Insight: A simpler life

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Nearly 53 years ago, I stepped onto a Greyhound bus for a three-hour ride to college after flying across the country from Rochester, New York to Albuquerque, New Mexico. As I settled in the front of the bus for the last leg of my trip, I noticed a tall, gangly looking red-haired young man in the back of the bus who was talking loudly in a pronounced Southern drawl and telling his life story to anyone within earshot.

Woodson 'Woody' Taylor was the first
person Ed Pierce met on his first day
of college in 1971. He died in January
at the age of 70. COURTESY PHOTO 

My first impression was that this fellow was extremely nervous and trying to make new friends and I couldn’t believe some of the personal details that he was sharing with complete strangers. He discussed growing up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, his family and where he was headed, which happened to be the same college that I was traveling to. In what I considered to be a totally naïve and gullible thing to say, he mentioned that his parents didn’t want him to carry cash but instead had given him $1,000 for his trip in traveler’s checks.

This guy talked nonstop during the entire bus ride and when we finally arrived at our destination, two older students from the college met us at the bus stop to take us to our dormitory on campus. I learned that my fellow bus rider’s name was Woodson “Woody” Taylor, and he was the son of a prominent family from Louisiana. When we got to the college, the resident advisor on duty that evening had Woody’s reservation for a dorm room, but somehow mine was not found.

One of those students who met me at the bus stop belonged to a fraternity and he suggested that I spend the night at the frat house and sort out the dorm room mix-up the next morning. I agreed and said goodbye to Woody, who in a way for me, was sort of like meeting Gomer Pyle in person.

I ended up as a pledge for the fraternity and Woody, who was in one of my freshman history classes, mentioned to me that he had pledged another fraternity. As the school year wore on, I saw Woody one day outside the college library, and he told me that the other fraternity had kicked him out for being “different.” I asked him to join our fraternity and eventually he became a fellow member like I was, and he also moved in to our fraternity house.

One night I got back to the fraternity house late at night after going out to a movie and I found Woody sitting alone in the dining room writing on a pad of paper. I asked him what he was doing, and he told me he was jotting down every single place he had spent the night in his lifetime so he wouldn’t forget them. Another time I found him writing down counties in America that he had visited. I found his interests to be eccentric, but they weren’t bothering anyone, so it didn’t matter.

Plenty of students at the college laughed at Woody’s southern accent or made fun of him but I never did. He went to church every Sunday and was interested in Japanese culture and those activities kept him busy. I transferred to a larger university a few years later and lost touch with him.

I saw Woody once in the late 1980s when I was a reporter for a daily newspaper and was covering an event at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. He was volunteering his time helping students from Japan become accustomed to American life at the university. He was single, heavily involved with the Episcopal Church, and had gained a lot of weight.

Through the years, I left New Mexico and went on to work for several newspapers in Florida. Woody had called me a few times to stay in touch and wanted me to come back to New Mexico to visit but my work schedule was hectic and that never happened.

When Facebook was created, Woody reached out in 2010 and we re-established our friendship. He had moved from Santa Fe, New Mexico to Denver, Colorado and his parents had died. He belonged to several Japanese clubs and had traveled to Japan numerous times. Many of his Facebook posts were of colorful birds with names I had never heard of before and he posted thousands of them, one a day for more than 10 years.

A few years ago, his Facebook posts became more desperate as he struggled to pay rent and his health declined. He was unable to receive Social Security for some reason and was accepting donations from a “Go Fund Me” to keep the lights on. Before Christmas last year, I saw a post that he was going into a nursing facility and no longer had a cell phone.

When I hadn’t seen anything from him for months, I visited his page and discovered that Woody had died in January. It was a tragic ending for such a simple, kind and caring individual. I’ll certainly always think of him as that naïve kid on that Greyhound bus in 1971 and am glad to have called him my friend.