Bob Woodward’s adventurous spirit, infectious humor and belief in community helped shape Bend’s identity.
It was early 2001, and I’d just made the decision to move to Bend. Someone told me that I should meet a fellow journalist there, Bob Woodward. I gave him a call, and he invited me to stop by. His wife, Eileen, was outside, greeted me, and directed me to his office, down a couple of steps in their home on Portland Avenue.
I don’t remember how much we talked about our work, which for him included contributing to many publications including Sports Illustrated, covering the Olympics multiple times and running his respected outdoor industry newsletter, SNEWS.
One thing he said, though, struck me: “Bend needs good people.” I was flattered, but more than a compliment — it was the implication that living in Bend is about giving, not just taking — a fresh new concept for someone who grew up in and around New York City. It said so much about how Bob viewed the importance of community. I’d later come to know his singular place in this one — a former mayor of Bend and one of the pioneers of its outdoor recreation scene, but always emphasizing camaraderie and fun — with a vehemence for not taking things too seriously.
It wasn’t on the local Nordic or mountain biking trails which he helped create where I got to know Bob “Woody” better, though. It was at the community theater — where he was instrumental in changing my life. Through doing a play that Bob directed, “Moon Over Buffalo,” a fast-paced, ensemble-driven comedy, I met my husband.
But I’m far from the only one whose life improved because of Bob. His impact through the community is legendary. That Bend “lifestyle” known for drawing growing numbers of people to visit or move to this recreation mecca? Bob pretty much invented it, with no agenda but the sheer love of playing in the outdoors with others who did too, when Bend was a working town winding down from its timber heyday with seemingly endless stretches of forests, rivers and steeps to explore.
Simply look to the trails — including “Woody’s Way” at Mt. Bachelor’s Nordic Center — that he and his band of like-minded merry mountain bikers, Nordic skiers and paddlers pioneered. [Read more about the Phil’s Trail System and how it came to be.] It was a group of Portland Avenue area denizens known as the Klister Korner gang (named for a sticky cross-country ski wax) that drew attention to just how much fun you could have in the backcountry. In the late 1970s, when Bend’s population was less than 18,000, mail addressed simply to “Klister Korner,” would still be delivered to Bob’s house.
“It was natural synergy, with everybody loving and living to do all that stuff,” Bob said in an article in Bend Magazine, Bend’s Outdoor Pioneers, written in 2016.
“We were exploring all the time, and there was always something new, someplace new to tour. Discovery was the key word, whether it was technique or things to do.”
He’d moved to Bend with Eileen in 1978, two years after they’d visited from the Bay Area and vowed to make Bend their home. As a freelance sportswriter and photographer, he showed the world the fun to be had pedaling through forests and down mountain peaks, careening over waterfalls in a kayak, shushing atop vast, white stretches of snow met by brilliant blue skies and heavenly, puffy clouds.
“There was a real sense of a little community that was building these sports, and it was the key to why it lasted,” Bob said in the same article, when he was 76 and skiing and biking frequently. “We got involved, stayed involved and spread it around. I’m tickled to death that there’s so much interest in Nordic. The only thing that bothers me is that people take it so seriously now. We had the dress-up days and kept a sense of humor about it at all times,” he said. “We’d get serious a few times for races, and the rest of the time was always about the fun and camaraderie. When I raced mountain bikes as the Reverend Lester Polyester and Art Deco, there were people in town who would call me Art — ‘Hey Art, how you doing!’ There was nudging and winking a jaundiced eye for anything too serious — everybody was in on the gag.”
He chronicled this and more in his weekly “Saturday Ramble” posts on Facebook, and his infectiously exuberant-yet-cool energy pervaded everything he did, from forming a comedy improv group or launching shows on the community radio station, KPOV. Local artist and DJ Teafly remembered the early days at the station, which was starting up in 2004.
“Bob taught me so much about what community building looks like,” she said. “How simply sharing the things you love with others can build bridges between differences. For Bob and I, our biggest difference was our age, but our sensibilities and humor were the same.”
Her favorite memories of him are how he shared things he loved — mostly jazz. “I would relish finding a CD in my mailbox or on my stoop with a simple note: ‘Tea — I think you’ll really dig this. It’s totally your vibe. — Woody’ ”
He was always right, too. “I always dug whatever he was throwing down,” Teafly said. “He opened up new worlds of music for me and always celebrated my own artistic endeavors. He encouraged me at every step and really made me feel like I was an important part of this wonderful community we call Bend. I will miss him.”
The last time I saw Bob was a chance meeting on an unusually warm, sunny winter day about 10 days before he died, on March 7 — he was doing an outdoor workout. Despite the progression of Parkinson’s disease, the 85-year-old was finishing laps around a quiet, pine-encircled parking lot off Shevlin Park Road, with help from a walker and Eileen.
We were laughing about a comedy sketch that Teafly and I did with his Around the Bend Players troupe in 2006 for the Bend 2030 future visioning project. In it, two women at a coffee shop are talking about skiing “Knott Fun Mountain,” the landfill-turned-ski resort that’s 20,000 feet high.
Right now, it’s hard to imagine a Bend future that doesn’t have Bob Woodward in it. One reassuring thought, though, is that the thousands of people who raced, explored and laughed along with him or those who never met him but will discover the glory of biking or skiing a trail he blazed, will carry his spirit — irreverent, fun and generous — forward. They will pick up on the message that he gave me the day we met: Bend needs good people.
-Cathy Carroll
