Billie Maxine Cook

She was born in Mount Pleasant, TX on March 14, 1924, the elder of the two children of Lawrence Owen Jones and Ina Gaskin Jones.

Billie was a wife, a mother, a friend to many, and a violinist and music teacher for many years in the Dallas area; she also played professionally with the Fort Worth Symphony, the Irving Symphony, and the Fort Worth Opera Orchestra. She was an orchestra teacher at Arthur Kramer Elementary School in Dallas during the 1960s and a private violin teacher for decades both at her home and at the Greenhill School of Dallas. She led a string ensemble class at her home (designed with musical acoustics in mind), through Northlake College. An avid and passionate supporter of music throughout her life, Mrs. Cook served on the boards of the Dallas Chamber Music Society and Dallas Symphony Orchestra Guild, and was an active member of the Wagner Society for years. Over the past sixty years she played in music ensembles and string quartets in many of the local churches including Highland Park Presbyterian, Highland Park Methodist, St. Michael and All Angels, Christ the King, and First Community Church, to name a few. Along with her classical engagements, Billie played all over the state in orchestras accompanying such celebrities as the Light Crust Dough Boys, Boz Skaggs, and Jack Benny. Billie was careful to emphasize that, despite Benny’s comic persona as a bad violinist, he actually played very well.

Billie Maxine graduated from North Dallas High School in 1941 and from SMU with a bachelor’s degree in English in 1945. She received a master’s degree in humanities from SMU in 1974—her beloved alma mater—and she is a member of the Dallas Hall Society as a valued supporter of the university.

Her father, Lawrence, a farm boy from Gorman, Texas, started as a sales clerk for Duke & Ayres, an independent chain of eighty-five dime stores in Texas and Oklahoma. Over the course of Billie’s childhood and young adulthood he worked his way up to manager, supervisor, buyer, vice president, and finally president of the company. Her mother, Ina, was a homemaker, and very active in the Highland Park Presbyterian Church where she volunteered creating flower arrangements for Sunday services at Wynne Chapel for 21 years. Mr. and Mrs. Jones were active members and generous supporters of HPPC for decades, until their deaths. Billie was an active member as a teen and, along with her husband, remained active for many years and they both sang in the choir in the 1950’s.

During Billie’s early childhood, her father’s work required frequent moves: from Mount Pleasant to Denton before she was a year old, then to Corsicana where she attended first grade, then to Henderson during the oil boom, and finally to Dallas in 1936 where, with the exception of her early adulthood, she lived the rest of her life. She attended Vickery Place Grade School on Henderson (which still stands) in Dallas. At North Dallas High School she was on the debate team with the late Federal Judge Barefoot Sanders, and she was the orchestra concertmaster playing with Alfredo Martinez of the El Fenix restaurant chain. They both remained friends of hers for life.

The move to Denton brought a seminal and traumatic event to her life. Billie, precocious at eight months, was already walking and talking. While her mother was unpacking moving boxes in the next room, Billie toddled over to a gas space heater and held on to the hot surface for balance. Both her hands were severely burned and she carried the scars of that incident for the rest of her life. This was before the time of modern burn treatments and her right hand was damaged to the point that she, out of necessity, became left handed. She was told she would never be able to play an instrument and certainly could not master the piano, like her little sister, Bobbie. Billie had always been determined, and fate brought a traveling violin salesman to her family in East Texas where she discovered her life-long musical outlet, passion and profession. She took up the violin at age eight and never let it go.

At the age of twelve, she received ground breaking skin graft treatment at the Carrell Clinic in Dallas. She spent two summers recovering from the surgical procedures to open up her hands. Even after that, her hands were still so scarred, stunted and damaged you’d think she couldn’t do anything with them, but she could. Billie was a great cook, had two green thumbs and was always surrounded by thriving houseplants at home; she could even type, (sort of a peck and search method) which came in handy when working on her master’s degree, and she could play the violin like an angel, and teach others to do so as well. Among her students at the Greenhill School were two sisters, Emily and Marty Seidel, who later formed 2/3 of the Dixie Chicks. Always modest, Billie was careful to note that the girls already knew how to play the fiddle, but their parents wanted them to have some classical training.

In 1941, during the war, the family moved to a house on Bryn Mawr in University Park, where she and her sister could walk the mile to the SMU campus. While pursuing her initial major in journalism she was very involved in the art and music scene, playing violin at numerous events. She became John Rosenfield’s correspondent at SMU, writing local interest stories for the Dallas Morning News. He encouraged her to join the musician’s union so she could play professionally; while still in college she played violin in numerous venues, including weekly radio shows on WFAA.

The violin is also what led her to meet her future husband. As part of her work-study, her sister Bobbie was working as a receptionist for the dean of music at SMU, Dr. Paul van Katwijk, when she got a call from a bride’s father, whose hobby was making violins, looking for someone who could play one of his violins as a soloist at the ceremony. Chester Cook was best man in his medical school buddy’s wedding and Billie was the soloist: there was an instant attraction and Billie and Dr. Chester Cook married eight months later, on September 8, 1945, in a garden at SMU, and celebrated their sixty-fourth wedding anniversary before his death in 2009. She will be laid to rest next to him, at Wildwood Cemetery in Terrell, Texas.

She was preceded in death by her parents, Ina and Lawrence Jones of Dallas, her sister Bobbie Jean Jones Shedd of Richmond, Va., and her husband Dr. Chester Edwin Cook. She is survived by her three children: Lawrence Peter Cook of Lake City, Florida; Celia Cook Sams of Rowlett, Texas; and Camille Cook Guirola of Dallas, Texas; as well as ten grandchildren and 24 great-grandchildren.

Memorial Services will be held at Wynne Chapel at Highland Park Presbyterian Church, 3821 University Blvd, Dallas, TX 75205 at four o’clock p.m. on Friday, February 26. Reception/celebration of life to follow at a private residence.

Memorials should be sent to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra Guild, Meadows School of the Arts or to the Alzheimer’s Association at www.alz.org.