Dr. David Bruce Cook

David Bruce Cook, MD, MPH, age 79, shuffled off this mortal coil on August 18, 2026. He is survived by his son Brian, daughter-in-law April, grandson Henry, sister-in-law Janet Skogan Roemer, and brother-in-law Wesley Skogan. He is predeceased by his wife of 48 years (and first grade classmate!), Lynda, father Dr. Bruce Cook, mother Mary, and son Scott.

From Hammond, Indiana, he was captain of the Hammond High School swim team and MVP, setting a number of local and sectional records and was also a member of the speech team, winning a first in state his senior year. He attended Wabash College on a competitive/academic scholarship and there was a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity, Glee Club, and Scarlet Masque and was president of the Alpha Psi Omega theatre honor society chapter.

After graduation from IU medical school and internship, he served in the USPHS as a flight surgeon with the US Coast Guard at the San Francisco air station, Alameda, and aboard the ice breaker Glacier in Antarctica during Operation Deep Freeze ’74.

Following military service and internal medicine residency, he did his fellowship in pulmonary medicine at the University of California, Davis, and thereafter returned to Indianapolis to be medical director and department head of the Respiratory Care Department at Methodist Hospital and started the Methodist-based Pulmonary/Critical Care physician group practice “Respiratory Consultants of Indiana” and served as its managing partner. He also served as president of the state Thoracic Society and on the Boards of Directors of the National Association of Medical Directors of Respiratory Care and our regional Lung Association. He then accepted a position as director of quality management for another of the state’s largest hospital systems.

Receiving his Master’s in Public Health degree from the Medical College of Wisconsin, he embarked on his final professional chapter practicing population health with a focus on analytics, being awarded a handful of related US patents. He was one of the founders of the Indiana Health Information Exchange and an 18-year member of its Board. Another highlight of this era was working with IU’s Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom, three other physicians, and a squad of non-clinical academics to determine to what extent her observations of effective cooperation among extractors of commonly-held resources might be applicable to the field of medicine.

Peer-reviewed publication topics ranged from exercise physiology to disease management.

He and his wife Lynda loved to travel, with camera in hand, throughout all fifty states, all seven continents and a third of the world’s nations: as far east as Cyprus, west as China, south of the Antarctic circle and north of the Arctic circle respectively. Annual “geezer” trips with old friends included canoeing the Yukon River, kayaking Maine’s Penobscot Bay and the Gulf of California’s Isla Espiritu Santo and hiking in national parks.

As his work hours became more predictable, he resumed indulging his enthusiasm for acting. Often cast as the “heavy” in college (Henry the Eighth in “A Man for All Seasons”, King Claudius in “Hamlet”, Pozzo in “Waiting for Godot”, etc.), he enjoyed primarily comedic roles in later years. Several of his favorites were: the forger convict “angel” in “My Three Angels”, the ghost of John Barrymore in “I Hate Hamlet” and one of the two title roles in the farce “Leading Ladies”.

There will be no services. Cremated remains will be interred at sea with military honors by the US Coast Guard off the coast at San Francisco.

Memorial donations may be made to Dr. David B. Cook Scholarship at Wabash College, 301 W. Wabash Ave, Crawfordsville, IN 47933 or www.wabash.edu/give or to your local Public Broadcasting station.