Who the Hell Is Woody Baldwin?
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Une Vie Extraordinaire What was largely unknown then, and still is, deserves to come to the public’s interest, even their gratitude. As the story unearths Baldwin’s scientific, personal, and most of all social contributions, the captivated reader wonders how it could be that so much of his and his friends’ lives were stifled to such a degree. Lawrence R. Peterson Who the Hell is Woody Baldwin? More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About Woody Baldwin Woody Baldwin was born to tough pioneer conditions in the northern Texas panhandle. He grew up poor, in the midst of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. The strengths developed from childhood led to a distinguished academic career. He taught as an Assistant Professor at University of California Los Angeles and as Professor and Department Chairman at Simmons College in Boston. He spent 37 years of shared life with his long term partner, made significant contributions to society and founded the Prime Timers organization. Une Vie Extraordinaire WWW.WOODYBALDWIN.COM Lawrence R. Peterson Who the Hell is Woody Baldwin? or More Than You Ever Wanted to Know about Woody Baldwin Lawrence R. Peterson ii Woodrow Wilson Baldwin “The time has come,” the Walrus said, “To talk of many things: Of shoes and ships and sealing-wax of cabbages and kings, and why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings.” Lewis Carroll (from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872) Contents I The Early Years Beginnings 1 The Early Years 3 II Youth Youth and Grade School 9 Age 13 - 18 and Amarillo High School, Class of ‘38 13 III Adulthood Amarillo Junior College 23 University of Oklahoma 26 Woodrow in the Army — 1942-1945 27 IV Academics UCLA: The Masters, The Doctorate and “Professor” Baldwin 35 Professor and Department Chair at Simmons College 45 V Bostonian Life in Boston and Reading 59 Woodrow Baldwin and John (Sean) O’Neill 68 The Popcorn Professor 77 VI Prime Timers The Prime Timer Organization 81 VII Retirement A Return to Texas 91 VIII Afterword About the Bigraphical Sketch 101 Endnotes 105 A Comment From Woody 111 iii iv Woodrow Wilson Baldwin Copyright © 2009 Lawrence R. Peterson; all rights reserved. This article may not be duplicated or distributed in any form without written permission from the publisher: Lawrence Reed Peterson, 1730 Aquila Avenue, Reno, Nevada 89509; e-mail: [email protected]. 1st Draft composed May/June 2009 in Reno, Nevada 2nd Draft composed July/August, Holland America Maasdam, sailing in the North Atlantic, Newfoundland, Labrador, Greenland, Iceland, and the U.K. Final manuscript completed September 2009 in Reno, Nevada First Printing, 50 copies, Reno, Nevada, 2009 Dr. Woodrow Wilson (Woody) Baldwin vi Woodrow Wilson Baldwin “I was taught by my mother to not have prejudices and to this day, I don’t.” 1 The Early Years Beginnings oodrow Wilson Baldwin was born to tough pioneer conditions in the still newly settled northern Texas panhandle. He grew Wup poor, in the midst of the Depression and the Dust Bowl. The strengths developed from this character-building childhood led to a distin- guished academic career and significant social contributions in his retirement. He taught for ten years as an Assistant Professor at UCLA and for 26 years as Professor, and Department Chair, at Simmons College, a prestigious north- eastern university. Upon his retirement, as a natural extension of his life, he founded the Prime Timers organization which now has over 70 chapters world wide. The scope of this biographical sketch is merely Woody Baldwin’s early years, his youth, academic and retirement years, and the shared life with his long term partner. This sketch can not attempt to provide a detailed history of Baldwin’s founding of Prime Timers, and the growth since it’s inception, which is a project in itself. Hopefully this paper will give the reader some in- sight into the hero of the story, known affectionately as “Woody.” We begin with a few names, as a way to place the young boy “Woodrow” within the context of the 1920s. The surname “Baldwin” was relatively new to the northern panhandle of Texas. We do know that Woodrow’s mother, Emma Leora (Ledia) Gray was born in 1884 and came to Texas from Tennes- see. His father, Claude Horace Baldwin, was born in 1882 and moved to Texas 1 2 Woodrow Wilson Baldwin from Georgia. Both parents left school at the end of their elementary grades to work on their respective family and neighbors farms. The availability of work and a life of their own may be what drove each of them further West. They met in Blue Ridge, Texas (about 41 miles northeast of Dallas) and were married there on April 1, 1900. They lived the first 7 years of their marriage there, giving birth to two of the children. They lived in Lockney, Texas for a time, and several other locations, giving birth to three additional children. It was not uncommon for pioneer farmers to start families when they were still very young and to raise a large family. Woodrow believes they moved around so much because, although his father was a farmer, he was not a very good one. Census records show that about 35% of Americans in the 1920s were consid- ered full-time farmers. As to how he came to be named Woodrow Wilson he comments: “I guess my parents just ran out of originality in naming their kids. My older siblings are named, Vada [Germanic meaning “famous ruler”], Zada [Arabic meaning “prosperous or increasing”, Obert [Germanic meaning “famous for his inheri- tance” and Leora [Hebrew meaning “my light”].” From the interviews with Woodrow apparently his mother finally put her foot down on the biblical names and insisted on something more modern for her fifth child. Woodrow further comments; “I guess my parents admired President Woodrow Wilson although I never heard it discussed. I teased my mother that I could never lie about my age because I was born in the last year of his presidency.” Prior to 1912 the name would have been unrecognized. Of the most Popular 1000 Names of 1920, from Social Security card applications for births that occurred in the United States, the name Woodrow ranked 67th. Woodrow Wilson is consistently ranked as one of the top ten American Presidents. One can only speculate what Woodrow’s parents admired most about this president. Perhaps it was because he declared the first National Mother’s Day in 1914? During his childhood the name Woodrow was used by his family and his peers, but his mother always called him “Sonny.” Woodrow claims to know very little about his grandparents. One must assume they were farmers too. The maternal grandparents are buried in Blue Ridge, Texas. Woodrow’s paternal grandparents are buried in Lockney, Texas. We know very little about that branch of the family. Lockney, Texas, is still a small rural community — near Lubbock. As far as where Woodrow’s ancestors came from, he comments; I don’t know (nor find it important) what nationality I am. It is not as important in Texas as it is in other parts of the country. When I grew up, there were Mexicans, blacks (they were politely called “Ne- gros” in those days), Jews, Catholics and Christians. Beyond that, Une vie Extraordinaire 3 nothing else mattered. I was taught by my mother to not have preju- dices and to this day, I don’t. To put his birth in context one needs to look at the events of the year 1920. This is the year Prohibition began, and the year a woman’s right to vote was passed. In Europe, Hitler presented his National Socialist agenda in Mu- nich and in Geneva the first meeting of the League of Nations was held. In New York the infamous Wall Street bombing occurred in front of J.P Morgan, which killed 38 and injured 400. The underlying causes of the Great Depres- sion were gathering momentum, and would soon coincide with the disaster of the Dust Bowl. One can also look at things we take for granted today and which did not exist when he was born. At a Christmas party, in his later years, Woodrow sur- prised the young children of his hosts when he noted that he grew up before Scotch Tape existed. It was only invented in 1930. He had to explain to the children how one wrapped Christmas packages with white glue and string. It may be noted he grew up before bubblegum (1928), the Yo-Yo (1929), and even Penicillin (approved by the FDA in 1928) and frozen foods (1929). Traffic lights were only invented the year he was born, the first being in Detroit, Mich- igan, and not ubiquitous in the US for many years. Woodrow Wilson Baldwin was born before nuclear bombs. In Amarillo Texas in the 1920’s and 1930’s they didn’t lock the doors of their homes and as children were never bothered with many of the fears placed upon the lives of the youngsters of today. The Early Years Woodrow Wilson Baldwin was born in Dumas, Texas on March 28, 1920. The man who developed the town was named Louis Dumas and the town, formed in the late 1800’s, was his namesake. The panhandle was one of the last areas of the State of Texas to be developed from the raw prairie. In the late 1800s the great migration westward was still ongoing, and this generation of early settlers encountered very difficult conditions. The town was given little chance to survive, but the pioneers were hardy stock and they stuck it out.