Jack Cole, 87; directory creator used computers to sift phone book data
Jack Cole, who used early computer technology to recast the phone book as a marketing and investigative tool by creating directories that were organized by address instead of alphabetically by name, has died. He was 87.
Cole died July 29 at his home in Spearfish Canyon, S.D., after a brief battle with cancer, said his daughter, Susan Wright.
Sixty years ago, Cole was a salesman at IBM when he thought to use the company’s punch-card technology to turn the traditional phone book upside down. In 1947, by relying on machine sorting of data, he published the first Cole Directory, which listed information for Dallas in order of address.
Door-to-door salespeople could then know who would answer their knock, and detectives or reporters could easily track down the next-door neighbors of someone suddenly in the news.
The idea for such a directory wasn’t new, but using technology to re-sort existing information was. Earlier attempts at publishing this type of directory relied on neighborhood canvassing to collect data.
Cole’s book sold strongly from the start, and he soon expanded the concept to Houston and beyond. He also made the directories more useful by incorporating information from census data, tax rolls and birth records.
The directories are still published -- with the Cole name on them -- in print and digital form by MetroGroup, which owns Cole Information Services.
While his son, Dana Cole, has called him “the father of data management,” others might consider the senior Cole “the father of junk mail” for being among the first to apply punch-card technology to mailing lists.
“Jack was the first to sell the lists just for marketing. He became the largest independent publisher of that data,” James McQuaid, president of MetroGroup, told the Black Hills Pioneer newspaper in Spearfish last month.
Major clients who wanted to target consumers soon came calling, including Time magazine, Reader’s Digest, Colgate-Palmolive Co. and General Motors Corp.
In the 1950s, Cole moved company headquarters from Dallas to Lincoln, Neb., and sold the business in the early 1970s. He invested in a Canadian-based network of remote hunting and fishing lodges aimed at the wealthy but sold the venture after about a decade, his daughter said.
He retired to a cabin in Spearfish Canyon that had been in his family since the late 1800s and dedicated himself to local conservation causes.
The cabin’s walls were “covered in history,” papered with photographs of famous people who had touched his life, his daughter said. Cole -- often decked out in a white shirt, tie and cowboy boots -- liked to give tours of the home he called “the museum” to show visitors that he had done something with his life.
“It was great for conversation and gave him credibility when he was talking about water-quality and mining issues,” his daughter said.
Jack Ridnour Cole was born Feb. 12, 1920, in Lincoln, Neb., the eldest of two children of Dana and Vera Cole. His father was an accountant.
At the University of Nebraska, Cole studied business and met his future wife, Lois Keller. After graduating in the early 1940s, he joined IBM and briefly served in the Navy during World War II before returning to the company.
“He had a real creative mind,” his daughter said. “A woman who came to his funeral had a neat way of putting it. She said, ‘Jack didn’t think outside the box, Jack thought outside the stadium.’ ”
In addition to his daughter Susan, of Prescott, Ariz., Cole is survived by two sons, Dana Cole of Lincoln, Neb., and Jeff Cole of La Quinta, Calif.; a sister, Patricia Sinkey; eight grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren. His wife died in 1997.
