Julie landed here on Earth on April Fool’s Day 1933 and kept the pedal to the metal for 92 years, taking us all along for one hell of a ride, before departing on July 25th, 2025.
Daughter of Henry and Esther Nichols and proud older sister to her beloved and equally colorful siblings, Hope ’54, Leslie ’55, and Hank. Summers were spent with their grandparents in Hyde Park, New York where their grandfather was caretaker at the Vanderbilt Estate. They lost their mother too early, a sadness they carried together for the rest of their days, which ultimately knitted them even closer together.
While attending Mt Holyoke College Julie went on a blind date with Christopher Cook, accepting because her roommate told her he had good posture. Thus began a journey that lasted 70 years and produced five children: Brett, Ethan, Esther, Silas and Jorden. Home was a 250 year old farmhouse in Lee, New Hampshire, drafty and temperamental but also magical. Julie and Chris met the many challenges of living there while taking great joy in nature and the beauty of their surroundings. For Julie that was always the birds. Every shopping list included a 40lb bag of birdseed. She excelled at living beautifully on a budget, shopping for remnants at the Exeter Handkerchief Factory, and sewing artful clothes for the family.
There were small bouquets of wildflowers on every windowsill, and partridge berry wreaths in Winter. She fed her large and hungry family wonderful meals from her home garden and with fish Chris caught in Great Bay. They made a remarkable team as parents, a united front knowing when to bring the hammer down and when to “try a little tenderness.”
Family hiking trips in the White Mountains often meant Julie had one child by the hand and another riding on her back. Swimming at Mendums Pond, sandwiches on the wooden cutting board under the big maple in the front yard, records playing on the record player, Julie knew the important beauty of an ordinary day.
She was a great reader aloud, ensuring a love of books by introducing her children to Ferdinand, Charlotte’s Web and The Wind in the Willows.
Julie and Chris moved to Andover, Mass in 1964 when Chris became the director of the Addison Gallery of American Art. She often said she knew when she married him she would have a life surrounded by art.
She began teaching pre-primary at the Pike School with her hilarious friend Jean Spader. Early marriage and children had postponed a college degree, which was required to teach in public school, her dream. She found a program that accepted life experience in lieu of credits at Harvard University. After graduating she went on to receive a Masters in Special Education at Suffulk University and a PhD at Boston University, all while teaching full time and wrangling five kids—now teenagers. A long career in special education at vocational high schools in Lowell and Lawrence followed.
She was a fierce advocate for her students, never looking away or backing down from any injustice they faced. One shining student, Alicia Phillips, called her on her birthday and all holidays for the rest of Julie’s life. She made another important friend, Diane Edstrom, a fellow teacher, artist and free spirit.
Julie worked her whole life for social justice in all its forms: civil rights, women’s rights and worker’s rights. She believed in unions and a good life and dignity for all.
She began a spiritual quest, which she shared with her dear friend Mary Chivers, finding deep meaning in the Quaker meeting houses in Dover, NH and Cambridge, Mass. She also discovered a real love for meditation and yoga. Her grandchildren were always delighted to find her standing on her head! She and Chris had become grandparents to Ryland, Jenny, Miles, Julia, Kylee, Nate and Pearl who they adored, sharing time together in the kitchen, the workshop, the art studio and outdoors. She also had such love for the spouses of her children, and all her beloved nieces and nephews.
She was blessed with extraordinary friendships. Her children remember the joy of coming home and finding them, all together in the kitchen, cooking omelets, drinking wine and laughing.
After retiring Julie and Chris returned to NH, settling in Portsmouth and happily picking up where they left off with treasured friends, Art and Celeste DiMambro and John and Janet Yount. Julie also became a CASA volunteer, continuing her advocacy for children and teens in need.
Julie showed tremendous strength and bravery when a diagnosis of dementia was delivered. “I can do this”, she said, “as long as I have the birds and Mahler.” She then added, “I always thought I was taking care of the birds but now I see they were taking care of me.”
She remained happy and loving and grateful. Often saying “I’ve had a wonderful life!” and “two thumbs up!” The Cook family would like to thank the staff at Riverwoods in Durham, not only for their incredible care, but also for making a home for us all.
A lifelong beauty, a reader, a dancer, a scholar, a regular at Boston Symphony open rehearsals and museums everywhere, making the trip to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum every Spring to see the hanging nasturtiums. She was the sun in our sky who we miss more than tongue can tell and for whom we say thank you every day. How did we ever get so lucky?
