Industrial designer Jean Wood dies at 85
An undated photo of Jean Wood.
Jean Wood, an industrial designer who was an unwilling contender for the Mrs. America title in 1963, died Sunday after a long illness in Chelmsford, Mass. She was 85.
Before her illness, she had divided her time between Fire Island and Sanibel Island, Fla.
Wood began her design career with the United States Navy at the Training Devices Center in Sands Point, a facility that designed and tested weapons and equipment for aircraft and submarines.
She later designed homes on Long Island and Sanibel Island, many of which still stand. The Sanibel Island home she designed for her family was intended to make Florida summers livable without air-conditioning. It was diamond-shaped, with all its rooms connected to a second-floor cupola that housed a giant fan and was kept open at night to channel the breeze down inside.
Wood graduated from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn with a certificate in industrial design, as well as Empire State College, where she earned a bachelor's degree in industrial arts.
During the 1970s, she produced curricula on the environment for local schools, as well as a series of programs on conservation and recycling. That work led to a stint as a spokeswoman for Grumman Energy Systems in Ronkonkoma from 1976 to 1980, her family said. She was also a freelance children's literature editor for Newsday for 13 years.
Her family was one of the first to install solar panels on their Port Washington home, and her six children grew up washing in water warmed by the sun.
Wood was also a devoted wife to Francis Wood, a Newsday reporter who sold his editors on a project idea: his wife would enter the Mrs. New York competition. If she won and moved on to the 1963 Mrs. America contest, he would accompany her down to Miami Beach, Fla., and write about it.
"My father put her up to this," said Wendy Wood-Kaler, of Sayville. "She didn't want to do it, but she was voted Mrs. New York."
For a week in April of that year, Mrs. New York cleaned, baked pies, made lunches and did her hair, and was graded by a panel of judges. She did not win. Her husband, who got a fine series of articles out of it, noted in his closing piece that the judges "ignored my favorite for the title . . . and picked a lively statuesque Californian as the nation's top homemaker."
Wood is survived by Wood-Kaler and five other children: Christopher Wood of Arlington, Mass.; Pamela Wood Clare of Bedford, Mass.; Jonathan Wood of Roxbury, N.Y.; Samuel Wood of Kismet, N.Y.; and Fred Wood of Medford, N.Y. She is also survived by 14 grandchildren.
A public memorial service will be May 7 at 1 p.m. at Gospel Community Church, 138 Greeley Ave. in Sayville. In lieu of flowers, donations in Wood's name can be sent to Habitat for Humanity. A memorial page for Jean Wood can be found on Facebook.
'I'm going to try to avoid it' A trip to the emergency room in a Long Island hospital now averages nearly 4 hours, data shows. NewsdayTV's Virginia Huie reports.
'I'm going to try to avoid it' A trip to the emergency room in a Long Island hospital now averages nearly 4 hours, data shows. NewsdayTV's Virginia Huie reports.
