COOKKK
Towering above all the other gravestones, the imposing piece of gray rock easily catches the eye of anyone who might be visiting Oakdale Cemetery in DeLand, Florida. The slab itself is not the main headstone but rather a decorative monument given to someone who had gained a lot of respect and adoration in certain communities. There is a second stone dedicated to the same individual; this one is a simple rectangle lying flat in the ground. Both have the name “ROY L. COOK” engraved in them. The flat, small one also reads “1887–1931” and features the logo of the Freemasons on it. The colossal gravestone, though, features a burning cross slightly askew with just three letters at the bottom of the cross: “KKK.”
The grave is the tallest amongst a sea of gravestones. It’s about ten feet tall — no others even come close. It’s almost as if Roy L. Cook wanted generations to look upon him and adore him. Instead, he is desecrated. When I came to see the stone, I could see faded red and black graffiti covering the stone. It was too faded to read what most of them said, except for one: “ROY WAS WRONG.” According to the cemetery maintenance men, that’s the only grave that ever gets graffitied, and it still happens every now and again. They try their best to unbiasedly take care of all the graves, but after so many years of being vandalized, it’s impossible for it to look completely clean. No one has ever made a formal complaint about this stone; graffiti is how the citizens of DeLand voice their opinions.
Next to his grave are two much smaller, insignificant-looking graves: Louise B. Cook, his wife (Sept. 5, 1888-Dec. 22, 1983) and his son, Roy L. Cook (June 29, 1915-Nov. 22, 1962). Besides his afterlife compatriots, Cook’s grave is a lonely one. Around him, there are numerous graves with flowers, American flags, or other such decorations. The section of the graveyard he’s buried in is the historical area — there are no newcomers. These decorations are still being given to people who are fondly remembered by their family. Not even online, on a website called findagrave.com, does he have any virtual flowers; his son has one of those. When I asked the three cemetery workers if anyone ever visited the gravestone, he replied with, “Only by people like you.” Evidently, it gets looked into a lot by curious observers and reporters, but never by a loved one.
Roy L. Cook is an enigma of a man. Despite having the most important-looking decorative rock in an area filled exclusively with them, the man himself has very little information on him, no matter how hard I looked. I first heard about the stone at Stetson, where there are rumors of him being related to the owner of nearby restaurant “Cook’s” and about a mass funeral consisting of hundreds of KKK members. While the former rumor, after a bit of looking into the restaurant, seems entirely untrue (turns out Cook is a very common name in Florida), the latter is the interesting one. What would Roy L. Cook have to be in order to garner such a huge amount of KKK members at his funeral?
Online, only one page mentions this alleged funeral. “Volusia history not exempt from white-supremacist activity”, found on News Journal’s website, claims that 2500 mourners came to see Roy L. Cook’s burial. It also claims he was a Florida Grand Titan, a high ranking position in the Ku Klux Klan. Essentially, a Grand Titan is in charge of all KKK operations in a specific area. This implies that Roy L. Cook was in charge of all KKK activities in the state of Florida. After some basic research, I discovered that Grand Titans were in charge of a Province, which is one or more counties. It seems unlikely that a Province would consist of an entire state, as the article claims. It also doesn’t tell me where it got the information about the funeral from.
With the intent of trying to find information about the funeral firsthand, I went to the DeLand Public Library, where they have a complete collection of microfilms from the DeLand Sun Newspaper. I looked through the newspaper for the year of 1931, hoping to find any information on Roy L. Cook and his funeral. Unfortunately, the newspaper didn’t have an obituary section, and I couldn’t find what month Cook died in anywhere. I couldn’t find a single thing in the paper. It’s certainly possible that I missed his name being mentioned within the paper. I looked through it over two evenings, and by the end of each session, my brain felt like it wanted to melt out of my ears. But as it stands, the DeLand Sun Newspaper was a dead end.
Everywhere I tried to look for information on this man wound up to be fruitless. Eventually, I found a book with a chapter titled “Roy L. Cook and the KKK.” I had found something — finally! There was a copy in Stetson’s library, so I went to find it. The book itself is not allowed to be taken out of the library. It’s located in a cage in the basement that only employees are allowed into. The librarian told me it’s reserved for books written by people associated with Stetson in some way and that there are expensive books in it. I was allowed to read it by the cage, and when I was done, I could give it back to her. I took pictures of all the pages in the relevant chapter.
The book itself is titled “Haunted DeLand and the Ghosts of West Volusia” by Dusty Smith. I myself don’t believe in ghosts, so I took everything written within with a grain of salt. Ghost stories tend to be based off of rumor, myth, and legend, not fact and investigative journalism. But I turned towards this book as a final hope.
To my surprise, there’s only one paragraph mentioning the ghost of Roy L. Cook in this book about ghosts. The last paragraph of the chapter off-handedly claims Cook’s ghost appears in the graveyard. The rest of the chapter depicts the history of the KKK and some of Roy L. Cook’s life. The words on those pages had lots of information on Cook, claiming Cook’s father was a clansman during the Reconstruction era, that Cook loved being a clansmen, that he enjoyed administering torture to those who opposed the clan, that he became the Grand High Dragon of West Volusia, and that he died a mysterious death. Once again, I couldn’t find out from where this information was coming from. This book did have a few sources in the back, one of them written by one Walter Henry Cook, who Smith claims is a “distant relative” of Roy L. Cook. I couldn’t find anything to support this claim, but I did find the book by Walter Henry Cook that was cited: “Secret Political Societies in the South; an address before the faculty and friends of Western Reserve University, Cleveland Ohio”. It was written in roughly 1914, and doesn’t mention Roy L. Cook at all. It instead talks about the history of the KKK, and was probably what Smith used for his chapter.
The book directly contradicted what the previous article stated, claiming Roy L. Cook to be a Grand Dragon. A Grand Dragon was the president of a Realm, which consist of a few states. A Dragon is above a Titan. If Cook was a Dragon, then he would’ve been the single most important Klan member in Florida — explaining the rumored mass funeral. Ultimately though I was unable to find any other evidence that backs up any of the claims made in the book.
In the end, Roy L. Cook remained just as much as a mystery as he was when I first began investigating him. The only thing I can say for sure is his name, his affiliation with the KKK, and that he has a huge statue to announce those two things for the world to see. I suppose those are the only facts about himself he wanted to be known. He wanted to be seen as big and powerful, but at the end of the day, he is an unknown man that attracts people who either want to figure out what the gravestone means or who want to right wrongs by their own means.
