Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 11, 1992 TAG: 9201110053
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KAREN DE WITT
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
REDSKINS' OWNER HAS SEATS OF POWER
Forget invitations to White House dinners. Forget dinner a deux at the British Embassy. Forget personal tours and tea at the Russian Embassy.The most clamored-for invitation in the capital is the one from Jack Kent Cooke, septuagenarian owner of the Washington Redskins football team, to watch the National Football League playoffs from his 50-yard-line director's box at RFK Stadium.
People who have not yet received an invitation should not be holding their breath. There are 64 seats in Cooke's private box and they are gone, gone, gone.
Gone to people like Vice President Dan Quayle and his wife, Marilyn; to George F. Will, the columnist and a regular attendee; to Carl Rowan, the columnist, and his son, Carl Jr.; to Richard Darman, the White House budget director; to Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder, and so on through politicians, pundits and the powerful.
Cooke reserves four seats for himself, his fourth wife, Marlene, and her two sons. And Marlene Cooke occasionally gets four seats to invite her friends.
Some analysts of the Washington scene maintain that one can figure out who is in and who is out in Washington power circles by noting who is in Cooke's box and where they are placed.
Rowan has a permanent seat; the departure of Lesley Stahl, a correspondent for CBS News' "60 Minutes," for New York, apparently has left a hole in the front row. Former senators sit in the next row.
This year, who is where counts even more than usual: The 'Skins have the best record in the league, 15-2. Sunday, they face the Detroit Lions for the right to play in the Super Bowl on Jan. 26.
There is no secret to why invitations are extended. Cooke must like you. In a town dominated by lobbyists who specialize in half-nelsons, no amount of arm-twisting can unlodge an invitation from Cooke.
The social distribution of the rich and powerful among wooden seats at a football game is just the kind of control that Cooke loves. He tends to order people around - mostly nicely, but not always - as if for their own good. He seems to want people to be at their best and, as host during Redskins' games, he is up and about, seeing to people's needs.
"I think the thing that stands out is how much he looks upon his role as host," Stahl said. "He wants everybody to be happy, to have a good time. If the Redskins are behind, he runs around making sure that no one is down about it. He tells people not to worry, we're going to get ahead. He wrings his hands. He's like a kid in a way, every time they make a touchdown. He jumps up and pats people and races up and down."
Cooke's own life has had its ups and downs, particularly on the marriage front. Born in Hampton, Ontario, and raised in Toronto, Cooke led a privileged upper-middle-class life until his father's picture-frame business went under in the Depression.
Cooke's schooling came to an end. To make ends meet he organized and ran an orchestra. Then he became an encyclopedia salesman. Then a runner on the floor of the Toronto Stock Exchange. Then he went back to selling encyclopedias. Then he became a soap salesman for Colgate Palmolive. He was energy personified.
But he did not channel that energy into the fortune-making skills he would have until he met the publishing magnate Roy Thomson, later Lord Thomson.
The two built a single radio station into a broadcasting and publishing empire. And to this day, Cooke credits Lord Thomson with the business acumen that has made him a billionaire.
After 12 years, Cooke began a business without Thomson, becoming prominent in his own right. By 1943, Cook was a millionaire. In 1960, he was made a U.S. citizen by a special act of Congress.
In 1961, at the age of 48, he retired to Pebble Beach, Calif., a decision he would later call "a perfectly dreadful idea."
He ended his retirement, bought the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team in 1965 for $5.2 million and then the Los Angeles Kings hockey team. He built the Forum. In 1979, Cooke's first marriage, of 42 years, ended with a $42 million settlement.
It prompted Cooke to embark on what he has called his "third life." He sold his California properties and moved to Washington, where he promptly became the owner of the Redskins.
A second marriage, to Jeanne Maxwell Williams, ended after 10 months. Then came the marriage to Suzanne Martin, a woman 44 years his junior, which Cooke refuses to discuss.
Nor will he talk about a vivid article detailing it, and his current wife's three-month stay in jail, by Rick Reilly in the Dec. 16 issue of Sports Illustrated.
Marlene Ramallo Chalmers Cooke served the time in 1986 after pleading guilty to conspiracy to import less than 2.2 pounds of cocaine. Cooke refused to be interviewed for the Sports Illustrated article.
Cooke is, he says, planning to write his autobiography, or to get someone to do a biography. "I'm going to tell the truth about myself, he said, "at least the truth as seen through my eyes. `Objectivity' is a word that shouldn't be in the English language."
An avid reader, Cooke is a stickler for what he considers the correct pronunciation or use of words.
Stahl said: "We first got invited to the games several years ago, maybe in 1984-85. I thought that he was inviting me because he'd seen me on television."
When she and her husband, author Aaron Latham, arrived, Cooke ran to meet them, saying he had loved Latham's book on F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Crazy Sundays," and wanted to meet him, Stahl said, adding, "I sort of came along as an extra."
Those who will be in the box for Sunday's game first received a call, then a short, formal note inviting them to the box and asking them to arrive an hour before game time.
The parking-lot attendants have the guest list, so their cars can be parked for free, and the man at the main gate will distribute envelopes with seat assignments.
Cooke's private reception space, the Lombardi Room, where the guests will meet before the game and during halftime, will be stocked with hot dogs, hamburgers, petit fours and whisky, served by waiters one guest described as "desperate to do something for you."