FORKS — Forks Forum Editor and Publisher Chris Cook will hang up his press badge today after 25 years in the industry, the past six years covering the West End for the weekly community newspaper.
The Forks Chamber of Commerce honored Cook on Wednesday with a cake and send-off at its regular weekly meeting.
“Chris is the best editor we ever had,” said Marcia Bingham, chamber director of customer service.
Cook arrived in Forks in March 2007 with a diversity of experience and willingness to learn more that made him an integral part of the Forks community, Bingham said.
“He’s always connected with everything. He didn’t mind being included in things,” she said.
‘Understand my roots’
After spending most of his life in New York City and Hawaii, Cook said he found that Forks is a lot like life in rural Idaho, the home of his pioneer family.
“I understand my roots better now,” he said.
At 63, Cook said it was time to hang up his journalistic hat and concentrate on other parts of his life, including writing more books and spending more time with his wife, Evelyn Cook, who has health concerns.
His current project is a nonfiction version of the first chapters of James A. Michener’s novel Hawaii, he said.
The Cooks are moving to Crescent City, Calif., a fishing and logging community near the Oregon border, where they already own a home, he said.
Delivered papers
Cook’s involvement in journalism included delivering newspapers in New York in 1963.
“I was in journalism before the Beatles were on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’” in 1964, Cook said.
He studied journalism at the University of Hawaii and, beginning in the 1980s, worked for The Garden Island newspaper on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, as an Associated Press and United Press International stringer in Hawaii, and as editor of the Coeur d’Alene Press in Idaho.
Cook, who also has spent time traveling to the best surf spots in the world, has published more than 15 books, he said.
Among them are Twilight Territory: A Fan’s Guide to Forks & LaPush and Forks (Images of America), with Larry Burtness.
In tourism
He worked as a tourism industry spokesman, was part of the effort to bring “Jurassic Park” filming to the island of Kauai and was a state spokesman during Hawaii’s recovery from Hurricane Iniki in 1992, he said.
The Forks Forum is delivered each Thursday to every postal address in the West End of Clallam and Jefferson counties and counts a circulation of 5,000.
Sound Publishing Inc., owner of the Forks Forum, is working toward finding a new editor but has not yet found one, Cook said.
Until a permanent replacement writer and editor can be found, a reporter from the Sequim Gazette, also owned by Sound Publishing, will cover local news for the Forum, Cook said.
The Peninsula Daily News also is owned by Sound Publishing.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arice@peninsuladailynews.com.
