Former Belfast Lord Mayor passes away due to Covid-19
David Cook, the former Lord Mayor of Belfast, has died from Covid-19.
Mr Cook passed away on Saturday at Craigavon Hospital, he was 77.
He was the first non-unionist Lord Mayor of Belfast in over a century when he took the post in 1978. He was a founding member of the Alliance party, served in the Northern Ireland Assembly from 1982-1986, and stood as an MEP candidate in 1984.
Alliance leader Naomi Long paid tribute to his passing on the Alliance party website, “He served the South Belfast electorate in Cromac in Belfast City Council from 1973 to 1985 and then at the ill-fated NI Assembly from 1982-86. A committed European, he also stood as an MEP candidate in 1984. His loss in this, our 50th year, is all the more poignant as we never got to celebrate that anniversary together, as a result of Covid-19, to which he ultimately and tragically succumbed. My thoughts and those of the Alliance family are with Fionnuala and the wider family circle as they mourn his passing at this sad time.”
Mr Cook was a solicitor and founded the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland, a charitable organisation that helps communities in need by providing grants, funding, and programmes to drive social change.
He is survived by his wife Fionnuala, children Barbary, John, Patrick, Julius and Dominic, granddaughters Romy and Imogen, and sisters Alison and Nora.
