Marie Cook, who has been cooking since she was nine years old, is still at the stove, “just doing it my way but not as much as I once did.” Marie has been married to James Thomas Cook for 62 years, and is the mother of six children, three boys and three girls.
Marie was nine when her own mother died. “My older sister raised the two us, there were three girls in my family, and we all pitched in. I would watch my sister cooking and would help. That’s how I learned to cook, just watching her.”
Both Marie and her husband were born and raised in the Pinero area of Gloucester County; Marie in the home that once stood next to old Dutton’s Store, and James in the first home that once stood on the parcel of land on which their new home now stands. The Cooks’ new home is the third house that has been erected on this site.
Having lived in Baltimore for 26 years, the Cooks decided to return home in 1973. Once settled in, James’s idea was to te...