Wednesday, August 15, 2001
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Wednesday, August 15, 2001 |
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Brooks to honor community pillar By CAROLYN
CARY
The town of Brooks, in a proclamation issued Aug. 8, will honor one of its own this Sunday, Vernon Gray Woods. The event will be at the town meeting hall, formerly Hardy Hall, with an open house from 3 - 5 p.m. Woods was born in Brooks Dec. 12, 1919 to James Benjamin Woods, 1887-1966, and Lois Jones Woods, 1888-1970. Both of his parents were of pioneer Fayette families in that area. He interrupted his college career to serve for more than three years as an aerial cartographer and photographer for the United States Air Force's Flying Tigers in World War II. Operating principally in the India-Burma-China theater, he flew many dangerous bombing missions over the Himalayan "Hump." Resuming his education after the war, he was graduated from the University of Georgia in 1948 with a major in agricultural engineering and minors in electrical engineering, machine design and hydraulics. He returned to Brooks in 1950 and began over a 30-year career in agriculture, raising beef cattle and operating the largest independent poultry enterprise in Georgia. His enterprises offered many jobs to Brooks area residents. He married Ruth Von Strobel, 1911-1959, in 1943 and they had two children, Von Strobel Woods and Cathy Jane Woods. His wife taught school in the Brooks District School until her death in 1959. He married Ima Otwell Woods, 1915-2001, in 1961. Along with his father, Mayor James B. Woods, he participated in the reactivation of the Brooks Town Charter in 1964 and he served as a councilman from 1965 until 1988. He has been a lifelong member of the Brooks Christian Church. The public is invited to the celebration.
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