Message from President Corey
Dear Biola community,
For the vast majority of you at Biola, you have spent most of your days with Dr. Cook as your president. He exhorted you in your work, service, in chapel, and in the classroom. He talked with you on the sidewalk. He ate with you in the café. He modeled for you the love of a husband for his wife Anna Belle, a father for his children, Laura and Craig, and a grandfather for his six grandchildren.
Clyde Cook prayed for you and prayed with you. He made you think and he made you laugh. He was approachable. He was funny. He was there. He pointed your horizons beyond the petty stuff and challenged you to think of the big world outside of Biola as a place God wants to redeem. He believed in you and he loved you.
For 25 years, he gave of himself for Biola. Clyde Cook embodied Biola, its heritage, its values, its high calling as a biblically centered university. When people across the country and around the world saw Clyde Cook, they saw Biola.
We look to the seat he occupied in Chase Gymnasium year in and year out when this community gathered for worship and where the plaque installed a few months ago in his honor will now be there in his memory.
After returning from speaking at a Bible institute in Houston on Friday, Dr. Cook was at home with his wife Anna Belle when he passed away and entered the presence of the Lord. The final address he would give was the evening prior, Thursday night. He wasn’t feeling well, Anna Belle told me, but he stepped up to the microphone and with the strength that could only come from the Lord, he gave his address and ended with words that went something like this:
The final quality I believe every student must have to make an impact is to ENDURE CONSTANTLY. We want our…students to hang in there. We don’t want them to quit. We want them to persevere. To keep moving. Or as the apostle Paul has written, ‘And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.’ If we are normal, we will have moments when we want to quit. My word to all of us is, “Don’t quit.” The Lord will help you through the crisis or pressure.
Clyde Cook lived the words he proclaimed on Thursday night. And on Friday night he heard, “Well done.”
It is with profound sadness that we mourn the loss of our beloved friend and leader, President Emeritus Clyde Cook. This news of his passing away has stunned us all. We grieve deeply with Anna Belle, Laura, Craig and their family. I promised Anna Belle on Friday night that their Biola University family would prayerfully stand with them through these days of extraordinary loss.
Dr. Cook was long loved by this community and has truly impacted the world for the Lord Jesus Christ through his influence on countless lives. We will miss him dearly. I will miss him and he was a new friend for me.
I imagine how much more he will be missed by the Board of Trustees and senior leadership of this institution who worked so closely with him, and by you as students, alumni, faculty, staff and friends who have spanned years and even decades serving with the inimitable Clyde Cook. The Biola Counseling Center and Rosemead Psychology have graciously offered grief counseling on Tuesday and Thursday, April 15 and 17, in Rose Hall from 8:15-9:15 p.m. for Biola community members.
This week we will have special occasions to celebrate his life and remember his legacy. Please visit Biola’s website,www.biola.edu, to stay informed daily of the events and tributes planned.
In lieu of flowers, the Cook family has requested that gifts of remembrance be designated to Biola's Clyde Cook Memorial Fund for the Talbot building project, which was on Clyde Cook's heart as a priority to complete.
Blessings in Christ.
Warmly,
Barry H. Corey
President
Biola University