Leroy E. Cooke (Leroy Ethelred Cooke) the first full-time Deputy General Secretary of the PNP, started following Jamaican politics during the 1955 General Elections. He became a member of the PNP in 1964 and worked in the Party Secretariat from 1968 to 1977, starting as the party’s first National Youth Organizer. He was also a member of the party’s National Executive Council between 1978 and 1988. Outside of politics, Cooke has worked at one time or another as a teacher, government clerk, rum-warehouse supervisor, community organizer, bauxite industry analyst, journal editor, radio actor and producer, trader, banker, plumbing operative, and consultant on agricultural and cooperative development.