'A Tribute to a Leader'
I could only say 'Wow' when I read the following email from the Rev. Odell Cleveland and Robert J. Wineburg about all the impact Nathan Cook made while in Greensboro. Cook recently left the city. Here's how he's probably helped make the lives of you and your neighbors a little easier:
A Tribute to a Leader
By the Rev. Odell Cleveland and Robert J. Wineburg
A few of years ago, when I, Rev. Odell Cleveland of Welfare Reform Liaison Project, received the 'Those Who Care Award,' Nathan Cook was in the audience sharing in the evenings joy. Nathan would never tell you about the role he played in making the partnership between Welfare Reform Liaison Project and the United Way the largest Gifts in Kind International project in the country. Nor would he tell you that the $10 million worth of new corporate goods distributed to local nonprofit agencies and churches in just 2 years was, in good part, his doing.
One would never know that Nathan Cook was behind the smiles on those kid's faces as they went to school in brand new clothes and carried new notebooks, some for the first time ever. Nathan did his caring behind the scenes!
Few people know who, almost 2 decades ago, started the local court counseling program for male batters, a partnership between Family Services and the courts. Today, when men are abusive to their partners, we don't just lock them up and throw the key away. Nor do we demand that the women and their kids leave home. That just plunges the family into poverty and does nothing to correct the inappropriate behavior. Two decades ago we usually ignored the problem, or if it got out of hand, we either locked the guy up for a while or merely told the woman to pack the kids up and hide. Today, we first try to put that family back together, demand counseling for the man, and more importantly, ensure that the men take responsibility for their destructive behavior as the first step toward that steep climb back to civilized family behavior. This system keeps the family in tact. Who was the carpenter behind the scenes putting the hinges on the new, and at the time, very awkward set of relationships among the courts, the agencies, and dysfunctional and pained families?It was Nathan Cook!
It was 2 a.m. and it was cold. A young kid was walking the streets aimlessly. He said that he was not sure where his mom was, but she wasn't home. The police couldn't put the minor in jail, and the Department of Social Services was closed. What did they do? There has been a man who served as the "after hours social worker" at the Department of Social Services for well over a decade. He knew how to talk to the scared kid. He knew exactly which emergency foster care families had warm beds, and he knew how to start the laborious paper work in the child protection process before the Department of Social Services opened. That way the child could quickly have some semblance of stability in what was often "messy stuff." Who was that quiet man reaching out to many pained children late at night -- without ceremony? Nathan Cook!
Four years ago, I received a call from an officer in the North Carolina Association for Information and Referral. He was, at that time, also an influential vice president at our local United Way, in charge of the In Touch Referral System. In his role as an officer of this association, he was the leader for the group of people in communities across North Carolina who answer calls ranging from a nervous woman trying to find a nursing home for her husband whose Alzheimer's disease is now unmanageable, to referring the newly diagnosed cancer patient to the closest support group. The association's officer said he didn't have any money, but his organization's members would benefit greatly from a workshop on how to get grants to support their hometown programs. He artfully persuaded me to say yes, and if funds became available "he’d do what he could" to direct them my way. I conducted that workshop in Wilmington – without a contract - because it was hard saying no to someone who cares as much as Nathan Cook!
Every time I see Nathan, now the first President of our region's new 211 system – the human service equivalent of the emergency call system "911," he jokingly tells anyone willing to listen that he almost beat me silly 20 years ago when I was his academic advisor. One day, I told him quite bluntly, that he wasn't working up to his potential and that if he didn't start doing so soon, he might want to consider trade school. By about age 20, Nathan had already reached one of the highest levels in Karate–the Black Belt. I felt that if he could spend all that time to become an "expert" at such a young age, all he had to do to hone his academic skills, was to refocus his mental sharpness and redirect his time to his studies.
I firmly believe that the verbal karate chop I gave Nathan that day was not really my work, but something in the hands of destiny itself. Nathan never would have beaten me silly. He is a gentle, yet powerful and skillful advocate for the underdog. He knew that I wouldn't have lasted 10 seconds in a physical tussle with him. Deep down he knew he had somewhere to go, and I happened to be one of the hoops he had to jump through to get there. Fortunately, for the underdogs in our community Nathan flourished at UNCG. This deeply religious man's destiny was in his sharp and calculating mind, his gentle spirit, and his wide-open and caring heart. If ever there were a person whose initials are engraved in the sidewalks leading to the major systems that care for the underdog in our community, they would read NC for Nathan Cook. Unfortunately for this community, some other community recognized the talents of this gentle, lovable, hard working, and smart man and offered him a position he could not refuse.
Nathan Cook will start his job as the first Executive Director of The Family Justice Center of Buffalo, New York. Nathan will lead this emerging non-profit, designed to co-locate advocates for domestic violence (victim services, law enforcement, prosecutors, and others who serve victims of violence) into one centralized location. Nathan will lead this new nonprofit in improving access to services for victims and families through the creation of a focused, efficient, and coordinated system that will decrease barriers and improve service delivery -- something he did here two decades ago. We will all miss Nate. He is the definition and embodiment of a professional!