Archives West Finding Aid

Everett L. Cooley was born on September 3, 1917 in West Jordan, Utah. He graduated from Jordan High School with honors in 1935 and enrolled at the University of Utah in the autumn of 1936. A member of the L.D.S. church, Everett served as a missionary to Germany and Canada during the years of 1938-1940. During his stay in Nazi Germany, Cooley experienced several incidents of police harassment and anti-American hostility. He also witnessed numerous examples of anti-Semitism, the omnipresence of the police state, and the effectiveness of the Nazi propaganda machine. After returning from his mission work in Germany and Canada, Everett re-enrolled as a student at the University of Utah where he graduated as a history major with a Bachelor of Arts in 1943. To provide financial support for his schooling he held several jobs, including working on a survey crew at the Salt Lake City Airport and as a miner for the U. S. Smelting and Refining Company. At the end of 1943, Cooley married Elvera M. Bird. Their two daughters, Janene and Karen, were born in 1946 and 1949, respectively.

Subsequent to the completion of his undergraduate studies, Everett was drafted into the U.S. Navy and was commissioned as an ensign in November 1943. During World War II, Cooley served in the Pacific as a member of the navy's amphibious forces. He participated in the invasions of Guam, Leyte, and Iwo Jima, and the occupation of Japan. Everett was discharged from the navy in early 1946 and was a member of the U.S. Naval Reserve's national security and research groups until 1965, retiring as a Lieutenant Commander. Upon release from the navy, Cooley returned to Salt Lake City where he entered the University of Utah's graduate program in history. While taking courses and writing a thesis on the Utah War, Everett taught high school history in the Jordan School District. He received a M.A. degree in 1947. Influenced by two of his U of U professors who were Berkeley grads and by his love for the Bay Area, Cooley continued his post-graduate studies at the University of California in 1947. Some of his graduate student friends were future Utah professors, viz., Brigham Madsen, George Ellsworth, and Dello Dayton. Cal's history department recognized Everett's excellent graduate record awarding him with a scholarship and appointing him as a teaching assistantship. In June of 1951 he received his Ph. D. degree.

With a paucity of college teachings positions available, Cooley secured his first full-time job working as a salesman for the Macmillan publishing company where he was employed for nearly three years. After having read Death of a Salesman and disliking life on the road away from his family, Everett sought a new job more suitable to his professional training and interests. On July 1, 1954, the director of the Utah State Historical Society, A. R. Mortensen, hired him as the state of Utah's first state archivist. Cooley was sent to study records management and archival development with the head archivist of Colorado for two weeks and attended a summer institute which the National Archives hosted in the summer of 1955. The lack of adequate space and trained personnel hindered Everett's efforts to implement ideas which he had learned during those two stints in Denver and in Washington, D.C. In addition, much to his chagrin, he found the state records to be in almost total disarray. Nevertheless, Cooley persevered and adopted some essential archival collection and record maintenance procedures and policies. He was responsible for the creation of a state records committee to assist him in these undertakings and for convincing his superiors to appoint record keepers in each state governmental department. The acquisition of acid-free archival boxes, the microfilming of important state materials, and the training of the newly appointed departmental record keepers represented significant steps in the quest for establishing a modern and highly respectable archival program. One of the sites for the housing of state record was the Kearns' mansion wine cellar.

After his appointment as Assistant Director of the state's historical society, Everett traveled throughout Utah meeting with each county's officials and assisting them in the preservation of local records. He also became involved in the archival education of these county record keepers via the formation of county and city training classes and in personally conducting annual meetings with local authorities in order to inform them of any relevant methodological and/or legal changes which had recently occurred. During his tenure as state archivist, Cooley reviewed books for the "Utah Historical Quarterly" and was assigned numerous tasks in the operational affairs of the historical society. Prior to his leaving the office of state archivist, he left his mark on state government by joining other state employees in the founding of a State Employees' Association which successfully lobbied for the securing of important employee benefits. When George Ellsworth, a graduate student friend and a Utah State University professor, told him of a job opening at USU, Everett applied and was hired as an Associate Professor in 1960. Within a year's time, Cooley left the Logan campus and returned to work for the Utah state government, this time as the Director of the Utah State Historical Society. Everett's replacement at USU was another Berkeley grad friend, Brigham Madsen.

As the society's director from 1961 until 1969, Cooley desired to increase the society's public visibility and reputation, goals which he later aspired to achieve as Assistant Director of Special Collections at the University of Utah. In pursuit of these aims, he tirelessly appeared in a variety of public settings promoting the historical value and the cultural importance of the society's activities. Frequent personal appearances on local television stations and interviews in area newspapers enhanced the society's exposure to a wider audience and effectively publicized the role which the state historical society played in the life of Utah. Three of Everett's most significant achievements as Director were organizing the first annual celebration of Utah's Statehood Day, drafting of an archives and records law, and altering the format of the "Utah Historical Quarterly". Endeavoring to make Utah citizenry more cognizant of the state's historical sites and memorabilia, he persuaded the State Parks Commission to upgrade property under its jurisdiction, and in conjunction with L.D.S. church officials, was instrumental in the launching of the Utah Museums Association. In 1964 Cooley began to devote a considerable amount of time and effort in what he perceived to be a major threat to an important part of Utah's heritage. viz., its historical buildings. Preservation of this segment of Utah's past became a cause celebre for him and a growing number of Utahns. A by-product of the public's awareness of attempts to destroy Utah's physical inheritance was the creation of the Utah Heritage Foundation in 1966. Everett was selected as the organization's president in 1969 and remained on the Heritage's board until 1974.

Everett's re-entry into the academic world occurred concurrently with his work for the historical society. In 1966 he commenced teaching a variety of courses for the University of Utah's history department and two years later was offered the position of a full professor in the U of U's Marriott Library as well as the job of the university's archivist. At the beginning of 1969, Cooley joined the U of U's faculty and was given the tasks of developing an archives program and of administering the Western Americana and Rare Books departments of the library. Within two years after he joined the library staff, Brigham Madsen was appointed Director of the Marriott Library. Madsen was a critical and influential supporter of Cooley's plans for archival development in the library. One of the first changes in the library's administrative structure which impacted upon Everett's work was the creation of the division of Special Collections which included the archives, the Middle East Library, Western Americana, Rare Books, and manuscripts. Cooley's new title became that of the Curator of Special Collections. An infusion of J. Willard Marriott money assisted Everett in strengthening the holdings in Special Collections. Such funds enabled the curator to implement a 1966 policy aimed at gathering and preserving a myriad of university records which heretofore had been scattered throughout the university and had not been protected in an appropriate manner. As information culled from the correspondence found in numerous boxes in this collection attests, Professor Cooley established a well-respected reputation as a persistent and yet patient archivist who diligently and diplomatically acquired an impressive amount of materials pertaining to Utah and the West.

In 1971 O. C. Tanner bestowed the Marriott Library with a fund which created a monograph series under the editorship of Professor Cooley. Everett's publication responsibilities were enlarged in 1981 when a Columbian hand press was donated to the library and placed under his supervision. Thus was established the Red Butte Press which has published a number of limited edition works. The U of U's history department appointed Cooley as a full professor in 1974 and assigned him to teach lecture courses on Utah and Western history and a seminar on archives and manuscripts. Subsequent to his retirement from the department of history, special collections, and as university archivist in 1983, Everett was placed in charge of an oral history program endowed by an anonymous donor and named the Everett L. Cooley Oral History Program. Throughout his career, Professor Cooley was elected and selected to serve on innumerable committees, boards, and councils. With A.R. Mortensen's intervention, he was appointed to the council of the American Association for State and Local History in 1968. During the next year, Everett chaired the Powell Centennial Committee and served on the Golden Spike Centennial Commission. A member of the Western History Association and the Mormon History Association, Cooley was the Secretary-Treasurer of the WHA and a council member of the WHA and MHA from 1970 until 1981. He also worked on the boards of the American West Publishing Company, the Western Historical Quarterly, and Signature Books.

In the field of publications, Cooley published articles and book reviews in a variety of journals, including the "Utah Historical Quarterly", the "Pacific Historical Review", and "B. Y. U. Studies". He was the general editor of several volumes in the Utah, the Mormons, and the West series, co-authored "The Life of Andrew Wood Cooley", composed "Utah: A Student's Guide to Localized History", and wrote the preface to the B. H. Roberts book.

The recipient of many accolades, Everett was granted the following honors: the Distinguished Service Award from the Utah Academy of Arts, Letters, and Sciences, the Special Award for Outstanding Effort and Architectural Preservation from the Utah Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, the Utah Distinguished Service Award for Librarianship in Higher Education from the Utah Library Association, and the Outstanding Award of Merit for Archives and Records Service from the Utah State Historical Society. Professor Cooley also was given honorary life membership status in the Utah State Historical Society, the University of Utah Friends of the Libraries, and the Western History Association.

Everett L. Cooley died in Salt Lake City on July 2, 2006.