Joseph Cookman

Joseph Cookman
Joe Cookman about 1942
Born	(1899-02-06)February 6, 1899 Batley, Yorkshire, England
Died	August 12, 1944(1944-08-12) (aged 45) New York, New York

Joseph ‘Joe’ Cookman (February 6, 1899 – August 12, 1944) was an American journalist, critic and a founder of The Newspaper Guild.

Born in 1899, in Batley, England, a suburb of Leeds, Joseph was the oldest of three children born to John and Ada (née Pattison) Cookman.

In 1907, John, the son of a Methodist Minister was sent to Canada with his young wife Ada and two of his three young kids (the youngest child Hannah, was too sick to make the journey at the time) and became a remittance man. Shortly after they arrived, John died of appendicitis.

With no money nor means to support herself, Ada put her son Joe in an orphanage at the age of 8. Subsequently, his mother got a job keeping house for a Walter Bowen and moved to his farm on Bowen-Eldridge Road in Fillmore, New York. Joe Cookman was retrieved from the orphanage and went to live with his mother and sister Grace in New York. Ada and Walter eventually would marry. In 1915, Cookman's sister Hannah now healthy, sailed from England aboard the SS Cameronia, is processed through Ellis Island and joined the family in Fillmore. Cookman graduated from a one-room school house in rural Fillmore.

He went on to study at Houghton College before joining the Army, going through officer training school at Smoky Hill Flats, Kansas, and serving in World War I as a Lieutenant in the infantry.

After the war, a friend's father who owned a steel mill, offered Cookman a job paying $75 per week. However, Joe did not want to be a steel salesman but a writer instead and moved to New York City settling on the upper west side. He shared an apartment with his sister Grace who had become a nurse.

On November 26, 1928, Cookman married Mary Carter Carson, daughter of James Carson a former Chairman of the Colonial Trust Company. She was known professionally as Mary Bass for most of her career. They had an episcopal wedding and a reception at the Englewood Golf Club. Ushers at the wedding were newspaper men Lindsay Perrott, Ted Dibbell (NY Post), Joy Lilly and John Collins. Bass's brother was also an usher. As newly-weds, they first lived at 750 Riverside Drive in Manhattan. They later moved to the Lower East Side around 14th street, with Cookman working at the New York Post and Bass working as an advertising assistant at a department store.