Shocking news: “I think a lot of his outbursts were calculated. He knew exactly what he was doing.

Shocking news: “I think a lot of his outbursts were calculated. He knew exactly what he was doing.

I think it was during summer camp before my sophomore or junior year, some writer from Sports Illustrated or someplace talked Woody into letting him do a story about the program. And he didn’t like to talk to the press; he didn’t even want us talking to the press. He didn’t trust them, but this guy convinced Woody that the story was going to be all positive, just positive things about the program. Woody agreed, but when the article came out, it was completely negative. The guy hadn’t done his homework. He hadn’t checked all of his sources. He didn’t look beneath the surface. He just went with all the sensational stuff he had heard.

 

“Woody was just devastated by that. It broke his heart.

 

The day the article came out, we were in the dining hall, on the bottom floor. Woody called a meeting for the dining hall on the top floor, and he was getting everything set up there. He was up by the podium, and he was getting managers to bring him one of those trays of glasses. He said it very calmly, very matter-of-factly, ‘Oh, and bring one of those trays of glasses over here and put it on the table. Yeah, that’s it, one of those trays full of glasses. Just bring it over here and put it down.’

 

“He started the meeting, and he read from this article to us, and he came to some part he didn’t like. He reached over, grabbed one of those glasses, and smashed it against the wall. He went through the whole article like that. Every time he came to something that made him mad, he threw another glass against the wall. The whole article, and it was long. Eighteen glasses later, he was finished.

 

“It was all calculated to get to us, just like cutting the strings on his hat or cutting the seams on his shirt. He’d get mad and grab his hat and tear it to pieces, and we’d wonder how this old guy could be so strong.

 

Well, he took a razor blade and cut the seams first so he could rip it apart. Or he’d take an old pair of glasses or an old watch and throw it down and stomp on it. He was a master at that kind of thing. He knew just what he was doing.”

 

spacerTim Fox, from the book “Woody’s Boys” by Alan Natali