Wichita is mourning the death of a popular bartender, ‘one of the all-time good guys’
If you ever attended a party where Jessie J. Cook was on duty, your glass never stayed empty for long.
If you ever hosted a party and hired Cook as your bartender, your guests all left happy, and Cook left your kitchen cleaner and more organized than it was when he arrived.
Now, people who knew Cook — and the list was long — are dealing with the news that he’s gone. Cook, the owner of At Your Service bartending and the father of 10, died last week. He was 60.
His family will greet friends from 2 to 8 pm. today at Culbertson-Smith Mortuary, 115 S. Seneca.
The news of Cook’s death rippled across town last week, as people who knew Cook or felt like they did called each other in disbelief. Cook, who was the go-to bartender for many of Wichita’s most exclusive parties, was scheduled to staff many events over the holiday season.
He also had become close friends with many of his employers, and his client list was a who’s who of Wichita.
“Everybody used him for any kind of event that they had,” said Cindy Carnahan, one of Wichita’s top residential brokers and a longtime friend of Cook’s. “He was very organized and such a happy soul. He knew what everybody drank. He knew your name, and he even knew when he’d last seen you.”
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Cook, who was born in St. Louis and graduated from Heights High School, was just 12 when he started as a dishwasher at Crestview Country Club. There, he became known as “Little Jessie” and was a close friend and coworker of “Big Jessie,” Jessie Davies, another popular Crestview employee, who died in 2017. Cook also worked in the Men’s Grill at the Wichita Country Club.
Eventually, Cook started his own bartending service, building it from the ground up and often employing members of his family. One of them was his nephew, Jerry Simpson, who said he plans to try to keep all of his uncle’s commitments through the holiday season.
Tommie Grant, who said she’s worked for Cook for the past 23 years, said he made her feel like a member of his family once he learned she didn’t have any family in town. She met him while working at the Wichita Country Club.
Cook had an amazing work ethic, Grant said, and he was on the job seven days a week. She admired the way he could solve any problem. She remembers once when they were serving at a party but had no trash cans. Cook found some boxes and wrapped them to serve as trash cans, telling everyone, “Don’t panic.”
“He always smiled,” she said. “No matter what, Jessie was always smiling. I still can’t believe it. I still wake up each day wanting to call his phone just to hear his voice mail.”
In the early 2000s, Cook was involved in a serious car accident and was left in intensive care. He didn’t have any insurance, remembers Hale Ritchie, the onetime CEO of the Ritchie Corp., and his vehicle was totaled.
Ritchie said he wanted to help, so he sent out letters to people he knew admired Cook. Within a few weeks, he had raised $78,000, which went into a trust. The money helped Cook recover from his accident and lasted him for several years, Ritchie remembers.
“I had no idea the depths to which people felt for him,” he said. “Jessie was a unique individual. He came from nothing and he he started up his business and was very successful. He was one of the all-time good guys.”
Bonnie Bing, the Wichita Eagle’s longtime social columnist, also was a friend of Cook’s and always hired him to work her parties, especially large outdoor affairs.
She had known Cook as a child — she was his P.E. teacher at Pleasant Valley Middle School and described him as a “joyful” kid. Even as an adult, she said, it took him forever to stop calling her “Miss Bing.”
Her guests were always wowed by his ability to remember what they drank, whether it was Diet Pepsi or white wine, she said.
“Once you had Jessie, you didn’t have to worry about anything,” Bing said. “Everything was going to be just fine at a party once Jessie was there.”
Cook also was a bartender at the Champion’s Club, an exclusive lounge at Wichita State University’s Koch Arena, and the athletic staff is planning to hang a framed picture of him behind the bar, Carnahan said.
Carnahan said she also has started a fund for Cook’s youngest children, who are 12 and 6, through Emprise Bank in downtown Wichita. Cook also is survived by his wife, Pearl Cook.
This story was originally published December 17, 2019 at 12:54 PM.
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