It is with great sadness that I announce that Dr. Jim Cook, retiree of GHC, original faculty at the college and Professor of History Emeritus , passed away Friday, April 9, 2021.
He taught history at Georgia State University for four years until 1970 when he became one of the original faculty members at Floyd Junior College. Dr. Cook taught history at Floyd (now Georgia Highlands College) for 30 years, until retiring in 2000. A rarity in academia today, Dr. Cook was a conservative who had great respect for America’s Founding Fathers and founding documents. An advocate of learning through travel, he spent six weeks in India on a Fulbright-Hays grant in 1985 and led 13 bus study-tours of Washington, Gettysburg and Williamsburg as well as 17 tours of Europe. A life-time student of Georgia’s political history, Dr. Cook published numerous articles and four books: Governors of Georgia, a biography of Gov. Carl Sanders, a biography of Rep. Carl Vinson, and a history of Floyd College entitled We Fly By Night. In later years, he published dozens of op-eds on historical and political subjects in the Rome News-Tribune.