A Lifetime Of Service

he walls in his office in the Pentagon's D-Ring were crowded with citations and awards, caricatures and pictures bearing testament to a lifetime of public service.

In this panoply of achievement, one photograph captured the essence of the esteem he earned from those who shouldered the burden of defending our nation in the last half of the 20th century: David O. Cooke, seated at a desk with nine men standing behind him-nine secretaries of Defense. "Doc" Cooke served all of them, and six others, in a Pentagon career spanning more than four decades. He administered the oath of office to most of them.

Cooke's titles-Defense director of administration and management, in official directories, and "mayor of the Pentagon," in more popular accounts-only hint at his stature, his moral authority, his essentiality to the Pentagon and the government community beyond its walls. Government and the nation suffered a great loss when he died in June.

Doc Cooke was 79 when, in November 2000, then-Secretary of Defense William Cohen threw an elegant party to celebrate his long service to the nation. The guest list was a Who's Who of the 20th Century's Defense Elite, with most of the players by then consigned to the sidelines of government. Passers-by in a city of temporaries, they gathered that night to pay tribute to durability if not permanence, to a pillar of stability. In his toast to Cooke, Cohen said, "You embody all the values and virtues that America could hope for in a public servant: unwavering honor, unquestioned integrity and unequaled commitment to the nation."

Cohen's tenure at the Pentagon ended a few weeks later, but not Doc Cooke's. He stayed on, swearing in and working for "Rummy" (as he called Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld) for the second time.

During funeral services July 10, Cooke was remembered as a man whose prodigious capacity for work never got in the way of his family, a wife and three children to whom he imparted his own love of knowledge and learning and of public service. He was remembered as a problem-solver who could make the complex, politically charged systems of government work in the interests of Defense secretaries and of the department's rank and file civilian and uniformed personnel. He was remembered as someone who cared deeply about government-the role and reputation and effectiveness of the public sector-and who did what he could to improve its condition.

"If you see a turtle on top of a fence post, you know he didn't get there by himself," Doc would say, in one of his wonderful aphorisms. Everyone there on July 10 knew what he meant, for all had been helped, one way or another, by

association with Doc Cooke. I was one: He taught me much about government, and he encouraged and helped me in my own modest undertakings to improve the public sector. All of us who joined Doc's family in celebrating his life last month-former Defense secretaries, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the office workers and staff sergeants and captains and majors-knew that we had been privileged to have worked with and been a friend of one of the great men of the 20th century. We will never forget him.