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Couple donate $3-million to further daughter's legacy

The money will help build a softball stadium at Notre Dame, where their daughter was on the team.

By VANESSA DE LA TORRE
Published July 19, 2006

PALM HARBOR - Melissa Cook was always adamant about women's equality with men, in athletics and everyday life.

Before she played softball for the University of Notre Dame in the early 1990s, she was a star athlete at her high school in Merrillville, Ind., and complained to her parents about the boys baseball team having the better field.

When she died at age 29, after scaffolding at the John Hancock Center in Chicago collapsed and landed on her car, Cook's family made sure that women carried her casket to her grave.

Now, in Cook's memory, her mother and stepfather plan to make her commitment to equality her legacy.

Linda and Paul Demo of Palm Harbor announced Monday that they were donating $3-million to the University of Notre Dame to build a softball stadium.

The money comes from a $75-million settlement that the Demos shared with the families of other victims in the 2002 accident, which killed four people and injured seven. Cook's cousin Jill Nelson was one of those who died. Linda Demo was one of the injured.

"We knew that money belonged to Melissa," Linda Demo said.

Even before the Demos learned the exact terms of the settlement, they knew they would spend it in a way that was meaningful to their daughter.

"That's how we came up with the idea to build a softball stadium," Linda Demo said.

She and her husband knew that the university's softball program had a field, but no stadium like the baseball team. When they approached school officials about the possibility of building one, they learned that the idea was ranked 94th on a list of future facilities.

Even as an athlete at Merrillville High School in northern Indiana, where Cook was captain of the volleyball, basketball and softball teams, she argued about what the boys got and what the girls didn't.

" 'Look at their field, and look at our field,' " Paul Demo said, recalling Cook's words. "And it was true, it was true. She just felt the girls should have more."

Melissa Cook Stadium is expected to cost $4.8-million and will be built near the men's baseball stadium. The Demos hope it will be ready by the 2008 season.

After graduating from Merrillville High in 1990, Cook went to the University of Notre Dame on an athletic scholarship, her parents said. As a freshman on the softball team, she led her team in triples. Cook would play another season, alternating between catcher, second base and shortstop, before deciding to spend her junior year studying in Australia.

Cook was a controller for the Teamsters Union Local 786 after graduating from college with a bachelor's degree in accountancy.

Notre Dame's president, the Rev. John I. Jenkins, said the university was "most grateful" for the donation.

"The circumstances of this extraordinary gift are sobering, but the way in which it will honor Melissa is wonderful," Jenkins said in a statement.

The Melissa Cook Memorial Foundation was also created with the settlement money, the Demos said. Cook's friends and college classmates will run the nonprofit, which will give financial assistance to high school students from northwest Indiana.

"Melissa was just a very generous person," Linda Demo said.

Times researcher Angie Drobnic Holan and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

[Last modified July 18, 2006, 20:54:35]