Attorney balances professional, personal life
As Dawes Cooke Jr. wields a large shovel from behind his mahogany desk, the defense attorney looks like something right out of an editorial cartoon.
"Your Honor," the speech balloon coming out of his mouth would say, "my client wouldn't hurt a fly." In the background, a man would be holding up a jury at gunpoint.
But this isn't the punch line to some well-worn lawyer joke. In fact, the golden spade in his hands was actually a gift from the Charleston County Bar Association for years of devoted service. And when not being shown off to inquisitive visitors, it usually rests against the wall next to the plaque for decades of service with East Cooper Community Outreach and the pictures of the two Bosnian kids he helped get heart transplants.
Sure, there are the requisite diplomas, honorary degrees, even an artist's rendering of him as he pleaded to the jury during the controversial Shannon Faulkner-Citadel case, but those are the last things he'll show you. Sure, he'll point them out — let's not go crazy here, he's still a lawyer, after all — but there's a different sort of pride in his voice when he talks about his family and community.
Making time
Most kids want to grow up to be firefighters. Or doctors. Few dream of being lawyers.
But ever since Cooke can re-member, he wanted to practice law.
What, you might ask, would drive a child to want to become an attorney? The thrill of exonerating the innocent? The challenge of protecting the little man?
"I'll tell you why I became a lawyer," Cooke says, a wry smile on his face, "Because I had a friend whose father was a lawyer and he owned a bowling alley and I thought, 'What a great career.' "
Years later, he would head off to boarding school in New Hampshire, the bowling alley dream a distant memory, but the designs of being a successful lawyer still very much alive.
Upon completion of high school, Cooke attended the University of Virginia and then the University of South Carolina School of Law, where he graduated cum laude. Almost immediately, the Beaufort native got a job closer to home clerking for Judge Sol Blatt Jr. in Charleston.
The clerkship soon turned into a full-time position. Eventually, Cooke was trying cases. At first they were small, but gradually they got bigger.
In 1993, when Shannon Faulkner sued The Citadel for sexual discrimination, the school tapped Cooke to be the lead counsel. Though the suit never culminated in Hollywood fashion (The Citadel eventually changed its admissions policy, and Faulkner ended up dropping out three weeks into the semester.), Cooke's hard work on that case earned the respect and fame necessary to take his career to the next step.
But it was during this time — a time when most lawyers would be flooring the career-advancement pedal to the metal — that Cooke took a moment to reflect.
He had three children now — Dawes III, George and Celia — and a loving wife, Helen. It was time, he decided, to spend more time with them and do more for those who were less fortunate.
"It finally hit me," he says, "that if you wait until you have time to do things to actually do them, then you'll never get around to them."
Balancing act
For the better part of his adult life, Cooke has gone above and beyond when it comes to serving his family and community.
It began with a simple act of helping a neighborhood get its feet back on the ground after the devastation of Hurricane Hugo. Eventually, that impromptu undertaking developed into East Cooper Community Outreach, a program he and his wife have been active members of for almost 20 years.
When he's not at monthly ECCO board meetings or fundraisers, he's talking with families or doctors as a part of his duties for East Cooper Breakfast Rotary Club's "Gift of Life" program, which brings Third World children to the United States so that they can receive the urgent and life-saving medical care they need. Then there are all the law-related organizations he belongs to, most notably the S.C. Commission on Judicial Independence and Impartiality and the International Association of Defense Council. Sandwiched among that, at least until recently, were all the soccer practices that come with being a volunteer head coach. The time that remains belongs to his wife and kids. To put it simply: Every single day of Cooke's life involves hearings, meetings, galas or scrimmages.
"I guess you could argue that I don't do any of those things as well as I could if I just focused on one," he says. "But to be honest, I'm just really dedicated to my profession, kids and community."
Lawyer or not, there's no argument against that.
