The Reverend Frank H.E. Wood
September 12, 1919 – April 26, 2013
The Reverend Frank H.E. Wood, former pastor of the Eagle Harbor Congregational Church, passed away on April 26 of complications following surgery.
Born in Michigan in 1919, “Buddy” spent his childhood in the orange-scented air of Monrovia, California. He graduated from Wheaton College and Princeton Theological Seminary. Volunteering as a Navy Chaplain in 1942, he braved “The Battle of Waikiki” while tending to the spirits of Marines deploying to the Pacific. After the war and a short stint in broadcasting, Frank and his family headed south to Bogota, Colombia where he was pastor of the Union Church, a nondenominational Protestant congregation for the international, English-speaking community. In 1958, he assumed pastoral duties at the Union Evangelical Church in Mexico City, a similar but far larger congregation. Like many, Frank and Maxine came to know Bainbridge Island by accident: in 1972, while in transit during a trip to Korea, they took a ferry ride that changed their lives, and the rest is history. Frank retired from the Eagle Harbor pulpit in 1986.
To those who really knew him, however, Frank was more than just a résumé. Throughout his ministry, Frank’s focus was on his fellow man, as he worked to help others with their relationships with God and with one another. He tirelessly paid visits to the sick and dying, always putting God’s love in the forefront. He was uniquely effective in bringing Christian tenets and the practical issues of everyday life together in a way that highlighted solutions. He was always clear that solutions weren’t free, however, and was direct in defining just what God expected from each of us. He viewed the Bible as less of a relic to be revered and more of a playbook to be practiced. His sermons were models of eloquence and strength, and his command and clarity from the pulpit always managed to make the universal feel intensely personal.
He was the keystone of a family built on love and laughter. The self-appointed center of every family gathering, Frank always held forth with great delight in what he had begot. More than anything, he will be remembered by those who love him for his exceptional intelligence—a mind so capacious, an intellect to ferocious and formidable, that to just be around him made you feel smarter… as if the weight of his wisdom and experience was too overwhelming and he had no choice but to share what he knew. And he was eager to share it with those he loved. When his eldest grandson complained, at ten years of age, of not being able to go places, Frank asked where he would like to go. He, Maxine and Frank were soon off to Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok and Bali. Similar month-long trips with their other grandchildren took them to Spain, North Africa, Hawaii, Australia, and New Zealand. He valued communication, in its truest sense. He believed that with the gift of language came a responsibility to use it well. And he did: with a single word he could gild or geld; he loved playing the “Devil’s Advocate” though he was anything but. And with this mental and verbal acuity came a sharp and singular sense of humor, which he wielded like a weapon against both pain and pride, as if making people laugh in the face of adversity were the highest calling of all. His was a rarefied wit that stayed with him to his dying day—though he’d been surrounded by family for days, he passed while no one was looking, a final bit of cheek from a world-class curmudgeon.
And with that passing, Frank leaves behind a wake of earthly attachments that will forever be leavened with his spirit, a memory far greater than the sum of its parts. Among many others: he was a man of many hats… literally; he never met a raccoon he didn’t love; he never met a computer he didn’t loathe; he enjoyed “UNO” bars and horehound, body surfing, Hemingway and Chandler, Wodehouse and Thurber, pens, the USC Trojans, vests, geodes, W.C. Fields, Groucho Marx and Will Rogers, whoopee cushions, playing Santa on Christmas morning, clean sentences and dirty jokes, old hymns and new shoes, crossword puzzles, Peggy Lee, quips and quotes, avocados, Mr. Hulot’s Holiday, his morning coffee and, perhaps above all, dancing to Nat King Cole’s “Stardust” with his wife of 71 years—the one he loved above all others, and the one who played leading lady on the stage of his remarkable life.
“You wander down the lane and far away
Leaving me a song that will not die
Love is now the stardust of yesterday
The music of the years gone by”
Frank is survived by his wife (Maxine), his sisters (Margaret Little and Mary Hope Stuckey) two daughters, (Susan Taylor and Debbie Viccellio), four grandchildren, four great-grandchildren, and his 1982 Cadillac Seville (The Blue Maxx).
A small family service and reunion in Frank’s memory is being planned for later in the year.
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