Victoria "Torie" Almedia Ragland Cook

Victoria Almedia Ragland was born on October 28, 1943, in Kernersville, North Carolina, to Clem Bayne Ragland and Grace Victoria Mason. Known as “Torie” for most of her life, she grew up in small-town Kernersville during the postwar years and graduated in 1962 as a member of the final class of Kernersville High School.

Torie’s youth reflected the music and culture of the 1950s and early 1960s, with Chubby Checker, Ricky Nelson, The Platters, and, of course, Elvis Presley providing the soundtrack. She spent many happy hours with family and friends at Charlie Snow’s Diner and the iconic Pinnix Drug Store, along with Saturday afternoons at the Justice Theater. She remembered driving along Piney Grove Road and passing Mr. Millard Stafford, who could often be seen tipping his hat to those who passed—a small but memorable part of the Kernersville community she called home.

During her high school years, Torie also dated cadets from nearby Oak Ridge Military Institute. Her father would drive her to Cottrell Hall on campus to meet her dates, and she attended dances with the cadets in King Gym—another fond memory of her teenage years.`

Torie’s family roots in the Piedmont ran deep. Her great-grandfather, James Madison Ragland, was a Civil War veteran who, after his release from a prisoner-of-war camp, walked from his home in Granville County in search of work. He eventually settled along present-day Oak Ridge Road (Highway 150), near the Forsyth-Guilford county line. There, he began a new life, and generations of the Ragland family became well-known members of the Kernersville community.

The Ragland family’s American ancestry traces to Evan Ragland, one of the earliest people to bear the Ragland surname in America in the late 1600s. Family tradition also connects the American Raglands to Raglan Castle in Wales, a connection that held special meaning for Torie when she had the opportunity to visit the castle during a trip to the United Kingdom.

Torie’s grandfather, James Cary Ragland, married Minerva Huff, a member of the Elias Kerner Huff family. Elias Kerner Huff was known in Kernersville for his wagon-making and carpentry skills. Examples of his craftsmanship can still be found at Körner’s Folly, where he worked for Jule Körner, contributing to the house’s distinctive woodwork and furnishings. Elias also built his own Victorian home nearby, which still stands today and is now home to Torie’s daughter, Paige—continuing the family’s connection to Kernersville across generations.

While Torie’s earlier Ragland ancestors in Virginia and Granville County came from an Anglican tradition, her Forsyth and Guilford County roots reflected the rich religious heritage of the North Carolina Piedmont. Her ancestry included families associated with the Quaker, Moravian, Methodist and Anabaptist traditions, among them the Reich, Rothrock, Huff, Seitz, Idol, Peeples, and Nelson families.

Completing high school, Torie attended business school and worked for an attorney in Winston-Salem. She then met her future husband, Sam Calvin Cook III of Alabama, on a blind date in 1965. They later married and shared sixty wonderful years together. Early in their marriage, Torie embraced life as a military wife while Sam served as a hospital corpsman in the U.S. Navy. During this time, they lived at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point in North Carolina, beginning what would become a lifetime of adventures together.

After Sam left military service, he and Torie settled in a mid-century home on Flynt Street in Kernersville, where they began raising their first child, Paige. Following the birth of their second child, Chip, the family moved to Winston-Salem’s historic West End neighborhood. There, they made their home in an 1894 Victorian house at the corner of Forsyth and West Fourth streets.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, Torie and Sam became active members of the West End community at a time when neighbors were working to preserve the area’s historic character and strengthen it as a place for families. They supported efforts that helped establish West End as a historic district, and Torie joined other neighbors in organizing one of the neighborhood’s early Christmas Open House tours. She also served on the committee that helped bring about the construction of the Victorian-style gazebo in Grace Court Park in 1981.

Torie also brought a sense of fun and community to the neighborhood. In the mid-1980s, after Chip and several neighborhood children created a small haunted-house attraction one Halloween, Torie expanded the idea into a larger haunted house in the basement of their Victorian home. Although it operated for only three years, it became a popular West End Halloween tradition.

One of Torie’s greatest professional accomplishments was founding Torie & Company, a boutique wicker and rattan furniture business at 418 West End Boulevard. Her concept combined a retail furniture store with a resource for interior designers and decorators. Customers could choose unfinished wicker and rattan pieces and then select the colors and finishes they wanted.

The business became a family enterprise. Sam learned to prepare the unfinished furniture by trimming and sanding the wood fibers before professionally painting the pieces in a paint booth at Torie’s father’s auto shop in Kernersville. Torie & Company quickly developed a successful clientele that included local customers as well as interior designers from Winston-Salem and beyond.

In 1985, Golden Triad Magazine featured Torie & Company, photographing the porch of Torie and Sam’s West Fourth Street home filled with the colorful wicker and rattan furnishings that had become the business’s signature. Torie & Company continued to operate successfully until 1988, when the family left Winston-Salem and Torie chose to close the business.

Together, these years reflected much of what defined Torie: her devotion to family, her entrepreneurial spirit, her creativity, and her commitment to the community around her.

Torie loved her home and life in Winston-Salem’s West End, but by 1988, the family was ready for a change. Her middle child, Chip, needed a new direction in his education, and urban life near downtown Winston-Salem had become a mixed blessing. The family increasingly felt the pull of a quieter, more rural life.

Torie and Sam found that life in Oak Ridge, purchasing a historic home just 2,500 feet from Oak Ridge Military Academy. At the time, Oak Ridge still had the character of a small rural community, where doors were often left unlocked, chickens wandered through front yards, and neighbors knew one another.

The move proved especially important for the children. Chip thrived at Oak Ridge Military Academy, and a few years later, the youngest child, Taylor, followed him there. Torie and Sam later learned that their home, the historic Stafford-Benbow House, had a longstanding connection to the academy. Across three generations, the Stafford, Benbow, and Cook families had sent children from the house to Oak Ridge, making the family’s connection to the school particularly meaningful.

Next door stood W.D.’s, a small country grocery store and, at the time, the only store in town. Oak Ridge cadets regularly walked down to the store on weekends and often gathered in Torie and Sam’s yard, making the academy and its cadets a familiar part of everyday family life.

Providing her children with a strong education was deeply important to Torie. Both of her sons attended and graduated from Oak Ridge Military Academy, while her daughter, Paige, attended Summit School in Winston-Salem and later Salem Academy. Chip and Paige went on to graduate from UNC Greensboro and Salem College, respectively, and both later earned graduate degrees. Torie took great pride in her children’s educational accomplishments and placed a lifelong value on learning and opportunity.

Torie was also a gifted musician who learned piano in her youth and was recognized for her talent through several recitals. Music remained an important part of her life, and she owned and played a baby grand piano.

After seeing the 1973 film The Sting, Torie became captivated by the Ragtime music of Scott Joplin and was inspired to compose her own piece, titled “For Paige.” She sent the composition to Marvin Hamlisch, who adapted Joplin’s music for the film. Hamlisch wrote back with an enthusiastic response: “Move over, Joplin.”

Torie passed her love of music on to all three of her children, encouraging each of them to learn an instrument. That influence endured: all three became multi-instrumentalists and have remained actively involved in music as adults.

Torie was deeply patriotic and proud to be an American. During the nation’s Bicentennial celebration in 1976, she decorated her daughter’s bicycle in red, white, and blue tissue paper, continuing the tradition with her other children during later Independence Day celebrations.

For Torie, patriotism was about more than flags and celebrations. It also meant caring for others and treating people with dignity, values she learned from her parents, Bayne and Grace Ragland. Growing up in Kernersville in the 1950s, Torie remembered members of a local Black church singing Christmas carols at the family home. Her parents welcomed the carolers inside for coffee and cake, where everyone gathered together in the living room.

Torie was also influenced by her mother’s commitment to helping vulnerable people. Grace led a letter-writing campaign calling for the closure of the Forsyth County Home for the Indigent and Infirm after concerns arose about the treatment of its residents, many of whom had developmental disabilities.

These examples left a lasting impression on Torie. She came to understand patriotism not simply as love of country, but as a responsibility to love one’s neighbors, stand up for those in need, and treat people with kindness and respect regardless of race, background or circumstances.

In her late 50s, Torie was diagnosed with cancer, but she refused to let the disease define or limit her life. She remained active in gardening, creating outdoor “rooms” in the woods surrounding her property, and continued the gradual restoration of her historic 1880 home in Oak Ridge.

Torie also loved to travel with Sam and other family members. In 2016, she made her first international trip, visiting the United Kingdom and France. In 2022, much of the family traveled together to Rome and Pompeii, where Torie especially enjoyed seeing the Spanish Steps, familiar to her from one of her favorite films, Roman Holiday.

During the final year of her life, Torie traveled with Sam and Taylor to Poland for the funeral of a close Oak Ridge Military Academy friend, Konrad Chwals. Although the circumstances were sad, Torie embraced the opportunity to experience Poland. Even while living with Stage IV cancer, she walked some 15,000 steps and 800 stairs while exploring one of the country’s historic salt mines—a fitting example of her determination to keep living life fully.

After returning home, Torie, Sam, and Taylor spent Christmas in New York City, enjoying the sights and magic of the holiday season in the Big Apple. Throughout her long battle with cancer, Torie continued to travel, explore, garden and enjoy life with her family.

Torie passed away on September 18, 2026, and her family is certain that she is now in heaven, collaborating with Scott Joplin and Marvin Hamlisch on a few new Ragtime compositions. She was preceded in death by her parents, Clem Bayne Ragland and Grace Victoria Mason, and her sister, Cary Ruth Ragland. She is survived by her husband, Sam Calvin Cook III; her three children, Paige Cook Truelove (Marc), John Taylor Cook, and Samuel C. “Chip” Cook IV (Sarah); three grandchildren, Henry, Erva, and Elizabeth; and two sisters, Anna Todd (David) and Clemmie Hoffman (Bob). She is also survived by her niece, Andrea Crook (Brad), and two nephews, Charles Basinger and Zach Todd.

Graveside funeral services will be held September 23 at 1pm at Mt. Gur Cemetery in Kernersville. A celebration of life is being planned for a future date. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorial gifts in Torie’s honor be made to Oak Ridge Military Academy (https://www.oakridgemilitary.com/make-a-donation). Thanks to Jessi and the ICU staff at Wesley Long.