Cook family survived repeated setbacks in developing what is now the thriving, 70-year-old Theodosia Marina Resort

‘We went dry, washed away, burned out and flooded’

Editor’s note: This is the conclusion of a two-part story describing the Cook family’s 70 years of operating what is now Theodosia Marina Resort on Bull Shoals Lake. 

By early spring 1953, Bull Shoals Lake had reached its power pool (654 feet above sea level) for the first time ever, and the Theodosia Boat Dock was in business.

L.B. placed two orders for new 14-foot Lone Star boats plus a shipment of nine Johnson five-horsepower motors and one 10-horsepower model. The Cooks’ motel was nearing completion, and word was getting around the state that Bull Shoals Lake offered some great fishing. 

Then Bull Shoals Dam began generating electricity, and no rain fell. The generators drew down the lake level, and with no rain to add to the water, the lake quickly went down 75 to 80 feet, Bill said, adding, “That put us in the mud in the summer of ‘53.”

They moved their new dock out of its designated cove and into the river channel – and then “chased the river” as the water level kept dropping, he said. 

‘The dock was gone’

“By November, the lake was only a memory, and all you could see was the river channel,” Bill wrote in a 2011 column. “Our new dock was anchored in that river channel and grounded. Our 16 new boats . . . were piled high on the shore above the docks.”

Despite the impossible situation, the Cooks’ lease with the Corps still had to be paid – $2,700 per year plus 10 percent of the gross. 

With no income coming in, and lots of money going out, they could no longer afford the house they were renting in Theodosia. So they moved into the new motel, with L.B. and Polly in one unit and Bill and Barbara in the unit next door.

It wasn’t a problem using the motel spaces because “with no lake there was no business,” Bill wrote.

Then, around Christmastime, a big storm swept through. “Mom looked out the window one morning, and the dock was gone,” Bill said. The rain and resulting runoff had flooded the river, and the dock had washed away.

“We went down HH Highway and got hold of the Shockey boys. They had an old wooden boat with a 5 horsepower motor, and we set out in it, looking for the dock,” Bill said. 

They found it about halfway between Theodosia and Spring Creek, several miles away. “It was barely floating,” he said. “About a third of the drums were gone.”

They moved the dock to a site where they could work on repairs, ending up 6 miles away from their lease site, “almost at Point 13,” Bill said. “And then we just rode it out until the lake came back 16 months later, in 1955.”

As the lake water slowly began to rise, the word spread that fishing on Bull Shoals was “phenomenal,” Bill said. “Pretty soon, the motel was full all the time, and we needed a place to live.”

L.B. contacted Jim Owen, the famous White River fishing guide, and asked for help. Owen told L.B. about a “houseboat sitting in the mud in Forsyth,” Bill said. “Dad bought it, and in March of ‘56, after the lake came back up, we went to Forsyth to get it. Max Jones, Ernest Blankenship and Palmer Willhoit went with us. We took two boats with 10 horsepower motors and another boat with a 25 horsepower motor. It took three days and two nights to get the houseboat from Forsyth to Theodosia. And that’s where we all lived.”

Finally, ‘our first good year’ - and then . . . 

Finally, in 1956, “we had our first good year in business,” Bill said. “Labor Day weekend was unbelievably busy. I drove to Jack Pettit’s store in Isabella to buy a broom, and when I walked in, Jack said the hotel was on fire. I thought he meant Janian’s Holiday Inn [near the boat dock,] but when I got back, I saw that no, it was our new motel. It burned to the ground, all 10 units.”

The Cooks immediately rebuilt the motel, “and by spring 1957, business is booming,” Bill said. By then other resorts had opened in the area, and Theodosia’s popularity got a boost when sportswriters around the state started noticing.

St. Louis Globe-Democrat columnist George Carson wrote, in his March 3, 1957, column, “The Theodosia area is one of the finest fishing spots in the state. . . . L. B. Cook, who operates the boat dock, is one of those genial fellows who tries to please everyone, and he is most helpful in aiding anglers in where and how to fish. . . .

“The area is capable of accommodating over 500 overnight guests from cabins and modern light housekeeping facilities to swank American plan resorts.

“Just up from the boat dock is one of the finest camping grounds on the lake. The grounds are level, firewood is furnished free, the water is approved. The camping and picnicking areas offer masonry tables and barbecue pits. There is also an ideal swimming beach near the camping grounds and a number of good eating places within casting distance.” 

Finally, it looked like the Cooks’ nightmarish start-up problems were over. 

“Then the lake started to come up,” Bill said, “and it doesn’t stop.”

The Cooks had experienced drought and low water levels, but staying ahead of the fast-rising water of Bull Shoals was a new challenge. The boat dock had to be moved as the water rose, and the walkway and cables had to be repeatedly extended. The parking area and part of the campground disappeared as the lake reached its maximum flood pool of 695 feet above sea level. 

Boats couldn’t pass underneath the new Theodosia bridge, and all the timber on the bluffs was killed by the water that stayed up all summer. “This was our first high-water event,” Bill wrote in one of his columns, “so we had no idea how high we could go or what to do with the boat docks.”

The water wouldn’t get that high again for 54 years, until 2011.

In their first five years in business, “we went dry, washed away, burned out and flooded,” Bill wrote in a column. “If we’d had brains, we would have sold out.”

L. B. would tell a sportswriter in 1995, “They didn’t tell us this lake would fluctuate as it does. It can go from normal level at 654 feet to a low of 588 feet or a high of 700 feet. . . . That’s a difference of over 100 feet.”

Lessons in being resilient and creative

But instead of discouraging the Cooks, the rough start taught them to be resilient and creative. L. B. had been involved in several civic organizations in Joplin, and he knew the importance of networking and promotion.

He became friends with the sportswriters at St. Louis, Kansas City and Springfield, and they happily wrote about their pleasant experiences fishing out of Theodosia. In 1958, George Carson published a two-page spread with photos by Roy Cook in the Globe-Democrat describing his fishing trip out of Theodosia Boat Dock with Ruby Williams, Missouri’s first female licensed fishing and hunting guide. 

“Thank goodness for St. Louis being a union town,” Bill said. “Everywhere else, no one else had extra money at that time. But union people had good jobs. And the owners of big companies came. These big shots wanted to see this new lake and the fishing they were hearing about.”

George Carson even put on a “get-together in the high school gym,” Bill said. “It was something to do with the lake area. He could throw an aspirin up in the air and shoot it with a BB gun.”

Next, L.B. and Bill “put on fishing classes in the wintertime in St. Louis. Then in the spring, they would come down here for their final test,” Bill said.

 In 1958, before their senior year at Gainesville High School, Bill married Nadine Bushong. They lived in the houseboat that had been moved from Forsyth while L.B. and Polly moved into their new home just above the resort. 

Barbara, who had graduated from high school in 1955, attended the University of Missouri for a year and then married a fellow student, Carl Wehrman. A few years later they settled in Taney County.

When Bull Shoals Lake first went in, “the only business any of us had came from fisherman,” L.B. wrote in a 1971 Times article, adding that fishing was a three-season income-producer: spring, fall and winter. “But during the summer months, there just wasn’t much going on,” he said. Then families started enjoying camping – along with their fishermen dads and husbands. 

Then “skiing and boating came to the Ozarks, and fast, larger boats and motors were obtainable, financing became possible, and the general economic and labor picture permitted families to have these things, and to have the vacation time from their jobs to enjoy them,” he wrote. “From this came the summer tourist business.”

In 1963, Bill and Nadine moved out of the houseboat and into a “real” house up the hill. Their family quickly expanded to include their three children, Becky, Ben and Bret. 

Meanwhile, L.B. was helping organize the Ozarks Playground Association and what is now the Theodosia Chamber of Commerce. He also became involved with the Missouri Conservation Commission. “He knew everyone on the commission,” said Bill, who often accompanied his dad to commission meetings. 

L.B. always said, “When you stop expanding, you lose ground,” and the Cooks were constantly looking for ways to expand and improve their operation. Within 10 years of their arrival in Theodosia, they had developed a resort. They added new docks and brought in ski boats, paddle boats and canoes to rent out and offered outboard motor service along with ice and souvenir items. The dock has expanded repeatedly in the family’s 70 years here, and it now has more than 200 stalls and floats on foam blocks. The metal drums were outlawed in the early 1970s.

They added bigger “housekeeping cottages” for families and larger groups. And in 1971, they tore down the 10-unit motel and rebuilt a two-level 20-unit structure with more modern conveniences.

In 1973, the lake rose again, flooding most of the campground area, which by then had grown to about 40 sites. In response, the Cooks built Fort Cook, an RV park, now with 100 sites, adjoining the motel and restaurant. Most of them are now rented year-round, Bill said. Fort Cook also includes a large swimming pool and tennis courts available to all resort guests. 

Extended family members step up

In the 1980s, L. B. Cook, then in his 70s, stepped back from the day-to-day operation of the resort, and Bill and Nadine accepted more responsibilities. Their three children got married and moved away, but as the years passed, they all returned home.  

In 1988, Bill and Nadine bought the grocery store in Theodosia, and in 1993, they bought the restaurant, which had been sub-leased by 10 different families since it opened in 1953 and had been expanded from the original tiny diner. They named it Cookie’s, and Nadine took charge, with the help of Bret’s wife, Melanie. 

Now starting its 70th year, Theodosia Marina Resort is the only concession on Bull Shoals Lake that’s been operated by the same family since the lake’s beginning. Five generations of the Cook family are now involved with the resort, including Bill and Nadine’s four great-grandchildren.

L. B. Cook died April in 2002 at age 89. At his funeral service, friend and part-time TMR employee Joyce Noah sang the Sinatra song, “I Did It My Way.” L.B.’s wife, Polly, who had run the office at the resort for many years while making a home for L.B. and their children, suffered a massive stroke eight days later. She died in 2003, two weeks before her 90th birthday. 

Bill and Nadine, now 80, are still involved in the resort and grocery store but live on a farm near Thornfield and they leave more of the day-to-day work to the younger generation. Their son, Bret, is the resort’s general manager. His wife, Melanie, runs Cookie’s. Their grandson Mitch Cook and his wife LaTasha are involved full-time in running the day-to-day operations of the resort with the help of Bret and Melanie’s niece Whitney Welch. Ben handles the boat sales and the resort’s marine service business. His wife, Vikki, manages Cash Saver Grocery with Nadine. Their son, Chase, helps part-time at the repair shop.

Bill continues to head up the business, helping out wherever needed and often to be found at greeting guests at Cookie’s and running the cash register. After Bret suffered a back injury at the marina, and Melanie was diagnosed with cancer, their son Mitch and his wife LaTasha stepped in to help in several parts of the resort operation. Other members of the extended family have also joined the business as employees.

The Cooks’ daughter, Becky, and her former husband, James Wilson, lived at the resort in the late 80s, and James managed the store while Becky worked to earned her RN credentials and also volunteered as a first responder with the Theodosia Area Volunteer Fire Department. They moved away and later divorced, and in 2017, Becky moved back home shortly after she was diagnosed with a double brain aneurysm. She died in September 2021.

Bill’s sister, Barbara Wehrman, now widowed, lives in Kirbyville where for many years she owned the Ozark Mountaineer magazine.

Bill has noted that, during the summer, when Theodosia Marina Resort swells to accommodate as many as 1,000 guests, it temporarily becomes Ozark County’s largest town. The resort itself is one of the county’s largest employers.   

Looking back on his seven decades in Theodosia, Bill says it sometimes “feels like a dream – sometimes it’s been like a bad dream. But I wouldn’t change anything for the world.”

When people hear about the humble start of what is now Theodosia Marina Resort and all the challenges and setbacks the Cook family faced in those early years, they may wonder if maybe the story is exaggerated. Bill refers to his partner and fellow witness to all that happened when he says, “Nadine and I started dating in 1957, and she remembers the high water that year. And yes, it is all true.”