OBSCURITY SHRUGS- Part Two

  I stumbled across the Cook brothers the same way I discovered Ethelbert Crawford, by accident. One day I was driving through the little village of Hurleyville and decided to check out the Historical Society. This museum resides in an old school repurposed as a repository for the Catskills of yesteryear. It’s rambling, funky and lovingly tended by a team of volunteers. There’s Dr. Livingston’s (not that one) stove pipe hat, a Calico Indian mask, an original map of the Hardenberg Patent, and an entire room devoted to the “great,” controversial, explorer Frederick A. Cook. The center piece of the display is a beautiful polar sled made by his brother Theodore. In another tragic twist of events, years after Frederick trudged through the arctic, his brother Theodore died in 1928, after being trapped and freezing to death in an upstate meat locker. Theodore Cook left behind a a small collection of Crawford paintings, that I now own.

   The first two sentences in Frederick Cook’s Wikipedia page states: “Frederick Albert Cook (June 10, 1865- August 5, 1940) was an American explorer, physician, and ethnographer, noted for his claim of having reached the North Pole on April 21, 1908. This was nearly a year before Robert Peary….” I grew up reading my grandfather’s old copies of Zane Grey’s (who also may have known the Cooks and Bert) cowboy novels. I may not be a great reader, but I love adventure stories. When I learned of Cook I bought everything I could find written on him—and as the wind howled and snow blew—I huddled by the wood stove and followed him up Mount Mckinley and (I thought) all the way to the North Pole.

   Cook, whose portrait looks like a present day Brooklyn hipster, was born in Sullivan County, moved to Bushwick with his family, became a doctor, lost his first wife to illness and became an ardent explorer. His brother Theodore moved back to the Catskills. Frederick A. Cook’s claims of  being the first to scale Mount Mckinley and reach the North pole have both been met with skepticism almost from the outset. The Cook Society, founded by devoted family members and other “believers” in Cook’s accomplishments is on its last legs. Many have died of old age. A 2011 article Hero to Humbug by Robert M. Bryce, who studied and wrote on the polar controversy, essentially calls Cook’s claims of both scaling Denali and reaching the pole before Peary a “hoax.” It’s not like FAKERY wasn’t a tradition in the Catskills. Cook was also a photographer, lugging his heavy photographic equipment along to document and prove his “discoveries.” According to Bryce, “photographs Cook claimed were taken of new land discovered on the way to the Pole (which does not exist and is therefore a fake)….strongly indicates tampering during developing to obscure significant identifying details that might establish the place it was actually taken.” What’s more interesting reaching the North Pole or faking the whole thing? Moon landing conspiracy theorists take note.

   No matter the volumes of evidence pro and con involving Cook’s “discoveries,” the controversy continues. A 2014 issue of NYU alumni magazine, which bears the same “hipster” profile of Cook on its cover, declares “CORRECTION- Arctic explorer Frederick Cook was not a fraud.” It didn’t hurt that Cook was strikingly handsome. America in 1908 was obsessed with the Wright brothers, the race to the Pole and how to perpetuate a believable hoax. FAKERY is still all the rage. All can agree that Frederick Cook did not sit home and create “deep fakes” on his couch. He raised money, sailed ships (to both poles) and mapped untold coastlines. His studies into the effects of the lack of sunlight on the body and mind, revolutionary photographic processes under extreme conditions, and heroism in the face of certain death, stand as testaments to the man. Peary had all the financial backing and political string pulling to support his claim of being first to the North Pole. The newspapers and populace fell in line, leaving Cook in disgrace, tarred as a huckster. Today, Peary’s claim is also questioned. Also a brilliant geologist, Cook ended up in a sketchy business deal with some Texas oil men in the 1920’s, essentially “discovering” the rich Texas oil fields. Because of the stain of his previously questioned explorations Cook was convicted of “fraud” for selling dry leases. Turned out the leases weren’t dry. You just had to drill a little deeper. He was convicted by a prejudiced judge and did 14 years in Leavenworth Prison, before being pardoned by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940, dying soon thereafter, in obscurity….another Catskill tradition.