As both a clown and a caterer, Jess "Woody" Woods served up entertainment for young and old alike and hearty holiday meals for the needy, spanning several decades.
Woods of Little Rock, known for his character "Woody the Clown" and for developing Woody's Sherwood Forest in Sherwood in 1977, died Monday. He was 94.
As a successful businessman, often incorporating his own comedic skills and ideas to entertain customers, Woods was able to meet and work with Arkansas governors since the 1950s and met and/or catered for six U.S. presidents, especially for fellow Arkansan Bill Clinton during Clinton's presidency.
"He was, as far as being a creative person, the best I've ever seen," Amber Bright White, a stepdaughter, recalled of Woods on Wednesday. "He was able to think of ways to do business even when he was a little boy. He worked at trying to make money any way he could. He'd entertain [customers] and get more money that way."
Having a knack for entertaining, Woods joined the Masons in 1946 after serving in the Army in World War II, becoming involved in the Masons' charitable activities and its circuses. As Arkansas' only member of the International Clown Association at the time, White said, Woods worked with late Gov. Orval Faubus in 1957 to establish a statewide Clown Week, still observed during the first week of August every year through a governor's proclamation.
Bette Bright, his widow, said Wednesday that her best memory of her husband is him "going down the street in a parade in his costume and handing out $2 bills and balloons and money or candy to children and adults alike."
"He was a walking clown," she said. "He was never riding."
During Clinton's presidency, Woods and Bright stood in a long line of people to visit the White House, with Woods in full Woody the Clown costume, White said.
"One lady said to him that he'd never get into the White House in that costume," White said. "Then the Secret Service came and grabbed him and mother and took them ahead in front of all those people. And there were the Clintons. Hillary looked at him and said, 'What are you going to do next, Woody?"
"For every one memory, there's 1 million," White said.
Woods began Woody's Barbeque in North Little Rock in 1955 that evolved into a lucrative catering business. After growing up in a poor family in Little Rock, Woods said in a 1991 interview that he had pledged as a boy that "if I could ever help anybody, I'd do it."
On Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's, Woods made good on his promise, catering free meals for hundreds at rescue missions in Little Rock or North Little Rock, a practice that Bright said went on for more than 40 years.
In 1976, Woods purchased 40 acres in Sherwood and by 1977 had developed Woody's Sherwood Forest, a multipurpose venue. The city purchased the property from Woods in 1994 and still manages it under the name Sherwood Forest.
For Woods' 91st birthday in September 2015, the city renamed the street leading into the venue Jess Woods Way.
"That's a big part of the identity of our city," Sherwood Mayor Virginia Young said Wednesday of the venue Woods created. "It's been a great asset to our city and he has been, too. He's always been a part of the history of our city and its growth.
"Half the time, people who have been here a long time will still call it Woody's," Young said of the Sherwood Forest venue. "And there's nothing wrong with that."
Metro on 12/13/2018