My Parents
Clifford Ray Wood and Saidee Dowling Wood
Cliff and new wife Saidee Dowling Wood on their honeymoon Christmas 1940
For the period prior to the Depression see the sections on my Paternal and Maternal Grandparents
My Father's Early Life
Cliff, as he was called, was born in Sioux City Iowa in 1910 and moved to Fellsmere Florida where his father had been farming during the winter. They permanently moved to Fellsmere before he was 8. The depression hit in 1927; about the time he would have graduated from high school. In November 1930, at age 20, he married Olive Brown in Fellsmere. The couple soon moved to Miami where he sought employment. During the time in Miami, he still had trouble getting a job and even worked as a golf caddy to make money. One of the stories he told about that was that the gangster Al Capone played at the golf club where Cliff caddied and was known for giving out a $100 tip. Cliff missed getting to caddy for him because there was just one other caddy ahead of him.
The marriage broke up by 1935, and Cliff moved to Washington DC looking for government employment there. He was able to find a job with the US General Accounting Office and began attending classes at American University studying accounting.
My Mother's Early Life
Saidee was born in Fairfax, South Carolina, also in 1910. Her parents moved around some but ended up in Saint Petersburg Florida in the late 1920s and graduated from St. Pete HS in 1927. She then attended Stetson University in DeLand. In the summer of 1931 her family took a trip to Washington DC. (I still have the diary she kept during that trip.) While there, her parents took an interest in the hotel business. In 1933 she married Edward H Munday Jr., but that marriage ended in divorce in 1935. In September 1938, Saidee went with a friend, Susie Simms, on a steamship cruise that departed Key West to Havana Cuba. She lived in and worked for her parents at London Hall Apts. In DC.
Their Meeting and Marriage
Saidee and my father Clifford R Wood - both were from Florida but met in Washington - were married in DC on Christmas Day in 1940. (See photo above.) On their honeymoon, they stopped in Times Square on New Years Eve before going on to Niagara Falls.
Things would change abruptly for them a year later. On Dec. 7, 1941, they were attending a Washington Redskin's football game when it was announced over the public address system that Pearl Harbor had been attacked by Japan. In order to build up the military as quickly as possible, In April, Selective Service (the Draft) announced a special program where recruits with some college could enter directly into Officer Candidate School. At this point, dad had two years of college so he qualified. He was in the first group of these candidates to join up and was pictured in a newspaper article with the Selective Service Director. After completing OCS, and before getting an assignment, his group were lined up and told to count off. The first man was a "1" and the second man a "2". This repeated until everyone was either a 1 or 2. Everyone that was a "1" was sent to the front in Europe. Fortunately, my dad's number kept him stateside or I would not be here. After a tour at Bolling Field in DC of all places, he went on to become an accountant with the Army-Air Corp working at the Ford Motor Willow Run plant in Detroit that produced a new B-24 bomber every 55 minutes. By the time the war ended, he had risen to the rank of Captain. I was born while my dad was stationed in Detroit but my mother went back to DC for my birth.
Capt. Clifford, Walter D and Saidee D Wood 1945
After he was discharged, they lived in and managed the Dowling's Potomac Hotel for several years until it was sold in 1959. The Potomac Hotel and 25% of the London Hall Apts. was inherited by Saidee in 1948 when her father A.L. Dowling died.
Family Time
In 1947, Cliff and Saidee purchased a large home in the DC suburb of Bethesda Maryland. While in Bethesda, my dad was a deacon and my mother on the Woman's Missionary Society at the First Baptist Church there. They had wanted a large family but only had two children, myself and my brother Gene who was born with Down's syndrome. Gene, profoundly handicapped, required full-time care was institutionalized, and died in 1999. They also had a daughter who was stillborn. As a result, I was brought up as an only child.
My parents took four long trips driving around North America, three with me and the fourth with my grandmother Mabel Wood. The three trips I went on were in 1954, 1956, and 1958. In 1954 left from Florida and headed west to California and then up the west coast into Canada. In 1956 we traveled up the east coast and into Canada as far as the Gaspe Peninsula and Nova Scotia. In 1958 we drove to Alaska. These trips created many great memories, I got to meet many of my parent's relatives, and I gained a broad knowledge of North America.
After they sold the Potomac Hotel and they purchased the Queen Anne Hotel in Surfside / Miami Beach Florida (photo below). (For those of you that are aware of the collapse of Champlain Towers South condo in Miami Beach, our hotel would have been located immediately adjacent to it.) When the Queen Anne was sold a year later, they obtained land in Homestead Florida.
Over the next few years, we spent a year in St. Peterburg, moved back to Bethesda, and in 1962 I graduated from high school and started at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Late that year they moved to Homestead to develop the property they had there.
Mother loved to play Contract Bridge and earned many Masterpoints in various tournaments. She was also a member of the Ladies Shrine Club. Cliff was Vice Commander of the Homestead (FL) Power Squadron and was in line to become the Chief Commander just before his death. Dad was a 32-Degree Mason and a member of Almas Shrine Temple in Washington, DC. They both loved the outdoors and enjoyed cruising and fishing on their 30-foot cabin cruiser that was docked in the Florida Keys. They were also members of the First Baptist Church of Homestead.
In the mid-1960s, my mother was complaining of stomach cramps. After three years of seeing doctors, she was finally diagnosed with colon cancer in April 1966. The doctors operated and removed a large tumor and a section of her large intestine. That operation was successful, but the cancer had already spread. She was dead before Christmas that year. However, she was able to see me married and her first son before she passed.
Less than a year later in 1967, I graduated from the University of South Florida. In August, I borrowed my dad's cabin cruiser and took it to the Bahamas with my wife Leslie and another couple. We returned on the 16th and said goodbye to my dad and that afternoon and drove back to my home in Tampa. I had no idea it would be for the last time. The very next morning, and before I had woken up, the Homestead police called to tell me my dad had been found dead in his recliner with the morning paper on his lap and a cup of coffee beside him.
They were burried beside each other in Woodlawn Memory Gardens in St. Petersburg, Florida. After my brother Gene died in 1999, his ashes were scattered on their graves.
No Regrets
I was only 22 and both my parents were gone. However, in looking back, I was so fortunate to have spent so much time with them, traveling all over North America, going fishing, taking multiple long boat trips including to the Bahamas and doing so many other things. I am also so glad that they were able to follow their dreams while they could rather than waiting for their retirement that never came. I am also blessed that they took me to church from the time I was a baby. (I still have my Nursery Certificate from a Baptist Church in DC.) Without that heritage, I would not be where I am today, ready to go to heaven when Jesus calls me home, knowing I will see them there!
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