Donald W. Wood Sr.

As a child, Donald thought Kenner was a boy’s paradise. He grew up climbing trees, setting off firecrackers, and scaring cows. Donald and his neighborhood buddies camped out on the levee next to the banks of the Mississippi river and took food their Moms had sent with them in their knapsacks to cook for dinner. They used those little scout-folding pans and of course, burned up everything their mothers sent. Later Donald and his friends became scouts and spent many happy summers at Camp Selman in Slidell canoeing, swimming, and playing night games with flashlights. Donald was an Eagle Scout.

After graduating from St. Martin’s Episcopal School and Tulane University, where received a commission in the Navy, Donald was assigned as an officer aboard the flagship of the Seventh Fleet in Japan. The ship visited many ports, including tribal villages in Borneo where he personally met with chiefs in huts. Donald was in Communication and brought top-secret messages to the Admiral who was sometimes in his pajamas! He took tours to the Korean capital and attended white-dress dinners at almost every palace in the Far East with his ship helping spread the goodwill of the United States of America.

After the Navy, Donald joined the family business and was really the “general handyman” who mopped floors, cleaned tugboats, and rolled 55 gallon drums down to the boats in the Mississippi River. His legacy continues on with the company Wood Resources and if you look into the Mississippi River, you just might happen to see a red, white and gray striped towboat named the M/V Donald Wood pushing barges.

He became interested in snow skiing and loved annual family ski trips so much that he built a home in Snowmass, Colorado, which the family enjoyed for many years (and wailed when he sold it). Even in his 70’s he was usually the first one down the mountain in his puffy blue ski jacket. He loved seeing his kids and grandkids at three years old out skiing.

Donald was an outdoorsman. He always had pirogues, loved to fish in Breton Sound, and regularly brought home a chest full of speckled trout.

Donald’s extensive travels included a mission trip to Russia where his church group performed skits on the streets of Kazan, Russia. The skits enchanted all the local women who sat on the street curb watching intensely the church group talking about Jesus and the Devil. Donald distributed 100 personal Russian Bibles and gave them out one-by-one to the women. Donald’s Russian group performed baptisms in the Neva River in St. Petersburg to the fellow church members in Russia. Following that, the local Russian church took him on a Volga sightseeing cruise where Russian songs and balalaika filled the air. After the cruise, Donald said goodbye to the church group and gave his JC Penney jacket to a young Russian couple that had clung to him during the whole trip. This couple wouldn’t accept the jacket without running home to get their wedding picture to give him. Donald had a hard time accepting their only wedding picture.

Donald and his wife Debby spent years attending operas presented by the New Orleans Opera Association as well as traveling to New York several times a year to see performances at the New York Metropolitan Opera. Donald’s favorite moment at the Met was sitting on the first row watching James Levine conduct.

Over his lifetime, Donald served on the boards of various non-profits but his 20- year tenure on the Board of the Bridge House where he was instrumental in raising funds for their new building, was his most passionate contribution.

For 37 years, he enjoyed golfing, dining and being with friends at the New Orleans Country Club.

Survived by his loving wife, Debby Hirsch Wood and six children:

Sarah Louise Wood Ham (Scott Ham), Donald William Wood, Jr. (Maria Ainsworth Newell) Pearce Friedrichs Wood (Babs Evangelista), Tiffany Merritt Shea (Stuart Hayers) Hunter Whitefield Shea (Christy Liriano) and Emily Madison Eickhoff, eight grand-children; Caroline, Hunter and Briggs Ham, Kate, Norah, Worth, Sadie and Ashton Wood, his former wife, Betty Freidrichs Wood, his brother Glenn D. Wood and many nieces, nephews and friends.