Why We’re Telling You Now About This SEC Chairman’s 2014 Death

(Bloomberg) -- A good chunk of the obituary writer’s time is spent pre-writing stories on the deaths of famous people who at that moment are old, or ailing, but still very much alive. Former presidents, moon-walking astronauts, Oscar-winning actresses and Nobel laureates are among the obvious candidates for a pre-written obituary.

But some of the best subjects, while not well-known by name, are those whose life trajectories intersected with a fascinating chapter of history.

That’s why, in 2011, I dug into the story of G. Bradford Cook. In 1973, at age 35, he had become the youngest-ever chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Just 74 days later, he had become the shortest-tenured chairman ever, singed by a stray spark from the Watergate scandal.

Long story short: Around the time Cook was settling into the chairman’s office at the SEC, it was becoming apparent that, in his earlier role as the agency’s general counsel, he (along with William Casey, his predecessor as SEC chairman) had been persuaded by Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign not to publicize a $200,000 donation the campaign had received from Robert Vesco, a fugitive New Jersey financier.

“The web of circumstance that I find myself confronted with has made me feel that the effectiveness of the agency might be impaired,” Cook said in announcing his resignation as chairman in May 1973, after which he pretty much disappeared from the news.

Obits shouldn’t focus only on painful chapters, so my piece on Cook took note of his impressive path to Washington (Exeter, Stanford, University of Nebraska Law, the Winston & Strawn law firm), and his work at the SEC helping brokers prepare for the end of fixed commissions.

The obituary also mentioned the oral-history interview Cook did in 2007 with the SEC Historical Society, during which he expressed regret at quitting the SEC: “I think that if I had to do it over again, with the same circumstances and facts, I would say: No, I would gut it out. I would not have resigned.”

So in late 2011 the prepared obit of Cook entered safe electronic storage, and I moved on to other subjects, though not before I created a Google alert on Cook’s name -- just in case it popped up in some other publication’s obituary.

In the past eight years, there have been occasional hits, always for different Bradford Cooks. Like on Thursday: Google alerted me to a report by WMUR in New Hampshire on a state government committee weighing how best to hold safe elections later this year. The chairman of the committee? One (different) Bradford Cook.

This time, just out of curiosity, I decided to see if there was anything new out there on the Bradford Cook of SEC history. And, lo and behold, there it was: A death notice from the Lincoln Journal Star, the local newspaper of his original hometown: “George Bradford Cook, of Bethesda, Maryland, passed away in his favorite place on earth -- Woman Lake in Longville, Minnesota on August 28, 2014 at the age of 77.”

I had to check the date twice before I believed it: August 2014. The opportunity to run the obit had come and gone six years ago. (Why my Google alert didn’t find the notice when it was published -- or, if it did, what was so preoccupying me in the summer of 2014 that I failed to notice the alert -- is something I’ll never know.)

In the death notice, Cook’s family (as families tend to do) had skipped right over the abbreviated nature of his tenure atop the SEC: “On March 3, 1973, he was sworn in by President Nixon as chairman, serving as the youngest in history. He later went into private practice for the remainder of his lifetime, serving on various boards and as general counsel for a handful of companies.”

Maybe I’m not the only Cook-watcher who missed the chance to tell his story. For all I know, other obituarists may also have to spike stories prepared long ago. And on Wikipedia, as of today, he was still alive.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.