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Cook wants to be Pembroke mayor again
Judy Cook
Judy Cook

After some time away from the Pembroke mayor’s office, Judy Cook hopes to return to it.

Cook served 12 years as mayor, but opted not to seek a fourth term in 2011 in order to travel and spend time with her family.

But Cook admits she has missed being involved in city government, so she is running for mayor against her successor, Mary Warnell, in the Nov. 3 election.

“It’s in my blood,” Cook said. “I miss helping people and serving people. I think I can continue to bring something to the community.”

Cook, 70, is touting the experience she would bring to the position. She points out that her involvement in city government began well before she first was sworn in as mayor in 2000.

Cook began working for the city of Pembroke in 1972 and was promoted to city clerk in 1982. She also served as the city’s personnel administrator, planning and zoning administrator and municipal-court clerk before retiring as an employee and running for mayor.

“My education started way before 12 years (as mayor),” Cook said. “I’ve seen most every situation imaginable. If anybody’s got experience, I’ve got experience — and experience counts.”

Cook is campaigning on a self-described “short and sweet” platform of “improving the quality of life” in Pembroke. The city coined the slogan “Pride in Pembroke” while she was in office.

“I keep going back to ‘Pride in Pembroke,’” she said. “That’s what I tried to build the 12 years that I was here — to have something for everybody to feel proud of, and to make sure that they have a part in accomplishing this.”

As examples of that, Cook referenced the city’s establishment of a clothing bank with donations from the community and Pembroke’s partnership with United Way to provide a local food bank and meals for seniors.

Also, the McCormick family gave funding for the Tommy McCormick Play Park, and the McFadden family donated land for McFadden Place, a 30-apartment senior-living complex in the city.

If she is elected, Cook’s goals include re-establishing the Miller Teen Center, offering a mentoring program for young people and partnering with America’s Second Harvest of Coastal Georgia to provide groceries to low-income seniors and after-school meals for at-risk children. She also supports a suggestion a Pembroke resident gave her to establish a citizens’ police academy.

“I love that word ‘partnering,’” Cook said. “I can’t say enough good things about the people of Pembroke and what they do. They care and they want to be involved.”

The largest project of Cook’s mayoral tenure was the construction of the new wastewater-treatment plant on the outskirts of Pembroke. Grants funded about $3.5 million of the $5 million project, according to Cook, and the city took out loans for the rest.

Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax revenue was used to renovate City Hall and build the J. Dixie Harn Community Center and a new city maintenance barn. To save taxpayer money, the city instituted a work detail for detention-center inmates to maintain streets and the city cemetery.

“I’m a fiscal conservative,” Cook said. “I look for that dollar, and I will beg you to come on (and support the city).”

Downtown revitalization was one of Cook’s priorities as mayor, as the city upgraded sidewalks and lighting with a streetscape project and purchased DuBois Square and the old Tos Theater. Memorial Park was created to honor military veterans and local family members with commemorative bricks.

Cook listed new businesses that opened in Pembroke while she was mayor, including St. Joseph’s Health Center and Tremble Funeral Home.

A small shopping center on Highway 280 houses three businesses, with a Dollar General store next to it.

“I love my town,” Cook said. “I love Pembroke.”

Cook pledges, if elected, to be accessible to the people of Pembroke. She said she “always had an open-door policy” as city clerk and as mayor.

“If somebody wanted to come in and talk to me, come on back to my office and sit down,” Cook said. “I love helping people. ‘Problem’ is not in my vocabulary. You might have a concern, you might have an issue, but we don’t have problems.”

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Later yall, its been fun
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This is among the last pieces I’ll ever write for the Bryan County News.

Friday is my last day with the paper, and come June 1 I’m headed back to my native Michigan.

I moved here in 2015 from the Great Lake State due to my wife’s job. It’s amicable, but she has since moved on to a different life in a different state, and it’s time for me to do the same.

My son Thomas, an RHHS grad as of Saturday, also is headed back to Michigan to play basketball for a small school near Ann Arbor called Concordia University. My daughter, Erin, is in law school at University of Toledo. She had already begun her college volleyball career at Lourdes University in Ohio when we moved down here and had no desire to leave the Midwest.

With both of them and the rest of my family up north, there’s no reason for me to stay here. I haven’t missed winter one bit, but I’m sure I won’t miss the sand gnats, either.

Shortly after we arrived here in 2015, I got a job in communications with a certain art school in Savannah for a few short months. It was both personally and professionally toxic and I’ll leave it at that.

In March 2016 I signed on with the Bryan County News as assistant editor and I’ve loved every minute of it. My “first” newspaper career, in the late 80s and early 90s, was great. But when I left it to work in politics and later with a free-market think tank, I never pictured myself as an ink-stained wretch again.

Like they say, never say never.

During my time here at the News, I’ve covered everything that came along. That’s one big difference between working for a weekly as opposed to a daily paper. Reporters at a daily paper have a “beat” to cover. At a weekly paper like this, you cover … life. Sports, features, government meetings, crime, fundraisers, parades, festivals, successes, failures and everything in between. Oh, and hurricanes. Two of them. I’ll take a winter blizzard over that any day.

Along the way I’ve met a lot of great people. Volunteers, business owners, pastors, students, athletes, teachers, coaches, co-workers, first responders, veterans, soldiers and yes, even some politicians.

And I learned that the same adrenalin rush from covering “breaking news” that I experienced right out of college is still just as exciting nearly 30 years later.

With as much as I’ve written about the population increase and traffic problems, at least for a few short minutes my departure means there will be one less vehicle clogging up local roads. At least until I pass three or four moving vans headed this way as I get on northbound I-95.

The hub-bub over growth here can be humorous, unintentional and ironic all at once. We often get comments on our Facebook page that go something like this: “I’ve lived here for (usually less than five years) and the growth is out of control! We need a moratorium on new construction.”

It’s like people who move into phase I of “Walden Woods” subdivision after all the trees are cleared out and then complain about trees being cut down for phase II.

Bryan County will always hold a special place in my heart and I definitely plan on visiting again someday. My hope is that my boss, Jeff Whitten (one of the best I’ve ever had), will let me continue to be part of the Pembroke Mafia Football League from afar. If the Corleone family could expand to Vegas, there’s no reason the PMFL can’t expand to Michigan.

But the main reason I want to return someday is about that traffic issue. After all, I’ll need to see it with my own eyes before I’ll believe that Highway 144 actually got widened.

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