Percy Ernest Cooksey Jr.

Percy Ernest Cooksey Jr. was born July 1, 1934 in St. Louis, MO, to Devolia (Jackson) and Percy Sr., and died October 23, 2024 of natural causes in Sacramento, CA.

The oldest of five siblings, Percy graduated from Sumner High School in 1952. He served a four-year tour as an MP in the U.S. Army in Angoulême, France. Finding the racial climate in France to be more welcoming to Black men than the Jim Crow culture of Missouri, he continued on in France for four more years after taking an honorable discharge from the Army.

In 1962, he returned stateside and moved to Oakland, California where he worked as a police officer, first at the Richmond jail and later in San Francisco as an undercover investigator. In the mid 1970s, he resigned from SFPD and took to the open road, crisscrossing the lower 48 states in a semi-truck. He retired from Teamster trucking after 25 years. In retirement, he worked as a City parking lot attendant in Sacramento, California until age 82.

Cooksey is survived by his wife, Gloria (Vano), son Salvatore, daughters Angelina (Cooksey) Bear of Sacramento and Patricia Turquois of Aix-Les-Bains, sister Loretta (Cooksey) Bolar, grandsons Tiberius and Tony, granddaughters Valeria, Sandra, and Natalie, great grandchildren Enzo, Yann, Emma, Alissa, and Nolan, and stepsons Alief Cross, Darryl Cross, and Omari Cross.

His brothers Calvin, Adolph, and Theodore Cooksey; son Tariq Al-Amal, granddaughter Traci Denene Cooksey and stepson Tyron Cross preceded him in death.

Mr. Cooksey loved eggnog and cookies and watching TV. Always a gentleman, with an incomparable sense of humor, he was a master of sobriquet. He disliked guns and harsh words.

Friends and family are welcome to attend a memorial service on Wednesday afternoon November 6 at 2:30 at W. F. Gormley & Sons, 2015 Capitol Avenue, Sacramento, CA.