We have already expressed our appreciation for the privilege of serving in many ways, so enough said there. However, as we set our thoughts to print, I (Fred. and I'm sure Kathy feels the same) am overwhelmed with gratitude for all those who participated in our clan activities during our term at the helm and the clan cohesion achieved. Appreciation to all our cousins who listened and even believed in our wild and grand ideas - and then eagerly dug in and helped in so many ways.

So today we can say with great satisfaction (which so many others justly share) that our society and the known clan members (much more numerous today) rest collectively on a very firm foundation. With our constitution, by-laws, administration, communications and executive in place, we are well served. Reunions continue regularly in both USA and CAN with seeds planted in who knows where else of which we are not aware. The organization has proven sound, efficient and effective. Our contact database has grown exponentially as has our family information database - pixs, videos, stories and tall tales etc.. When we took over from Eileen 2438, we had only our own family and the names of other members from her 1970 genealogy - no addresses or phone nos etc. - so we can only encourage our followers to preserve the current name/address database of well over 2000.

In 1970 I (Fred) could claim less than 500 cousins of record; today I can identify clearly well over 40,000 - some progress eh - and most other clan members will find the same, when they procure THE COMPLETE ECHOES (TCE).

Research and information feed continues daily from many Family Line Representatives, and other interested parties and we can boast a very effective WILLIAM COOK Branch of the Society in WIS USA and an ELIZABETH COOK Branch in TX USA - all feeding information to be correlated by your Master Genealogist and helpers.

So we believe we leave you in good shape - shepherded by your society - held together by a mutual interest and hopefully growing closer as time passes - our ancestors would surely be proud of us. Having built on the foundation Eileen and Johnny Houser left us, we trust the next generation will continue to preserve what has been done and build upon what we leave behind.

We leave you two key words to consider - GROW and COMMUNICATE - which have driven our era at the executive level - both good business & family principles.

We shall personally spend some of our remaining "active" years completing and getting TCE into the hands of (hopefully) 200 clan cousins. Then we shall give our attention to handing over the reins of all the society activities to some WORTHY cousin --- PLEASE let us know if you are interested. We will be happy to table you name and credentials before our board for consideration.

FAREWELL from cousin Kathy and Fred

UNQUOTE

Note - we have taken the liberty of printing all of the board members e-mail addresses here, so that you can communicate with each other (normally we BCC them) - hope that is OK.

Fred Cook 198 - AO & MG for acgs inc #820632 - not-for-profit
http://www.cookkk.com  the village of "COOKs KOZY KORNERS"
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