David Cook is the award-winning city columnist for the Times Free Press, working in the same building where he began his post-college career as a sportswriter for the Chattanooga Free Press. Cook, who graduated from Red Bank High, holds a master's degree in Peace and Justice Studies from Prescott College and an English degree from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. For 12 years, he was a teacher at the middle, high school and university levels. A Marshall Memorial Fellow, Cook published in magazines (The Sun, Utne Reader, Geez), academic journals, an anthology on homelessness ("Personal Struggles, Professional Lives: Ethics and Advocacy in Research on Homelessness" — Lexington Press) and an anthology on grandparents and grandchildren ("Grandparenting with Heart" — North Atlantic).
For the last 261 days, ever since the coronavirus appeared in this county on March 13, an untold number of men and women have devoted and risked their lives to save ours.
by David CookThis Thanksgiving, you're not going to intentionally undercook the turkey, are you? Some salmonella and gravy for your guests?
by David CookWhen the pandemic began, Troy Rogers and Tony Oliver bought $100 worth of Walmart groceries and began feeding people across the city.
by David Cook"Where is your country? he said.
by David CookLife feels like a flood right now. The waters are so high, so torrentially fast.
by David CookHow do we fight without fighting life itself?
by David CookRecently, I heard of a local man who, in the pre-dawn dark, gets up early to run his neighborhood streets.
by David CookSeveral years ago, we were named the Most Bible-Minded City in America. So, tell me:
by David CookSix months...and three weeks.
by David CookThe large swastikas spray-painted on the Walnut Street Bridge and art district are gone now.
by David CookThis isn't really about the books.
by David CookLet's forgive David Smith.
by David CookHow are the voices of Black women received in this city and county? Especially outspoken, unapologetic Black women?
by David CookThis week, Hamilton County returned to school.
by David CookOn Friday, July 31, hundreds of local Republican leaders attended an annual fundraiser at the Chattanooga Convention Center.
by David CookI asked a friend — she's Black — what John Lewis meant to her. "Hope," she said.
by David CookFear hurts. It's not like love, which opens and embraces. Fear tightens, constricts and hardens, the spirit's form of arteriosclerosis. When I feel afraid, my abdomen and chest feel like they're being squished and squeezed into a too-small box.
by David CookWe have reached the end of privatized prisons in Hamilton County.
by David CookWhy aren't we all wearing masks?
by David CookIn July 2019, after a video surfaced of white officers beating, kicking and strip-searching a handcuffed Black man, 50 or so Black leaders stood on the Hamilton County Courthouse steps with one clear message for the sheriff.
by David Cook