LaVerne Cook couldn’t stop giving, whether it was food, money, time or prayers.
Cook, who died Jan. 21 at her Denver home at 87, had longtime health problems, including cancer and tuberculosis, but they never slowed her down.
A service for her will be held at 10 a.m. today at Odom Memorial Church of God in Christ, 3301 Williams St. Viewing will be at 9 a.m.
A rock-solid believer in God, Cook took calls “around the clock” from people asking her to pray for them, said her daughter Karen King.
Once, when Cook gave her last $5 to someone in need, another daughter, Debra Green, said, “You can’t do that.”
Her mother’s response: “God will provide.”
Green went to the bank, withdrew $40 and gave it to her mother. “See,” Cook said, “I told you God would provide.”
“She was a hard act to follow,” said King.
“She was super wonderful in her love for others,” said Pat Hannah Glover, a friend for decades.
When Glover was 7 years old, “there was a tragedy in our family and LaVerne took me in and raised me for five years,” said Glover. “Later, she was like a grandmother to my grandchildren.”
Another time, Cook took in five siblings from one family and raised them for three years, King said.
Cook ran errands for sick and elderly people, mentored women in her church, helped people with utility bills and, when her daughters were small, made them new dresses each week for church.
One time she gave away half the family’s dinner to another across the street because they had nothing to eat, said Green.
“She was the strongest woman I ever met,” said Green, who lives in Aurora.
LaVerne Elizabeth Mattie Rose was born in Denver on June 28, 1923, and graduated from Manual High School.
She was awarded a four-year scholarship to study art at the University of Denver, but she left after two years because her mother needed help.
She worked in a munitions factory in Denver during World War II, and was a model for Fashion Bar, a stenographer and the first black woman to work in the U.S. Post Office here, her family said.
As a young woman, she had breast cancer and tuberculosis and was in a TB sanitorium in Boulder for three years. She had one lung and a quarter of the other removed.
She married James W. Cook in December 1945. They later divorced, and he died in 1981.
She is also survived by two other daughters, Denise Wills of Denver and Janet Cook of Aurora; her son, James Cook of Aurora; 13 grandchildren; 15 great-grandchildren; a sister, Betty Duncan of Denver; and two brothers, Jerome Rose of Birmingham, Ala., and John Rose of Aurora.
Inside.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
