Free Republic

Jeff Cook, a Country Music Hall of Fame member as one of the co-founders of the country group Alabama, died Monday at age 73 at his home in Destin, Florida. He had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2012 and revealed his condition to the public in 2017. Cook was immediately recognizable to fans as the key instrumentalist in the group, playing guitar and fiddle as well as contributing vocals in three-part harmony alongside co-founders Randy Owen and Teddy Gentry, his cousins. (Cook is pictured above, at left, alongside Owen and Gentry at a 2016 event heralding the opening of...

What we owe to NAFTA Posted: December 1, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc. Around Oct. 6, 38-year-old auto mechanic Jeff Cook decided to treat his wife and two daughters to dinner at Chi-Chi's in Beaver Valley Mall outside Pittsburgh. Within three weeks, Cook, suffering from acute liver failure, was fighting for his life. To save him, surgeons had a new liver flown in. They failed. Jeff Cook became, writes Lydia Polgreen of the New York Times, "the first person to die in what federal health officials say is the biggest food-borne outbreak of hepatitis A in...