Peter Trowbridge Cook
Died January 10, 1998
Peter followed in the footsteps of his father, David T. Cook, Y’36, grandfathers, C.P, Cook, Y’01S, and F. Abbott, Y’02, and uncles, D.C. Cook, Y’31, and W.M. Wherry, III, Y’35. He came to Yale via Pomfret School, entering in the fall of 1960. When Peter elected a double major in electrical engineering and industrial administration, he switched to the Class of 1965.
A resident of Silliman, Peter held the 1901S Scholarship, the Western Electric Fund Scholarship and a University Scholarship. Even with those scholarships, Peter held many bursary jobs and rowed in freshman and varsity crew and sang in the Apollo Glee Club. 
After Peter earned his B.E. in 1964 and his B.S. in 1965, he joined a subsidiary of General Electric but left that position after one year and later earned an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1968.
Peter then joined Morgan Stanley in New York and, in 1971, became the youngest to be promoted to vice president. He married Anne Blind Hutton in 1972. In 1978, he moved to Morgan Stanley International in London, where he became executive director of the firm’s London Syndicate Department and was subsequently given responsibility in London for Morgan Stanley International’s Japanese business.
Peter and his family left London in 1995 for Washington, where he became head of the Asia Division of the International Finance Corporation, the commercial activity of the World Bank. It was the first time the World Bank had reached outside member governments to fill an Area executive director position.
Peter died in Washington on January 10, 1998, a long-suffering victim of bi-polar disease, which he kept to himself to the very end. He was survived by his wife, Anne, and two sons, Cutler and Crosby.
James Butler remembers: Peter and I were roomates in Club ’05-’06 during senior year and I was one of the ushers at the garden wedding to Anne. I had something to do with his introduction to Morgan Stanley and stayed in touched over many years. I am deeply saddened by his decision to take his own life.
Peter Conze remembers: I met Peter early in the fall of our freshman year, when he, as a sophomore, was trying out for varsity heavyweight crew. Having rowed at Pomfret School before arriving at Yale in the fall of 1960, and continuing on the freshman squad that year, Peter was hopeful of earning a seat in the JV, but he subsequently had to relinquish rowing because of his heavy academic load. Our interaction was limited to conversations during our bus rides to and from Derby that fall, and I knew instinctively that I liked him very much: we had similar backgrounds, each having attended a small New England prep school before Yale, he was mindful of his Yale heritage, which I certainly respected although my father had gone to Princeton, and he liked to row.
What of course I could not possibly ever have imagined was that Peter and I would each take Anne Blind as his future bride; Peter married Anne in 1972, but died in 1998. Anne and I were married on Valentine’s Day, 2004, 18 months after my wife Judy died of lung cancer.
I suspect we are the only couple in which a classmate has married the widow of a deceased member of our class. Now, of course, I really wish I had gotten to know Peter even better while we were undergraduates, but inevitably it has turned out that I have gotten to know so much more about him since Anne and I have been married.
It is very clear that he was extremely intelligent, very capable and accomplished. Everyone I have encountered and who knew Peter well describes him as a kind and generous man, whose circle of friends, business colleagues, clients and acquaintances all held him in the very highest regard. He had many good friends, and in retrospect I am disappointed I was not one of them.