Alan “Al” Cook passed away at home in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA on December 26, 2025 surrounded by his family.

Al was born May 10, 1938 in Buffalo, NY, the first of the four sons of Gerhard and Lura Cook. The family lived in several Buffalo suburbs before settling in 1950 on a farm in Clarence, NY. Clarence was rapidly growing and their move coincided with the opening of the new Clarence Central High School. Al won a contest to write the lyrics for the new school’s alma mater in 1951. Always a good athlete, Al and his partner won the 1955 Buffalo High School Doubles Tennis Championship.

Following in the footsteps of his parents and many other relatives, Al entered the University of Michigan in 1955. After growing up in snowy Buffalo, Al always dreamed of sunny beaches and a land without snow, so he transferred to UCLA for his junior year. LA agreed with him and he resolved to settle there after college. Although still not a college graduate, Al enrolled in the Stanford Law School in 1958. Fortunately he realized quickly during his single semester in Palo Alto that a legal career would not be the best match for his skill set and he returned to Ann Arbor and graduated from the University of Michigan with his bachelor’s degree in 1960. In college, he was voted the Huber House Jock of the Year by his University of Michigan dormitory and also participated in ROTC. He served in the U.S. Army both Active and Reserves for five years in the 1960s.

Still captivated by his time at UCLA, Al loaded all his belongings in his car and the day after graduation from Michigan drove west to Los Angeles. His first job was a teller at Union Bank in Torrance. He and a buddy shared an apartment in Manhattan Beach one block from the beach. Their landlord managed a beach volleyball team and offered the two roommates $75 off their monthly rent if they would join his team, which they happily did.

The landlord was also a recruiter for IBM and at Al’s request, gave him a computer programmer aptitude test. Al passed the test and joined IBM in 1961, beginning his 30-year career in the computer industry..

While Al dated several women, including taking one young lady on a date to Dodger Stadium where they witnessed Sandy Koufax throw a no-hitter, he couldn’t find the right person with whom he wanted to share his life. So in the spring of 1964 he put his faith in the new high tech world and submitted his info to a computer match service.

The computer matched him with a 24-year old school teacher named Bonny Robinson. Like Al, Bonny had traded her Connecticut upbringing for the sunshine of LA. They exchanged letters and phone calls for several weeks before meeting for their first date in April, a trip to the San Diego Zoo. As the legend goes, they were holding hands by the time they reached the sea lions.

Bonny and Al became inseparable, meeting for dates during the week and frequently spending weekends camping. Their romance became serious enough, they travelled to the east coast that summer to see her family in Connecticut and his in Buffalo. Not yet the romantic he would become later, he never actually proposed to Bonny. Instead, to Bonny’s surprise, he matter-of-factly introduced Bonny to his Mom as “this is Bonny, the girl I’m going to marry”.

He was right, and while on a camping trip they stopped in Reno, NV and were married in a small wedding chapel on August 29, 1964. Al did develop a romantic streak and began writing poems for Bonny each year on her birthday, their anniversary and at Christmas. In 2024, his brother Phil collected 60 years of poems and presented them to Al and Bonny in a beautiful hardcover book.

Society in the 1960s placed many restrictions on which jobs were available or unavailable to women, but Al felt Bonny had the aptitude and more importantly, would be happier in the computer industry than in her school teacher job. With his encouragement and support, she took the risk and also became a computer programmer, often being the only woman on the team. She had her own successful 30-year career in technology.

Their life developed a rhythm, working during the week and often camping and hiking all over Southern California in their Army surplus tent on weekends. This rhythm was disrupted in August 1968 with the birth of their son, Andrew. By mid 1969, they were ready to resume their regular camping trips - a preview of travel to come.

Living and working in the South Bay for many years, they had always dreamed of a home in Palos Verdes and in June of 1971 made that dream a reality. With their forever home secured, their next goal was to expand their travelling beyond California and in 1973 bought a converted VW van with a bubble top. The van comfortably slept four and Bonny’s widowed Mom Ellen Robinson began joining them for the annual two week summer vacation. Over the next decade, the four of them visited more than forty states, including Hawaii and Alaska, plus Mexico and Canada. The quartet began alternating annual U.S. trips with visits to Europe beginning with Greece in 1981. Al, Bonny and Ellen continued travelling as a trio after Andy left for college, eventually visiting all 50 states, 62 countries and all seven continents.

Beginning in the 1940s, Al was an avid hiker, initially with his Dad and brothers in the White Mountains of New England, and later with his brothers in Rockies and Sierra Nevadas. Bonny discovered she enjoyed hiking, and she and Al together hiked Southern California mountains, conquering Mt. San Jacinto more times than they could count. Al didn’t confine his passion for hiking to mountains. In April 1974 he began an audacious plan to walk the coast of California from the Mexican border to Oregon. Walking the coast in bits and pieces over long weekends with Bonny and Andy as the support team, he completed the trek ten years later in March 1984 Later he walked the length of Britain from John O’Groats to Land’s End.

While Al enjoyed a successful career in computers, his professional passion always lay with writing. In the early 90s, he was laid off as part of a corporate merger. He took the opportunity to follow his dreams and became a novelist. He wrote 25 novels, mostly murder mysteries over the next 25 years. He also became the family poet, writing limericks and song lyrics for all kinds of special occasions.

Retirement for Al also included a commitment to volunteering. He served for the Palos Verdes Peninsula Friends of the Library, Palos Verdes Helpline, and tutored students learning English as a second language. He was an active member of the South Bay Writer’s Guild for many years, where he met Author Ray Bradbury on a number of occasions.

His professional passion was writing, but his personal passion was his family. Al was a devoted father to Andy, playing endless games of catch in the backyard after work and volunteering to be the mid-year replacement coach for a youth soccer team after the first coach quit. The two of them attended numerous Dodger games, Rose Bowls and the 1984 Olympics.

In 1998 Al and Bonny became grandparents with the birth of grandson Matthew, joined by a second grandson Mason in 2000. The grandsons were the lights of his life and when they were young, he wrote them a series of stories called the M&M Mysteries featuring the boys going on adventures around the world. The grandsons even contributed to bringing his written works to life - Matthew providing the voice for the audiobook editions of two novels and Mason composing a musical score for a concert band inspired by Al’s epic poem “The Legend of Monk’s Rest”.

Beginning in the early 1990s, the families of the four Cook brothers began informal family reunions each Thanksgiving hosted by Phil and his wife Judy in Chapel Hill, NC. With brothers, wives, cousins, nieces and nephews, these reunions often had 20-25 Cooks.

Al is survived by his wife of 61 years Bonny, son Andy (Melissa), grandsons Matthew and Mason, brothers Steve (Linda) and Phil (Judy). He was preceded in death by his brother Mike (Kim).