JOHNNIE GRACE WOOD, HOMEMAKER WHO FOUGHT TEXAS SEGREGATION
By TODD ACKERMAN
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
May 8, 2010, 10:18PM
Johnnie Grace Wood, a creative homemaker with an unflinching sense of justice, died last week. She was 92.
Wood, an Oklahoma transplant who lived independently in her home until the end, died peacefully in her sleep Tuesday, said Jerry Wood, her son.
“What was important to my mom was what was the humane thing to do and how actions affected other people, not legalisms,” he said. “She believed that sometimes you have to stand up in a room of people saying yes and say no.”
Remembering her refusal while living in Oklahoma to vote to convict a young man accused of a felony possession of marijuana, he said he “felt a little sorry for the jury trying to change her opinion — because when she was certain of her position, she was immovable.” The case ended in a hung jury.
He said her convictions were inspired by her mother, an outspoken opponent of the Ku Klux Klan at a time when the Klan “ran the state” in Oklahoma. He said that’s undoubtedly where his mom got her ardent opposition to segregation in Texas.
Jerry described her as “an ordinary woman who had extraordinary moments in her life” — the result of her father being sent to prison for bootlegging; and being raised by her aunt after her mother died when she was 10.
Born Johnnie Grace Wilson, she grew up on a farm in southwest Oklahoma, where she became an expert in the difference between pulling and picking cotton and got the task of killing snakes.
Later, living in Louisville, Ky., she worked as a waitress in the city’s premier hotel, learning the names of French pastries she’d never heard before.
She came to Galveston in 1944 and in 1947 married David Gladstone Wood, a bookkeeper, who said he owed her too much money not to. Together, they raised three children in Houston.
She loved gardening and sewing, making quilts and doll clothes she donated to Toys for Tots.
“She believed in recognizing the right thing to do and standing up for what you believe,” said Jerry. “That’s how loved ones will remember her.”
Preceded in death by her husband, Wood is survived by Jerry, her daughter Karen Janene Kirby and a granddaughter.
Her burial will be at a future date at Oaklawn Cemetery in Corsicana. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests contributions to Houston Hospice or Sheltering Arms Senior Services.
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LYNN REDGRAVE, ACTRESS AND PLAYRIGHT
NEW YORK (AP) – Lynn Redgrave, an introspective and independent player in her family’s acting dynasty who became a 1960s sensation as the unconventional title character of “Georgy Girl” and later dramatized her troubled past in such one-woman stage performances as “Shakespeare for My Father” and “Nightingale,” has died. She was 67.
Her publicist Rick Miramontez, speaking on behalf of her children, said Redgrave died peacefully Sunday night at her home in Connecticut. Children Ben, Pema and Annabel were with her, as were close friends.
“Our beloved mother Lynn Rachel passed away peacefully after a seven year journey with breast cancer,” Redgrave’s children said in a statement Monday. “She lived, loved and worked harder than ever before. The endless memories she created as a mother, grandmother, writer, actor and friend will sustain us for the rest of our lives. Our entire family asks for privacy through this difficult time.”
Redgrave was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 2002, had a mastectomy in January 2003 and underwent chemotherapy.
Her death comes a year after her niece Natasha Richardson died from head injuries sustained in a skiing accident and just a month after the death of her older brother, Corin Redgrave.
The youngest child of Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson, Lynn Redgrave never quite managed the acclaim – or notoriety – of elder sibling Vanessa Redgrave, but received Oscar nominations for “Georgy Girl” and “Gods and Monsters,” and Tony nominations for “Mrs. Warren’s Profession,” “Shakespeare for My Father” and “The Constant Wife.” In recent years, she also made appearances on TV in “Ugly Betty,” “Law & Order” and “Desperate Housewives.”
“Vanessa was the one expected to be the great actress,” Lynn Redgrave told The Associated Press in 1999. “It was always, ‘Corin’s the brain, Vanessa the shining star, oh, and then there’s Lynn.'”
In theater, the ruby-haired Red grave often displayed a sunny, sweet and open personality, much like her ebullient offstage personality. It worked well in such shows as “Black Comedy” – her Broadway debut in 1972 – and again two years later in “My Fat Friend,” a comedy about an overweight young woman who sheds pounds to find romance.
Tall and blue-eyed like her sister, she was as open about her personal life as Vanessa has been about politics. In plays and in interviews, Lynn Redgrave confided about her family, her marriage and her health. She acknowledged that she suffered from bulimia and served as a spokeswoman for Weight Watchers. With daughter Annabel Clark, she released a 2004 book about her fight with cancer, “Journal: A Mother and Daughter’s Recovery From Breast Cancer.”
Redgrave was born in London in 1943 and despite self-doubts pursued the family trade. She studied at London’s Central School of Speech and Drama, and was not yet 20 when she debuted professionally on stage in a London production of “A Midsummer’s Night Dream.” Like her siblings, she appeared in plays and in films, working under Noel Coward and Laurence Olivier as a member of the National Theater and under director/brother-in-law Tony Richardson in the 1963 screen hit “Tom Jones.”
“Before I was born, my father was a movie star and a stage star,” the actress told the AP in 1993. “I was raised in a household where we didn’t see our parents in the morning. We lived in the nursery. Our nanny made our breakfast, and I was dressed up to go downstairs to have tea with my parents, if they were there.”
True fame caught her with “Georgy Girl,” billed as “the wildest thing to hit the world since the miniskirt.” The 1966 film starred Redgrave as the plain, childlike Londoner pursued by her father’s middle-aged boss, played by James Mason.
Dismissed by critic Pauline Kael as a false testament to free thinking, the movie was branded “cool” by moviegoers on both side of the Atlantic and received several Academy Award nominations, including one for Redgrave and one for the popular title song performed by the Australian group The Seekers.
“All the films I’ve been in – and I haven’t been in that many attention-getting films – no one expected anything of, least of all me,” Redgrave said in an AP interview in 1999.
“Georgy Girl” didn’t lead to lasting commercial success, but did anticipate a long-running theme: Redgrave’s weight. She weighed 180 pounds while making the film, leading New York Times critic Michael Stern to complain that Redgrave “cannot be quite as homely as she makes herself in this film.
“Slimmed down, cosseted in a couture salon, and given more of the brittle, sophisticated lines she tosses off with such abandon here, she could become a comedienne every bit as good as the late Kay Kendall,” he wrote.
Films such as “The Happy Hooker” and “Every Little Crook and Nanny” were remembered less than Redgrave’s decision to advocate for Weight Watchers. She even referenced “Georgy Girl” in one commercial, showing a clip and saying, “This was me when I made the movie, because this is the way I used to eat.”
At age 50, Redgrave was ready to tell her story in full. As she wrote in the foreword to “Shakespeare for My Father,” she was out of work and set off on a “journey that began almost as an act of desperation,” writing a play out of her “passionately emotional desire” to better understand her father, who had died in 1985.
In the 1993 AP interview, Redgrave remembered her father as a fearless stage performer yet a shy, tormented man who had great difficulty talking to his youngest daughter.
“I didn’t really know him,” Redgrave said. “I lived in his house. I was in awe of him and I adored him, and I was terrified of him and I hated him and I loved him, all in one go.”
Redgrave credited the play, which interspersed readings from Shakespeare with family memories, with bringing her closer to her relatives and reviving her film career. She played the supportive wife of pianist David Helfgott in “Shine” and received an Oscar nomination as the loyal housekeeper for filmmaker James Whale in “Gods and Monsters.” She also appeared in “Peter Pan,” “Kinsey” and “Confessions of a Shopaholic.”
On stage, she looked at her mother’s side of the family in “The Mandrake Root” and “Rachel and Juliet.” In 2009, her play “Nightingale” touched upon her health, the life of her grandmother (Beatrice Kempson) and the end of her 32-year marriage to actor-director John Clark, who had disclosed that he had fathered a child with the future wife of their son Benjamin.
“Redgrave, a cancer survivor, sits at a desk … and works from a script because of what has been described as an unspecified medical ailment – but not a recurrence of cancer – requiring immediate treatment. It doesn’t affect her touching, beautifully realized performance,” the AP wrote last year.
“And reading gives the evening an almost storybook quality in which it seems as if the actress, buoyed by a radiant smile, has gathered a few good friends to hear her reminisce about this formidable woman – mother of Rachel, mother-in-law of Michael and grandmother to Lynn, Vanessa and Corin.”
Lynn Redgrave is survived by six grandchildren, her sister Vanessa, and four nieces and nephews.
A private funeral with be held later this week.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Former Alaska Gov. Walter J. Hickel, who served as Interior secretary under President Nixon until he was dismissed for objecting to the treatment of Vietnam War protesters, has died at age 90.
The two-time Alaskan governor died Friday of natural causes at an Anchorage assisted living facility, said longtime Hickel assistant Malcolm Roberts
Gov. Sean Parnell ordered state flags flown at half-staff Saturday in honor of his predecessor.
“He taught us to dream big and to stand up for Alaska,” Gov. Parnell said. “Governor Hickel will be remembered for many things — for his wit, for telling it like it is, and for always reminding us that our resources belong to Alaskans.”
Hickel was fired from his Interior post in late 1970, after sending Nixon a letter critical of his handling of student protests following the National Guard shootings at Kent State and the U.S. invasion of Cambodia.
The letter helped to stir national debate about the growing generational rift over the Vietnam War.
“I believe this administration finds itself today embracing a philosophy which appears to lack appropriate concern for the attitude of a great mass of Americans — our young people,” Hickel wrote.
Days before he lost the post in Nov. 1970, Hickel had told CBS’ “60 Minutes” that he would not quit under pressure. He said he would only go away “with an arrow in my heart, not a bullet in my back.”
Nixon spokesman Ron Ziegler said Nixon took the action because his relationship with Hickel lacked “essential elements of mutual confidence.”
Hickel had never held elected office when he upset two-term Democrat Gov. William Egan in 1966.
Hickel resigned in 1969 to become Interior secretary and quickly made national headlines as the environmental movement began to take root in America.
Hickel imposed stringent cleanup regulations on oil companies and water polluters after an oil rig explosion off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif. He also fought to save the Everglades from being destroyed by developers and advocated for making Earth Day a national holiday.
An “Alaska boomer” with complex views on environmentalism and developing the state’s oil-rich resources, Hickel railed against “locking up” the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil drilling and used settlement money from the Exxon Valdez oil spill lawsuit to help repair Prince William Sound.
He frequently described Alaska as an “owner state” and advocated that the state’s wild frontier should be developed responsibly to preserve its value.
Hickel’s political career started in the early 1950s as a crusader for Alaska statehood, both at home and in Washington. He was also involved in the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act which helped pave the way for the trans-Alaska oil pipeline.
Hickel’s was a quintessential Alaska rags-to-riches story. Born in Kansas, he arrived nearly penniless in the small city of Anchorage in 1940, taking advantage of the city’s rapid growth following World War II to build a multimillion-dollar construction and real-estate fortune.
“I used to think about all the great countries of the world where I might want to go, because there was no room or opportunity in Kansas for me to do the things I wanted to do,” he wrote in his 1971 book, “Who Owns America.”
Through the years, Hickel never lost the “can-do” attitude that made him a rich man, nor did he stop thinking about ways Alaska could further develop its natural wealth.
“He was Alaska’s greatest cheerleader and a very effective one, thoroughly dedicated to the idea that people in Alaska should take hold of Alaska, to meet their needs and their vision of the future,” Stephen Haycox, an author and professor of history at the University of Alaska Anchorage, told the Anchorage Daily News.
He never quite got out of politics. In 1990, at age 71 and after several unsuccessful gubernatorial bids, Hickel won the job a second time.
But his four years as governor were marked by frequent run-ins with legislators put off by his sometimes autocratic style and with environmentalists critical of his unabashed support for natural resource development. His backing of a drinking water pipeline to California became a metaphor for his love affair with big construction projects and a target of criticism from political enemies.
With his popularity sagging, Hickel chose to not run for re-election in 1994 and Democrat Tony Knowles was elected. Hickel returned to Anchorage to run his business, while also serving as head of the Northern Forum, an international group addressing polar issues.
Hickel remained interested in politics, and endorsed a 2010 gubernatorial candidate during an October 2009 news conference.
Hickel also was an early supporter of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin during her campaign in 2006. However, that support waned after she became Republican John McCain’s running mate in the 2008 presidential race.
In a September 2009 guest column in the Anchorage Daily News, he decried what he said was her penchant for partisan politics during the campaign.
“Palin became the spokesperson for the divisive voices in American politics. She dismissed the greatness of our immigrant heritage, indeed of today’s Alaska, where in Anchorage alone nearly 100 languages are spoken in the homes of the children in our public schools,” he wrote.
“She missed a golden opportunity to challenge the rest of the country to adopt the welcoming spirit of the Alaska frontier and the message of mutual respect,” he wrote.
Walter Joseph Hickel was born Aug. 18, 1919, in Claflin, Kan., the oldest son of a German wheat farmer. As the Depression-era Dust Bowl swallowed Kansas, he made plans to leave the Great Plains.
He took up boxing as means of travel and won the Kansas Golden Gloves championship. At age 20, Hickel, impatient over the wait for a passport and visa for a trip to Australia, chose Alaska.
In 1941, he married Jannice Cannon, who died in 1943. They had one son, Ted.
In 1945, Hickel married Ermalee Strutz. They had five more sons – Bob, Wally Jr., Jack, Joe, and Karl.
He is survived by his wife, his sons, 21 grandchildren and 7 great grandchildren.
A funeral Mass will be celebrated in Anchorage.
Ann
