About David Thomas Cooke
Dave was born on 17th March 1966 two minutes before his twin brother, Steve They were brought up from birth by their adoptive parents Kathy and Everett Cooke. For the first eight years of their lives they lived in Bishop Auckland which was followed by a move to Telford until the boys were 16 at which point the family moved to Leeds. Dave went to Abraham Darby Comprehensive School in Ironbridge, then onto Park Lane College in Leeds.
After leaving school at 18 Dave worked at at Boddington Hall, Leeds as a general assistant before going to The College of Ripon and York St John in York to study English Literature and American Studies. He then spent a year working at the Abbey Park Hotel as a porter before going to University of Leicester to complete a PGCE in English.
It was on the very first day of his degree course at St John, York that Dave met Zoe. In Zoe’s words “We were friends until December 1988 when we started dating. He moved in with me when our course finished in summer 1989, according to him because the shared house he had lined up for the summer was no longer available! We lived together for 5 years and we used to spend Saturday morning’s reading the papers and listening to DLT (for the younger readers this was Dave Lee Travis). A standing joke between us was that during the wedding slot, I would ask him to marry me and he would turn me down. He eventually asked me to marry him whilst watching golf on the tv! We got married at York Register office on 12 August 1994 with a marvellous wedding reception with friends and family at Lady Anne Middleton Hotel”.
Once qualified as a teacher Dave joined Hall Cross School in 1991 and taught English and Media Studies across the 14 to 18 age range. As well as being a well-respected and popular member of staff amongst his colleagues, Dave was also an incredibly popular and well-loved teacher amongst those he taught. The word “legend” is one that has been used to describe Dave not just as a tribute to him since passing away but by many a pupil when he was still working at Hall Cross.
He left in December 2014 and went on to teach at The Focus School in York until July 2015.
After leaving The Focus School Zoe and Dave moved to Selby and he decided to have a break from teaching and worked as a shop assistant at the local Nisa convenience store in Barlby for 3 years. Alongside the work at the store Dave also worked as a Student Support Mentor at Selby High School. During his years of teaching Dave was also very involved with the work he did for the AQA exam board as part of the examiners and moderators team.
In February 2020 Zoe and Dave moved from Selby over to Wakefield, a place that they were both excited to get to know, as well as the fact that Dave had secured a job at The Hepworth Museum which is just a couple of minutes’ walk from their new home. Sadly, the job never took off because the pandemic hit and like most things it was put on hold. Knowing and loving Dave the way all of those who knew him did, we can only assume that had he had the chance to do the job at The Hepworth later he would have made a great success of it and become a hit with everyone who got to know him in the way that Dave naturally always did.
