Cooking With Chemistry

EAST PEORIA — Memorable.

That is definitely a word to describe the classroom experience created by professor Billy Cook for the thousands of students that have come through his doors over the years. And before officially retiring on July 31, Cook had some 10,000 students under his tutelage over the course of 100 fall, spring and summer semesters at ICC.

What made him so memorable, though, was not his years of teaching; it was all of his other unique life experiences that he brought with him into the classroom for all to see, and while this would lead to students learning a lot about Cook, they would somehow learn just as much about the class subject, chemistry. Yes, Billy Cook was a chemist.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE

Never using notes during his information-packed lectures, Cook was talented a chemist, but he was also a bit of a showman. He used humor and stories to keep the class’s attention and give them mental breaks during lecture, often telling one of his many tales from his early years as a chemist.

There was when he turned an entire lake “Welch’s grape juice purple,” and the time that he caught sewer treatment plant operators eating arsenic-laced tomatoes and the day he watched a glassblower get knocked out by a lab explosion at U of I – just to name a few.

Amidst his teaching, he would also stress that scientists still had a lot to learn about the world.

“We’re still just poking things with a stick,” he said. “It’s just a high-tech stick now. The stick has just got more complicated.”

ARCH-TOP ARCHIPELAGO

As much as he loved chemistry, Cook loved his side job just as much. Cook was and still is a luthier, a craftsman of stringed instruments, and loves to laboriously make handmade arch-top guitars for his side business, Cook Guitars. He labels his guitars “the finest jazz guitar.”

Cook didn’t start this business; in fact, he is the latest in a line of luthiers that, over generations, have crafted the style that he follows. He first got involved in 1976 by apprenticing under luthier Bill Barker in Bartonville.

“I was going to hang out in his shop for about six months,” Cook said, “and then 10 years later I was still there.”

After buying the shop in 1987, Cook and his former fellow apprentice Lon Tucker built the first four “Cook guitars” in 1989. Now, that he’s retired, Cook wants to work toward his goal of having 100 guitars that bare his name.

SEE HIM PLAY

There’s a video of him playing one of his guitars while his son sings Love Potion No. 9 during a July 19 performance of the Billy Cook Quartet on the Peoria riverfront. See it online at youtube.com/ICCHarbinger.