Margaret Leary – recently retired as the director of the University of Michigan Law Library – gave me an historic tour of Michigan Law School when I was researching The Four Ms. Bradwells. She was such an amazing font of information that it was a delight to hear she was writing a book. Now Giving it All Away: The Story of William W. Cook and His Michigan Law Quadrangle is out from The University of Michigan Press! Professor Theodore J. St. Antoine, says of it, “Generations of Michigan Law grads have passed on myths about their generous but eccentric benefactor … Now Margaret Leary has given us the real story, and it reads like a gripping whodunit.” I can’t wait to read it! – Meg
My obsession with William Wilson Cook (1858-1930) began in 1973, when I found his heavy black death mask in my office at the University of Michigan Law Library. (I had just become Assistant Director of the library.) I held his head in my hands: closed eyes, mustache, trim hair, under slung and cleft chin. I felt an instant connection, although I knew him only as the long-dead donor of the iconic collegiate gothic Michigan Law Quadrangle. When I asked my colleagues at Michigan Law about Cook, they knew little. Oh, they told me he was “prickly,” “prejudiced,” “peculiar,” “stubborn,” and “attached strings to his gifts.” But they had no evidence for any of those conclusions.
I was immediately intrigued. Why was Cook, the donor of such extraordinary buildings, all but unknown? But I was not to give in to my obsession until 2003, when I did archival research at Michigan’s Bentley Historical Library. I was excited beyond all reason to find a vast array of Cook correspondence: from Cook, to Cook, and about Cook. However, the material was scattered and not indexed. To find it all, I went page by page through hundreds of boxes of archival material: University presidents, law school deans, faculty members, and files related to the buildings Cook had paid for. I set aside each Friday for a year and worked eight straight hours, all that the archives were open.
I visited the places Cook had lived, worked, and played. On the train from Manhattan to Port Chester, N.Y., I was certain that if I took the right turn around a corner I would run into Will Cook. I was nuts.
I got probate records of his every possession at his death. I searched old newspapers and read many books about the industry in which he was engaged: telegraph and cable communications. I found terrific stories in Cook’s life: a great romance that ended in bitter divorce; a critical role in the first global communication system; a leader in developing corporation law to support the industrial democracy of the early 20th Century; connections to the most powerful men of the time, including prestigious clubs; a possible second and third romance; dramatic political maneuvers at the University of Michigan; and at the end, lawsuits over his estate, including one by his former wife who claimed their divorce was invalid.
Five years later I started to write.
Uh oh. What I wrote, no one including me would want to read. I had been trained to write like a lawyer (citations to support every statement, in a legal vocabulary). I had learned how to write memos, procedures, policies, and academic articles. I had never learned to write so that someone would voluntarily and after paying money, read my words.
So: I took online classes: how to structure a story; how to write magazine articles; how to write descriptively; how to copy edit and proofread. I went to the Antioch Writers Workshop, then twice to the Kenyon Review Writing Workshop. I hired an editor to help with structure and copyediting.
And I kept researching, and writing. Another year went by, and I had close to a completed manuscript. I had photos of the people and places in the story. I also had not one but two rejections from an academic press, and could not find an agent. The agents all said, “this is an easy sell to an academic press, you don’t need an agent.” I decided the book needed a proponent other than me. 
And who could be the proponent? Since my book’s audience was primarily people associated with the Law School, and especially its graduates, I spoke with the Assistant Dean for Development and Alumni Relations. He not only agreed the book would be of interest to law alumni, he saw an entire new audience: students of development in higher education. I learned from him that there is now such a specialty in Ph.D. programs. I made an approach to the University of Michigan Press, and they accepted the book. My willingness to pay for the design of the book, and to have it copy edited in advance, also helped.
Giving it All Away: The Story of William W. Cook and His Michigan Law Quadrangle, University of Michigan Press, came out in early September. I’m now finding places to talk about the book, focusing on the independent bookstores and libraries and alumni events. Another retirement project is to do an M.A. in Creative Writing. My third, to see if I can sell my writing on a wide range of topics, only a few of which are connected to my obsession with William Cook. – Margaret
