Founders Day 2015… a great success! The Founders Day reception sponsored by the Cooke Parent School Association (PSA) took place on Thursday evening, January 22nd, hosting more guests than ever before! Over 100 parents, faculty and trustees braved the cold to celebrate our founding families in a reception decorated like a winter wonderland! The Founders Day event commemorates Cooke’s founding in February 1987 and celebrates our founding principles: collaboration, partnership and parental involvement. This gathering brings together parents, past and current, along with faculty and staff, to make new connections and learn from one another. Amy Schindler, Catherine Glynn and Claudia Santiago co-chaired the event. New parents Diane Abudaram, Marie Dennehy and Arlene Hagopian joined veterans Marie Despinosse-Thomas and Latoya Williams on the very energetic planning committee. It’s because of this group that the event was such a stunning success. Gary Barton and Barbara Wolf, both Cooke parents, were honored for “Cooke from the Heart”, a moving series of audio interviews of current and past Cooke parents sharing their stories. The debut of the series featured founding parents Karen and Tom Robards. We greatly appreciated Gary and Barbara’s time and dedication to this project and all the parents that participated. The audio series will be posted to the Cooke website in February. (www.cookecenter.org) We are grateful to PSA co-chairs, Catherine and Claudia, for all the energy and effort they have been investing. Thanks to them we have a new system of class reps who helped make sure that all parents were warmly invited to attend this event. Thanks to the generous contributions from many purchasers of sponsorship tickets, we were able to ensure that all families interested in attending could participate. The Founders Day event was truly a community effort. The committee set up the room in a Winter Wonderland theme with white and ice blue linens complemented by amazing floral décor. Anissa Burnett from Blank Slate Events (blankslateeventsny.com) helped the committee in designing the room and donated stunning white flowers including roses and hydrangeas, along with gorgeous glass vases. (Anissa does an amazing job every year at the Cooke gala – coming up on May 13th). (continued next page)
Founders Day 2015‌ a great success! Spencer Harrington, another Cooke parent, generously donated a variety of wine for the event. Billy English reprised his role as Founders Day emcee. Roger Nembhard, Cooke technology teacher, was the event photographer for the evening. Amy, Catherine, Claudia, and your amazing committee, please know how grateful we all are for the hard work you put in to making this a beautiful event. Anissa and Spencer, Roger and Billy, Barbara and Gary, thank you for your contributions. Thank you to all our guests. See you next year!