Hope Cooke

Hope Cooke (born June 24, 1940) was the Gyalmo (Template:Bo; Queen Consort) of the 12th and last Chogyal (King) of Sikkim, Palden Thondup Namgyal.<ref name="nyt">Template:Cite news</ref> Their wedding took place in March 1963. She was termed Her Highness The Crown Princess of Sikkim and became the Gyalmo of Sikkim at Palden Thondup Namgyal's coronation in 1965.<ref>Cooke, H. (1980) Time Change. Simon & Schuster.</ref> She is the first American-born Queen Consort.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In 1975 Namgyal was deposed and Sikkim merged into India as a result of internal turmoil, Indian military intervention and a referendum. Five months later, Cooke returned to the United StatesTemplate:Citation needed with her two children and stepdaughter to enroll them in schools in New York City. Cooke and her husband divorced in 1980. Namgyal died of cancer in New York City in 1982.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Cooke wrote an autobiography, Time Change (Simon & Schuster 1981) and began a career as a lecturer, book critic, and magazine contributor, later becoming an urban historian. In her new life as a student of New York City, Cooke published Seeing New York (Temple University Press 1995); worked as a newspaper columnist (Daily News); and taught at Yale University, Sarah Lawrence College, and Birch Wathen, a New York City private school.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Early life and family

Cooke was born in San Francisco to John J. Cooke, a flight instructor, and Hope Noyes, an amateur pilot. She was raised in the Episcopal Church.<ref name="nytimes1982">Palden Thondup Namgyal, Deposed Sikkim King, Dies - Nytimes.Com</ref> Her mother, Hope Noyes, died in January 1942 at age 25 when the plane she was flying solo crashed.<ref name="po">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=bio>IMDb biography</ref>

After her mother's death, Cooke and her half-sister, Harriet Townsend, moved to a New York City apartment across the hall from their maternal grandparents, Helen (Humpstone) and Winchester Noyes, the president of J. H. Winchester & Company, an international shipping brokerage firm. They were raised by a succession of governesses.<ref name=po/> Her grandfather died when she was 12 and her grandmother died three years later. Cooke became the ward of her aunt and uncle, Mary Paul (Noyes) and Selden Chapin, a former US Ambassador to Iran and Peru. She studied at the Chapin School in New York and attended the Madeira School for three years before finishing high school in Iran.<ref name=wa/>

Marriage to the Crown Prince of Sikkim

The King and Queen of Sikkim (1966)

In 1959, Cooke was a freshman majoring in Asian Studies at Sarah Lawrence College and sharing an apartment with actress Jane Alexander. She went on a summer trip to India and met Palden Thondup Namgyal, Crown Prince of Sikkim, in the lounge<ref>Duff, A. (2015) Requiem for a Himalayan Kingdom. Berlinn Ltd</ref> of the Windamere Hotel in Darjeeling, India. He was a 36 year-old recent widower with two sons and a daughter. They were drawn to each other by the similar isolation of their childhoods. Two years later, in 1961, their engagement was announced, but the wedding was put off for more than a year because astrologers in both Sikkim and India warned that 1962 was an inauspicious year for marriages.<ref name="nyt"/>

On March 20, 1963, Cooke married Namgyal in a Buddhist monastery in a ceremony performed by fourteen lamas. Wedding guests included members of Indian royalty, Indian and Sikkimese generals, and the US Ambassador to India, John Kenneth Galbraith.<ref name="nyt"/> Cooke renounced her United States citizenship as required by Sikkim's laws and also as a demonstration to the people of Sikkim that she was not an "American arm" in the Himalayas.<ref name="ERG19760613">Template:Cite news</ref> She was dropped from the Social Register but the marriage was reported in National Geographic magazine. The New Yorker followed the royal couple on one of their yearly trips to the United States.<ref name="nyt"/> Although her husband was Buddhist, Cooke did not officially convert from Christianity to Buddhism though she had practiced Buddhism from an early age (Henry Kissinger once remarked "she has become more Buddhist than the population").<ref>Wheeler, S. (2015) The story of Sikkim's last king and queen reads like a fairy tale gone wrong</ref><ref>Cooke, H. (1980) Time Change. Simon & Schuster</ref><ref name="nytimes1982"/> Namgyal was crowned monarch of Sikkim on April 4, 1965. However, their marriage faced strains, and both had affairs: he with a married Belgian woman, and she with an American friend.<ref name="nyt"/><ref name="po"/>

The King and Queen of Sikkim and their daughter watch birthday celebrations in Gangtok

At the same time, Sikkim was under strain due to annexation pressures from India. Crowds marched on the palace against the monarchy.<ref>Gray, Francine Du Plessix, The Fairy Tale That Turned Nightmare?, The New York Times, March 8, 1981.</ref> Cooke's husband was deposed on April 10, 1975 and confined to his palace under house arrest.<ref name=pro> "Princess Hope L. Namgyal Is Engaged To Thomas Reich Jr., a U.S. Diplomat", The New York Times, February 3, 1991.</ref> The couple soon separated. Cooke returned to Manhattan, where she raised her children, Palden Gyurmed and Hope Leezum.<ref>"Books Of The Times; An Adult Fairy Tale" by Anatole Broyard, The New York Times, February 28, 1981.</ref>

In May 1975, Representative James W. Symington (D-MO) and Senator Mike Mansfield (D-MT) sponsored private bills to restore her citizenship;<ref>Template:USBill and Template:USBill; Template:USStat [1]</ref> however, after the bill passed the Senate, several members of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration objectedTemplate:Why?, and the bill had to be amended to grant her only U.S. permanent resident status before it could gain their support and pass Congress.<ref name="ERG19760613" /><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> President Gerald Ford signed the bill into law on June 16, 1976.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> By 1981, she still had not been able to regain U.S. citizenship.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The royal couple divorced in 1980, and Namgyal died of cancer in 1982 in New York City.<ref name="autogenerated1">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>"Palden Thondup Namgyal, Deposed Sikkim King, Dies", The New York Times, January 30, 1982.</ref><ref name="privatebill">Ashley Dunn, "Congress' Ticket for Foreigners: 'Private bills' have granted citizenship or residency to many who were ineligible under U.S. law.", Los Angeles Times, February 4, 1992.</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Later life

With child support from Namgyal and an inheritance from her grandparents, Cooke rented an apartment in the Yorkville area of New York City. This time around, she felt "profoundly displaced" in the city and started going on walking tours and then creating her own.<ref name=nym>"Cooke's Tours", New York, p.Template:Nbsp31 (September 26, 1988)</ref> She studied Dutch journals, old church sermons, and newspaper articles to acquaint herself with the city and lectured on the social history of New York. She wrote a weekly column, "Undiscovered Manhattan", for the Daily News. Her books include an award-winning memoir of her life in Sikkim, Time Change: An Autobiography (1981), an off-the-beaten-path guide to New York, Seeing New York,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> developed from her walking tours, and, with Jacques d'Amboise, she published Teaching the Magic of Dance.<ref name=wa/>

Cooke remarried in 1983 to Mike Wallace, a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and Distinguished Professor of History at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.<ref name=wa/><ref>"Mike Wallace", John Jay College of Criminal Justice website; accessed December 3, 2014.</ref> They later divorced. Her son, Prince Palden, a New York banker and financial advisor, married Kesang Deki Tashi and has a son and three daughters. Cooke's daughter, Princess Hope, graduated from Milton Academy and Georgetown University, and married (and later divorced) Thomas Gwyn Reich, Jr., a US Foreign Service officer; she later remarried, to Yep Wangyal Tobden.Template:Citation needed

Cooke lived in London for a few years before returning to the United States, where she now lives in Brooklyn and currently works as a writer, historian, and lecturer.<ref name=wa>Kaufman, Michael T. (February 24, 1993). "About New York: When East Met West and Walking Around Led to Brooklyn". The New York Times.</ref> She was a consultant for PBS's New York: A Documentary Film (1999–2001).<ref>Template:IMDb name</ref> Cooke has contributed to book reviews and magazines and lectured widely.Template:Citation needed

Controversies

Cooke faced controversy during her tenure as queen due to allegations of being an agent of the CIA, purportedly promoting American interests and opposing Sikkim's merger with India. Her American background fueled suspicions of CIA influence in Sikkim's affairs.<ref name="c905">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="t874">Template:Cite web</ref>

Publications

• Time Change: An American Woman's Extraordinary Story, New York: Simon & Schuster (1981); Template:ISBN.<ref>"Review of Time Change", The New York Times, February 28, 1981.</ref>
• Teaching the Magic of Dance (with Jacques d'Amboise), New York: Simon & Schuster (1983); Template:ISBN.
• Seeing New York: History Walks for Armchair and Footloose Travelers, Philadelphia: Temple University Press (1995); Template:ISBN.
• Cooke wrote several articles for the Bulletin of Tibetology, published by the Namgyal Institute of Tibetology.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Bibliography

• "Crowning of Hope Cook, Sarah Lawrence '63'" in Life, April 23, 1965. p. 37.
• "How Is Queen Hope Getting Along?" Life, May 20, 1966, p. 51.
• "Hope Cooke: From American Coed to Oriental Queen". Family Weekly (August 2, 1964). Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

External links

• "Where There's Hope", TIME, March 29, 1963
• LIFE 23 Apr 1965
• "Sikkim: A Queen Revisited" Template:Webarchive, TIME, January 3, 1969
• University of Hawaii Museum. Sikkim – Woman's Informal Ensemble. (Kho dress worn by Hope Cooke in the 1960s, on Flickr).
• Template:IMDb name