Cristy Cay Cook was driving her 1977 Camaro back to Pullman after an early morning Cougar Crew practice on the Snake River, leading a caravan of cars through dense fog.
She was giving four teammates a ride to campus and trying to make it in time for her 8 a.m. class when she missed a turn at a T-section and crashed into an embankment. The crew members riding in her car were taken to area hospitals and, eventually, recovered from their injuries. Cristy died at the scene. She was 20.
Three months later, the Cook family donated a cedar racing shell to Cougar Crew in Cristy’s honor. Now, after three decades away from Washington State University, that special shell has finally made its way back home.
Commencement Bay Rowing Club, which has owned the shell since the mid-1990s, recently returned the Cristy Cay Cook to WSU on Aug. 7. It will eventually be permanently displayed in the Cougar Crew ergometer room following a formal rededication ceremony in March 2027.
“Those whose stewardship, foresight and affection have preserved this magnificent example of the boat-builder’s art, in a place of reverence and honor, all these decades, have earned our undying gratitude,” said Mike Klier (’75 Physics), who joined Cougar Crew as a freshman in 1971. He’s been working to bring the Cristy Cay Cook back to WSU since 2019. “Had this shell gone to anyone else, we would be bringing home ashes, not a living manifestation of a family’s love.”
The Cristy Cay Cook, which seats eight rowers plus a coxswain, was built by Pocock Racing Shells in Seattle. The Cook family donated the shell to Cougar Crew in February 1980. It was dedicated in a special ceremony during a basketball game.
About 15 years later, the Cristy Cay Cook was sold to the then-fledgling Commencement Bay Rowing Club and replaced with a state-of-the art carbon fiber shell dubbed Cristy Cay Cook II. After some negotiation, the Commencement Bay Rowing Club agreed to return the shell in exchange for another historical shell.
The Golden Gate 1-1, another vintage Pocock cedar eight, is believed to have been owned by Stanford University before the shell was acquired by Olympic rower and sailor Conn Findlay for his boat-rental business in Belmont, California. Upon his death in 2021, the Golden Gate was salvaged by rowing historian Al McKenzie and placed in storage in Arlington, Washington.
Cougar Crew acquired the Golden Gate 1-1 in late 2022 specifically for the trade for the Cristy Cay Cook. The shell was stored in the Ken Abbey Shellhouse at Wawawai until this summer. Klier and Doug Engle (‘80 Bio., ‘82 MS Env. Sci.), president of the Cougar Rowing Association, refurbished the Golden Gate 1-1 on the WSU Pullman campus between June 2 and July 17. A decommissioning ceremony was held June 10 to honor the shell’s competitive racing past.
Refurbishment included sanding and varnishing, patching old tears in the decking, and cleaning the metalwork. The stretcher clogs were re-painted, the leather was restored, laces were replaced, and heal cups were polished. Seats were repaired and varnished, their tracks also cleaned and polished and the hardware replaced. The original Pocock decals remained in place.
The exchange took place August 7. The shell will remain in storage until its formal rededication during the annual Cougar Crew Days reunion in March 2027.
For CBRB, the Cristy Cay Cook was “an icon of a new beginning,” said Klier, praising the club’s difficult decision to let the shell go “with grace and understanding and compassion toward its intended purpose: to represent in form on earth that life which now lives in spirit.”
The return of the racing shell is one way Cougar Crew remembers Cristy Cay Cook. After her death on November 7, 1979, the crew set up the Cristy Cay Cook Memorial Fund for operational expenses.
In 2024, 45 years after the car accident that claimed her life, Cristy was remembered during a wreath-laying ceremony on the Snake River. Former and current crew members rowed to the middle of the river on the morning of March 16, placing white carnations on the surface along with a floating white-flower wreath. At the crew’s annual fundraising gala at Beasley Coliseum that night, Klier called for a moment of silence in Cristy’s memory, sharing a video of that morning’s memorial as well as photographs from Cristy’s life. He organized the day’s remembrances.
Cristy, a pre-med student, was close with her parents, Darwin (’60 Elec. Eng.) and Sherry, and younger sister, Tammy (Cook) Lindberg (’84 Hum. Nutr. and Food Systems). Cristy and Tammy had joined Cougar Crew together early in the semester, their first at WSU.
Cristy had earned her pilot’s license at 17. She enjoyed cooking and playing piano. She loved the band Heart, especially the song “Crazy on You.” Her dream was to become a veterinarian.
