Rajie ‘Roger’ Cook, renowned graphic designer, Middle East peace activist, and author, dies at 90

Rajie “Roger” Cook, 90, of Washington Crossing, an award-winning graphic designer, sculptor, Middle East peace activist, author, and tireless community volunteer, died Saturday, Feb. 6, of myelodysplastic syndromes in hospice at Chandler Hall in Newtown.

Mr. Cook earned national recognition on Jan. 30, 1985, when President Ronald Reagan honored him with a Presidential Design Award for his 1974 work in creating a collection of iconic public symbols, including the ubiquitous pictograms that designate men’s and women’s restrooms, and no-smoking areas.

In honoring Mr. Cook and his business partner, Don Shanosky, the awards jury wrote that by “taking the best elements from other systems but refining each symbol, the designers created a balanced new system [that] … makes a valuable contribution to communication.”

The project was later added to the collections of the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

Mr. Cook’s 50-year professional design career featured projects for many companies and organizations, and he never lost his zest for art and creation. He worked for half a dozen companies before founding and operating Cook & Shanosky Associates, Inc., from 1967 to 2002.

In 1981, he began making and exhibiting assemblage sculptures that featured items he had collected set in deep wooden frames. Many of them addressed social and political issues in the Middle East and were displayed in galleries around the world.

Born to Palestinian immigrants, Mr. Cook became immersed in a personal quest for peace in the Middle East, and he took many trips to the region to document and publicize issues that were important to him.

“He kept the wonder in his life,” said his granddaughter, Sara Rhodin. “He was constantly finding things that evoked his interest in pretty remarkable ways.”

In 2017, Mr. Cook published his memoir, A Vision for My Father: The Life and Work of Palestinian-American Artist and Designer Rajie Cook. In 2018, reviewer Delinda C. Hanley wrote in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs that the book is a “deeply personal tribute to America and the immigrants who, like his father, Najeeb Esa Cook, leave all that they know and love to come here.”

One of five children, Mr. Cook was born on July 6, 1930, in Newark, N.J. He graduated from Bloomfield (N.J.) High School, the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and served in the New Jersey National Guard from 1946 to 1955.

At the suggestion of an elementary schoolteacher who found Rajie too hard to pronounce, Mr. Cook answered to Roger for years. He used Roger throughout his professional career but later returned to Rajie to honor his Palestinian roots.

Mr. Cook met Peggy Schneider when they were teenagers in Bloomfield. They married in 1955 and spent the next 65 years together. They lived in New Jersey and Levittown before settling in 1969 with daughters Cyndi and Cathie in Washington Crossing.

Mr. Cook liked to collect antique wooden potato mashers, show off his model trains during the holidays, and entertain children with magic tricks and Sparky, his raccoon hand puppet. He played guitar and sang bluegrass, and country and western songs.

He was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in his 20s but recovered and became an avid tennis player and long-distance runner. He was a beekeeper with 25 hives, and bought and restored two historic homes in Newtown.

He was involved with many local organizations, including the First Presbyterian Church of Newtown, the Bucks County Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, the Ramallah Federation, and the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund.

Rajie means “hope” in Arabic, and his family said in a tribute that Mr. Cook’s art and dedication to peace everywhere is a “tribute to curiosity, creativity, love, and above all, his namesake, hope.”

“My art will be my voice long after I have gone,” Mr. Cook told his book publisher. “It will never be silenced.”

In addition to his wife, daughters and granddaughter, Mr. Cook is survived by two grandchildren, one great-grandson, a sister, two brothers, and other relatives. A sister died earlier.

A virtual service was held on Feb. 21, and an in-person service is to be held later.

Donations in his name can be made to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund, PO Box 1926, Kent, Oho 44240.