Henry M. Wood

Condolences

Lynda Hastings lit a candle and writes,
Dear Henry, I remember so well when you arrived from Washington, D.C. at the 7th floor of the new Marine Midland Bank building to take over the new Office of Prevention. You turned an idea into a reality…something no one else at our Department really knew how to do. You were smart, tall, handsome, friendly, charming and charismatic. I think that the folks in charge of the Department did not fully understand what they were getting when they hired you. They were so lucky. You surveyed the scene, explored communities around the state and read the Federal Register for programming and money opportunities. And you read our legislative mandate. You were really the first person at our Department to get it. You created a wonderful Office that sincerely tried to fulfill our mandate. And you hired us, your staff, to make the dream come true. It is amazing what you taught us. Thank you for so many things…. For modeling how to be a good boss. For teaching us to value and maximize benefits from diversity. For teaching us skills in grant writing, program development and budgeting. For introducing us to community leaders around the state and prevention leaders around the country. For guiding us in how to appreciate working with our Controller to ensure that we were always spending in line with grant requirements. For protecting us from bureaucracy, keeping us away from all that so we could operate creatively inside the state system. You were our mentor, our father-figure and our friend. We have always been so grateful to you. I am profoundly grateful to you for all the many blessings that you have brought into my life. This includes knowing all the folks who have been concerned about you during your anguished and extended illness, and who are mourning you now. I am so happy that your Dodgers won the world Series for you this fall. It is perhaps the brightest spot of this otherwise dismal year. We, your friends, have missed seeing you due to the pandemic. We cherish your memory and know that you are now free of this life’s sorrows. Goodbye, Henry. Free at last. Love, Lynda
12/17/2020 03:46 pm
Steven Martin lit a candle and writes,
Henry was the first state administrator I met in Delaware after coming to the University of Delaware in 1988. And he remained the best I met in 30 years at UD. His knowledge of the system and compassion for people was profound. He created not only an infrastructure for prevention in working with youth in Delaware but also an ethos that still endures. Most impressive was the group of staff he recruited to work at OP and whose legacy continues to this day. It was privilege to know him and the staff who worked with him. Steve Martin, retired Senior Scientist Center for Drug and Health Studies
12/18/2020 12:52 pm
Peter Breyer lit a candle and writes,
Reflections on Hank Wood I was terribly saddened to hear of Hanks’s (to us he was always Hank, not Henry) death and long illness which only became known to me yesterday with his obituary forwarded to me by my long-time professional partner, Donald Malafronte. I first met Hank during the fall of 1968, when I was assigned as a community organization social work student from Rutgers to the Newark Model Cities Program. Organized shortly after the devastating riots of inner cities during the previous year and particularly in Newark where 57 citizens were shot by the national guard, Model Cities was a federal program to provide services in education, transportation, law enforcement and health to combat poverty and inner-city neglect. Hank was in charge of the health task force in concert with a community board. He then moved up to the Regional Medical Program (RMP), another federal effort to reduce the morbidly and mortality from cancer, heart disease and stroke. He headed up the Urban Health Component which assigned health planners to a dozen cities in New Jersey with associated grant money for specific health programs. Hank operated in the militancy of post-riot Newark, with community demands for just about everything. He was as a skilled and extremely adept programmer/administrator at a time when black men were beginning to get their chance for professional advancement. Hank gave me my first job and launched me on my career as a health planning consultant which I continued until recently until the advent of Covid. He was a fair-minded person who gave me a leadership position in the Urban Health Component above other black men and defended me when my position was challenged. When I sought to advance my education, he provided me time off get my class credits during the day for my PhD in Urban Planning. But Hank was also my friend. We drank and caroused together during the late 60’s and early 70’s. My wife, a black woman I met while in the Peace Corps in India and his wife, Laverne were good friends, and he brought me into the social milieu of upwardly mobile black men and woman, one of whom became the first black supreme judge in New Jersey. He entertained from his brick house in Plainfield. We drank, attended conferences and had loads or fun together. I heard all his high school baseball stories, reviewed his scrapbook and we would hit a plastic ball in the halls of our office. I remember his nice hitting stance and swing. When we drank it was always a Rusty nails, Drambuie mixed with Scotch. Or sometimes a bottle of Courvoisier brandy. When I first met him he was driving a beat-up 1965 Volkswagen beetle. Many of his staff were ashamed to ride in the car with him. Hank was hard on cars and his beetle shook and rattled and sometimes needed second gear to get up steep hills. I said we were friends, but he sold it to me for $100. After six months when I went to trade it in for a new beetle, the salesman told me, “son, what you got here is a nice radio (blaupunkt) with four wheels.” Hank went on to get a Mercedes diesel which pleased his staff all of whom were anxious for a ride. Mercedes were still rare back then. Hank was a proud black man, but he never complained about “white this,” or “white that.” Yet, one day I saw him very quiet with his head in his hands. “Hank, what’s wrong?” I asked. “It’s one thing to hear about discrimination but when confronted with it, it really hurts,” he told me.” Hank as a well dressed and artfully spoken man tried to rent a car, produced his credit card and was denied. The man would only say, “we won’t rent it to you.” Surely far worse discrimination stories can be told involving violence, but I experienced how it negatively affected him. He told me not to hear platitudes from me as a white man on how bad such discrimination was or to make excuses for white people. He told me out of his pain and needing some way to express it. Hank didn’t talk much about his personal feelings, but I always had a sense for what he was thinking. Time moved on and the Urban Health Component which he created separated from the NJ Regional Medicinal Program as an independent organization. I became the Deputy Director and have carried on to this very day. Hank stayed on with NYRMP and moved on to Washington and then Delaware which I only learned yesterday. After his divorce from Laverne, my wife and I lost contact with him and his former wife. The last time we saw him was at a tragic funeral of his brother during the late 70’s who died in a house fire. We had promised to keep touch, but somehow it never happened. What saddens me most is to hear of his devastating stroke at age 56 and my inability to communicate and comfort him. He was such a wonderful man and over years, my partner, Don, and I have tried in vain to contact him. I have thought of him often and the start he gave me in life. How many white men can look to a black man as their mentor and that’s what he was to me during my budding professional career. It was heartwarming to hear of the many friends he had who supported him during his time of need and of the wonderful person who wrote his obituary. May he rest in peace. Peter Breyer, April 14, 2021
04/14/2021 10:36 am