LITTLE ROCK — For about 10 years, David Wooley routinely stood in front of the mirror painting his face white, along with a big red smile outlining his lips to become “Buttons,” the Shriner clown.
“He was big and jolly, he had a wig and a white cap ... he had a blazer full of buttons, short knicker-type pants and knee-high socks and basketball shoes,” said his daughter, Susan Chitwood. “The children, for some reason, would want to pull the buttons off his jacket.”
Aside from clowning around, Wooley devoted his life to making a difference for children, from coaching to counseling, his family said.
William David Wooley, of Stamps, died Sunday at LifeCare Specialty Hospital in Homer, La., from pneumonia.
He was 79.
Standing 6-foot-1 and weighing 240 pounds, Wooley was recruited as a tackle for the Muleriders football team at what was then Southern State College in Magnolia in 1952.
Wooley was a good athlete, but to help him focus, Coach Elmer Smith once made him “line up with his rear to the line,” making him a target for the defense, said his wife, Libby Wooley.
“As long as he blocked like his eyes were in the seat of his pants, [Smith] wanted him to line up that way,” his wife said, as noted in Smith’s 1975 autobiography This Really Happened: The Athletic Memories of Elmer Smith.
In 1968, Wooley began teaching physical education and driver’s education to high school students in Stamps.
“He had 90 students first period and he went through the exercises with them as the only [teacher] and never had a problem,” his wife said.
For about two years, he coached football and the junior varsity girls basketball team.
“He loved those girls and called them his ‘chickens’ because they all gathered around him in the huddle,” his wife said.
When it came to his football players, Wooley was a “father figure.”
“They all wanted to outwrestle their coach and he’d take them on,” his wife said, adding that he was always available to talk. “I’ve had many a meal get so cold because he’d dash off to help.”
His daughter, Sara Wooley, coached basketball for 11 years, including four years at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro.
“I wanted to model my life after my Dad,” Sara Wooley said. “We would sit and have a lot of conversations about the philosophy of coaching ... I’d call him after every game.”
For 30 years, Wooley was a counselor at high schools in Stamps and Lewisville.
“He wanted to help find out the problems, the cause of the young person’s difficulty in life,” Libby Wooley said.
To help the young men who didn’t have money to go to college, Wooley started a furniture-making class in conjunction with the local Alan White Manufacturing, so the students could work for the company after graduating.
The men could also get experience in his woodworking shop, dubbed the “House of David,” where he built everything from cabinets to tables, favoring white pine, his wife said.
Wooley also got his sports fix as a football referee, baseball umpire and track and field timer.
“He could have a relationship with each student,” his wife said. “I don’t know how many have called me these past few days saying, ‘He’s had such an influence on my life.’”
In 2007, Wooley retired as a case manager from a branch of the Therapeutic Family Services, where he spoke in court for youth who had been arrested.
“[The judge] would often tell David, ‘If not for you, this boy would be in prison right now,’” Libby Wooley said.
Libby Wooley said her husband enjoyed putting on Vacation Bible School activities and donning his gold, button-filled blazer to make a child in the hospital smile.
True to his inner clown, Wooley was the ultimate optimist.
“He said this all the time, ‘Nothing is as bad as it seems,’” Chitwood said. “That was kind of his philosophy in life.”
Arkansas, Pages 15 on 12/19/2012