By Dave Stafford
The Herald Bulletin
PENDLETON, Ind. —
About 100 people gathered on Earth Day to share their memories of Vic Cook, a Pendleton man who gained an international renown for his inventive passion for simple living.
A musician, music teacher, tinkerer, ecologist and builder and resident of the solar-powered “Earthship,” Cook was remembered as a kind and free-spirited soul who opened his home and his heart to generations of people. Cook died earlier this month after suffering a massive stroke. He was 67.
“He was off the grid. That’s it — he was off the grid,” said bass player Jeff Kern, who said that Cook taught him more than how to play.
“I had attention-deficit disorder and no teacher could get me to focus,” Kern said. After someone suggested lessons with Cook, Kern said, “within a year I could focus. He was more than my teacher. He was a friend and mentor. ... I couldn’t wait to get to a lesson.”
But it wasn’t always so.
“When I first met him, I thought, ‘What have I gotten myself into? This is an old hippie and I want to play rock ‘n’ roll,’” said Kern, who helped organize Thursday’s memorial at Falls Park. “Vic gave me a lot and I did not know it until Vic was gone.”
Kern, who now plays in an Indianapolis-based blues band called Day Job Blues, want to stage a fundraising concert to raise funds to help keep the Earthship in operation. He said several musicians who Cook trained have agreed. Kern said he hopes the concert will take place in June, but details have not been finalized.
Vic Cook Jr. recalled how, on short notice, his father came to his first public performance when he got a gig playing guitar and singing at a club in Arcadia. “He sat right in front of me — I knew six songs,” he said.
“With a tear in his eye, he sat there and listened to me play those six songs.”
For family and friends, Cook Jr. played and sang two songs he said he and his father used to play together, whose lyrics were particularly poignant — Don McLean’s “Vincent,” and James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain.”
“He was my best friend, he was my buddy,” Cook Jr. said. “I never thought about my dad as old.”
Cook’s Earthship gained him notoriety before off-the-grid living was widely known. He built the house over years, and innovations that embraced nature and technology were at its core.
“He lived the way he wanted to live and not many people can do that,” Cook Jr. said. “We’re on a timecard and a light switch.”
“We’re going to try to keep the giant going and keep it alive for him,” he said.
Tyler Goff, a friend of Cook’s who became acquainted with him through an interview for a public television station, recalled that was introduced to him when came across a library file labeled ‘Vic Cook, the Giant’. Goff thought perhaps Cook was 8 feet tall, he told a chuckling audience.
“I’ve never seen anyone captivate the imagination of an audience the way he did,” Goff said. “He called his home ‘the Giant.’ The Giant was Vic.”
Contact Dave Stafford: 648-4250, dave.stafford@heraldbulletin.com
