John Cockey was from Glyndon, Maryland and was the 1936 class president of Franklin High School in Reisterstown, Maryland.  He entered Dickinson College that autumn.  While at the College he was a varsity soccer player and a member of Phi Kappa Sigma, Skull and Key, and Raven's Claw.  He graduated with his class in June 1940 and enrolled at Duke University Law School. 

He enlisted in the Army Air Forces in June, 1941 and a month after  Pearl Harbor he had already earned his pilot's wings and a commission at Kelly Field in Texas.  He became a basic flying instructor in Kansas and in Texas as the Air Corps grew quickly.  After sixteen months of this duty, he trained at the heavy bomber school in Fort Worth, Texas, on Liberators.  He was promoted and assigned to the Eight Air Force in England in January, 1944, and promoted again in July, 1944.

Cockey was killed in a flying accident over the small village of Bodney, a few miles west of Norwich in East Anglia on September 7, 1944, when he was a squadron commander and a major.  Eleven days later, his fellow pledge in the eight man Phi Kappa class of 1940, John Ell,  was killed in action in Holland.