Jack Woodward would have turned 92 today. Here is the eulogy I wrote about my father. Please excuse more typos than usual. It’s a hard document for me to edit.
To understand the kind of life Jack Woodward lived, all you had to do was look him in the face. He wasn’t born with that nose, that indomitable schnauz — he earned it the hard way, one punch at a time. And the dentures? He didn’t lose his teeth all at once, but he lost his top front pair just after boot camp, catching a bar stool across the mouth. The big wrinkles were chiseled by 87 years, the fine wrinkles from smoking nearly as long. His workingman’s tan never quite faded. But the thing I always noticed, and will remember most, was his lopsided grin.