Paul Samuel Wood

Services for Paul Samuel Wood will be 10 a.m. Monday, July 24, 2006, at First Methodist Church with the Rev. Joel McMahon officiating. Interment will follow in Scottsville Cemetery. Visitation will be 6-8 p.m. Sunday, July 23, 2006, at Downs Funeral Home. Born May 6, 1946, he was the son of Paul Whaley Wood and Constance Key Wood. He was the grandson of Samuel Eldred Wood Jr. and Mary (Mamie) Rose Youree Whaley and Edmund Key Jr. and Rae Lyttleton Key. Paul was well known and appreciated as a fascinating raconteur and a welcome boon to any social gathering where he could be relied upon to add interest and entertainment. He held a life-long passion for history both general and familial. Despite a serious handicap resulting from a virulent cancer as a very young man, he maintained a passion for sports including kayaking the Pacific coast and Columbia River and especially Caddo Lake. He maintained a prolonged involvement in handicapped snow ski racing where he amazed his sure-footed friends with his aplomb perched upon a single ski. He was a proud contributor to the Challenge Aspen Foundation, which provides opportunities for handicapped sports enthusiasts. Paul was a stock broker with Morgan Stanley at the San Francisco Embarcadero office for 20 years and prior to that served as Vice-President and Director of the First National Bank in Center. He graduated with a BBA in economics from the University of Texas at Austin and enjoyed membership and life-long friendships begun in the Phi Delta Theta fraternity. Paul graduated from Woodberry Forest School in Orange, Va. In his senior year he won an English Speaking Union Scholarship to Brighton College, Brighton, England, where he was selected to the All Southern England rugby team. During his senior year he was the leading scorer and selected as an All-State first team running back in Virginia and named a Prep School Football All American. His first year on the Marshall High School varsity football team he was selected as an all-district linebacker. He began his climb up the educational ladder at Miss Gussie's Kindergarten on South Washington and the Trinity Episcopal Day School. He was married twice and preceded in death by his father and mother. He is survived by a step-mother, Dr. Martha McClendon Neal of Marshall; a sister, Mary Constance Wood of Austin; and two brothers, Edmund R. Wood and wife Anna Lomax Wood of Marshall and Scott K. Wood of Austin and by his nephew, Andrew R. Wood of Wimberly; aunts, Nancy Rose Wood Fair of Tyler, Rae Key Ferrell of Fort Worth and Mary Key Henley of Dallas. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that gifts be made to the Harrison County Historical Society, or Challenge Aspen. Pall bearers will be Robert Wood Fair, Tyler; Allen Whaley Fair, Tyler; Edmund Key Burton, Marshall; Philip Knox Key, Victoria; Richard K. Dulaney, Fort Worth; Craig Shackelford, Montrose, Ark.; and A. L. Kaufman, Austin.