Richard Lewis "Dick" Cooksey

Richard Lewis “Dick” Cooksey, age 83, passed away December 30 in McKinney, Texas. He graduated from high school in Iola, Kansas, in 1959 and attended one year of study at Allen County Junior College before entering Kansas University, where he joined Phi Sigma Epsilon fraternity. He joined the Kansas National Guard in 1960 and completed his military obligation as Second Lieutenant.

During teen days living in Iola, Dick enjoyed playing trumpet in the Iola City Band. Dick played many musical instruments, and he decided to form a rock n’ roll band with other Iola musicians including both John & Bob Ellis, John Conderman, and L.C. Lacy. The band performed throughout the area and at KU as “The Checkmates.”

Throughout his entire life, Dick enjoyed the outdoors with his family involving swimming, hunting, fishing, camping, canoeing, snow-skiing, and all kinds of water sports. Growing up in Kansas, he spent countless hours at the Iola swimming pool, which was an extra-large facility built in 1930’s WPA days with a sunning area on top of the bathhouse. The pool sported a 25-foot diving board where Dick enjoyed demonstrating his “flip & a half.” The pool was also where he first spotted his eventual wife, Max, sunning with a friend on the top lounge area of the bathhouse. But it was that one-piece black swimsuit that most stuck in his mind as he surreptitiously tossed small pebbles at her on the wood lounge deck to get her attention & a smile. Dick also competed in Boy Scout swimming meet races conducted at the pool winning several trophies as a child. His ability in the water also allowed him a place on the Ft. Leonard Wood Army Swimming Team in the summer of 1960 competition. Besides swimming, Dick in his youth enjoyed all the summer family vacations taken for two weeks each year at fishing resorts in upper Minnesota in the 1940s & 1950s. Hunting quail in Kansas was a sport that Dick also enjoyed and he had several places available to do so, on land owned by his relatives in & around Burlington, Kansas, and on his in-laws' farmland around Baynard, Kansas.

Dick and his high school sweetheart Maxine “Max” Phillips attended KU together and were married in 1965 in Lawerence, Kansas. Dick graduated from KU with a BSEE (Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering) in 1966. 

Dick accepted a position as Associate Engineer at the Boeing Company in Wichita, where they remained for four years. While working at Boeing, Dick obtained his MBA from Wichita State University in 1970. He was offered a position with LTV Electrosystems in Greenville, TX. A son, Scott Allen Cooksey, was born in 1971 in Greenville, and they moved to Plano shortly after where Dick accepted an opportunity in financial management with the Frito Lay Company in Dallas. Another son, Benjamin Marshall Cooksey, was born in Dallas in 1973. Another move was in their future when Dick was offered an opportunity to relocate to the headquarters of Pepsi-Co, Inc. (owner of Frito Lay) in Purchase, NY, and commuted from the family’s home in nearby Ridgefield, Connecticut. After two years of living & working “back East,” another promotion opportunity opened with Frito Lay back in Dallas, which Dick accepted so the family could relocate back to the town of Plano. And just prior to their departure from Connecticut, a daughter, Shannon Leigh Cooksey, was born in 1976 in Danbury, Connecticut. Over the years, Dick worked with several Dallas companies, including Hunt International Resources, Phillips Coal Company, and Electronic Data Systems (EDS) before deciding to obtain his real estate license in 1992, forming Gallery Real Estate, and eventually retiring in 2010.

His grandsons, Buzz and Seven Cooksey, were a happy part of their days in Plano and Allen. Many outings and train rides around the Dallas Area were enjoyed by the four of them.

Travel has always been an exciting part of Dick’s life, and he brightened his family members’ lives by their experiences being with him along the way. These trips will be part of their memories of a dearly loved husband and father. When the children were grown and on their own, Dick and Max traveled yearly to European countries and throughout the Caribbean.

Dick was preceded in death by his youngest son, Benjamin. Ben and his siblings and also his nephews, Buzz and Seven, were very close and everyone in the family has very fond memories of our time with Ben.

Dick will be greatly missed. Survivors include his wife, Max; one son, Scott Cooksey, and his wife, Josefhine, of Dallas, TX; a daughter, Shannon Thober, and her husband, Ben, of Fairplay, CO; a daughter, Terry Stafford and her husband, Andy, of Shawnee, Kansas; five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

The family suggests memorial contributions to Shriner’s Hospital for Burned Children in Dallas, Texas.

Memorial services will be held at a later date in Colorado where the entire family will celebrate his life together in one of his favorite places, the great outdoors.