EDMOND — Pendleton Woods, former World War II prisoner of war and community servant recently was honored in a special ceremony during a chapel service at Oklahoma Christian University.
In addition to an Oklahoma Senate citation, it was announced a special grove of recently planted trees just south of Enterprise Square will be named in Woods’ honor.
Thousands of Oklahomans, from Boy Scouts to veterans in Veterans Administration hospitals have benefited from Woods’ generosity and tireless service work. He recently received an award for 70 years of service to the Boy Scouts program.
In 1942 Woods had signed up for the Army Reserve. In October 1944, he was sent to Germany, on the Belgian front. On Dec. 10, 1944, while on patrol behind German lines, Woods and seven others were cut off and surrounded by a German unit. So began Woods’ five-month ordeal as a prisoner of war.
In 2002, he was inducted into the Oklahoma Military Hall of Fame. In 2005 he was named by the American Ex-Prisoners of War as the Outstanding Ex-Prisoner of War in the nation, based upon public service and service to veterans.
After 21 years as an editor and press relations director for the Oklahoma Gas and Electric Company in Oklahoma City, he joined the staff of OC to inaugurate and direct a statewide oral history program, established by the university.
Woods now directs the American Citizenship Center, an OC outreach program, reaching youth with a message of patriotism, sense of purpose, drug abatement and commitment to public service.
The center works closely with other organizations that promote the same ideals, including the Military Order of the World Wars, the Sojourners and Freedoms Foundation. He is author and co-author of more than a dozen books.
He also has given more than 7,000 volunteer hours of service to patients in the Veterans Hospital in Oklahoma City.
He has served on the board of directors for 15 years and as an officer the past five years on the Oklahoma County Senior Nutrition Development Foundation. Woods was one of the founders of the Epilepsy Association of Oklahoma in the early 1980s. He was a recorded reader for the Oklahoma Library for the Blind for several years.
Woods is a longtime member of the Military Order of the World Wars, a national veterans’ organization, dedicated to serving others — particularly youth. In the early 1980s this organization established a Youth Leadership Conference for high school student leaders at the Freedoms Foundation headquarters at Valley Forge.
In 1999 members of the Oklahoma City chapter of the Military Order of the World Wars re-named its chapter the Colonel Pendleton Woods Oklahoma City Chapter in his honor, and it is the only one of the more than 125 chapters in the nation named for a living individual.
Active in environmental and beautification activities, Woods was one of the founders of “Oklahoma City Beautiful,” edited and produced its publication for 21 years, and initiated its “Adopt-a-Park” beautification program for volunteers.
In 1998 he was the Oklahoman selected to receive the Jefferson Award for public service in Washington, D.C. Nine years later, in 2007, at age 83, he was Oklahoma’s selection to receive the Older Worker Award, again in Washington, D.C. He is now 85, and still on the job.
