His Efforts Helped Central Library Rebuild After Fire

Lodwrick Cook was in the lobby of the Richard J. Riordan Central Library when a man wearing a yellow “I Love Mom” T-shirt rushed in his direction.

“Hi, are you Mr. Riordan?” he demanded a little breathlessly, as he balanced a thick stack of library books in his arms.

In his gold-buttoned blue blazer and gray wool trousers, Cook did have the look of somebody who was somebody. And his white hair and broad cheeks were not unlike the former mayor’s.

But he shook his head, explained that Riordan was a friend and then quipped in his Louisiana drawl, “I think I’m better-looking.”

What the former Arco chairman didn’t say was that he, too, has his name on the library -- on its rotunda, one of the building’s most treasured spaces. Or that the library was about to honor him again for his efforts on behalf of books.

On Thursday night, the Library Foundation of Los Angeles was to give Cook its Light of Learning Award for his dedication to the library. He first became involved with it nearly 20 years ago, soon after he became chairman and chief executive of Arco.

From his 1,600-square-foot office on the 51st floor of the north tower of Arco Plaza, he could look down on the little building, directly across Flower Street. He was looking down on it on April 29, 1986, as thick smoke rose up from a large fire set by an arsonist.

The fire tore through the stacks and destroyed 400,000 books and periodicals. Hundreds of thousands of other volumes were damaged by smoke and water in the aftermath.

The commotion was occurring far below him. Cook could have simply glanced at it and gone about his business. Instead, he stepped in to help, and devoted himself to the library’s cause for years.

Within days, he welcomed displaced library staff members into 25,000 square feet of rent-free office space in the Arco building. And he readily accepted then-Mayor Tom Bradley’s request that he join him in leading Save the Books, a campaign to raise money for the library’s recovery.

Arco donated the money to run the campaign, which was well underway in September when a second arson fire occurred. Cook urged friends and other corporate leaders to give money. He set up a store in Arco Plaza to benefit the library. He dispatched many Arco employees to the effort. And in his cowboy boots and cowboy hat, he set phones ringing off the hook when he danced to “Just a Gigolo” on a Save the Books telethon. (One friend of his pledged $1,000 if he would stop dancing, he said.)

By the end of two years, the effort had raised more than $10 million.

And by the time a new and expanded library reopened in 1993, with Cook’s name on the rotunda, Cook had helped to create the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, which now solicits about $5 million a year in private donations. He served as founding chairman.

In a way, he said, the fire made people recognize how much they could do if they worked together.

“I hate to say this, but the arsonist did us a favor. He lit a fire under us,” Cook said.

Helping wasn’t something Cook had to think about, he said. Arco, based in Los Angeles, took civic responsibility seriously. The city’s crises were its crises. Its leaders were expected to get involved.

When Cook signed on to help raise money, he said of the library, “We’re neighbors.”

After the riots of 1992, he served as a chairman of Rebuild L.A.

In those days, a small group of corporate leaders met occasionally to discuss the city’s needs, Cook said.

“I wish Arco was still here,” he said. “Now we’ve lost a lot of our corporate headquarters, and that’s a sad thing, because you don’t have that push.”

Cook retired from Arco in 1995. He went on to be co-chairman of Global Crossing, and is still actively involved in business. He is vice chairman of Pacific Capital Group and chief executive of the National Infrastructure Capital Group, which tries to form public-private partnerships to repair and improve highways, bridges and other major public works.

Cook’s reading tastes tend to Tom Clancy and John Grisham. He likes a good Civil War story. But he doesn’t read so much anymore, he said. His eyes are not as good as they used to be.

He also doesn’t come downtown often, since retiring from Arco. He visits “his” rotunda only rarely. The Lodwrick M. Cook Rotunda is a grand, airy space, decorated with enormous murals, a 9-foot-wide cast-bronze chandelier suspended from its intricately painted domed ceiling.

The chandelier has 48 globes, for the 48 states in existence when the library opened its doors in 1926. Cook, who will turn 77 next month, was born in the small town of Castor, La., in 1928.

As he stood in the rotunda on a recent afternoon, people walked by without connecting Cook’s face to the face on the plaque on the wall.

But when library officials took him to visit Teen’Scape, a space designed for teenagers to study and hang out right off the rotunda, Virginia Loe, the senior librarian, stood beaming when she saw Cook coming.

“Hi, I’m Lod Cook,” he said, extending a hand. He didn’t have to say more.

“I know all about you. You’re very famous here. You know, you’re a hero here,” Loe told him.

“Everybody knows you here. We appreciate your work and your help. Thank you.”

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One for the books

Cook graduated from high school in Grand Cane, La., in a class of just five students. “It was hard to be in the top 20%. I wasn’t even in the top 40,” he said, laughing, then added, “Our school was so small, we took driver’s education and sex education in the same car.” (In fact, the school offered neither class.)

* He has two bachelor’s degrees from Louisiana State University -- in mathematics and engineering. He also has a business degree from Southern Methodist University.

* Cook has five grown children. His 10th grandchild is on the way.

* In 1994, Queen Elizabeth II approved an honorary knighthood for Cook, who can now use the initials KBE (or Knight Commander of the British Empire) after his name.

* Cook spent 39 years at Arco, starting in 1956 as a management trainee.

* The Central Library isn’t the only library Cook has championed. He has been active in two presidential libraries -- as former chairman of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and a board member and trustee of the George Bush Presidential Library Foundation.

Los Angeles Times