Woody was an original thinker, an outstanding writer and demanding editor, and a tireless supporter of the causes he took to heart.  Ellen Schneider, Executive Director of Active Voice perfectly summarized the Woody we all knew in her message to friends and colleagues:

“Most of you already know that we lost a mentor, an ally and a true media visionary on Sunday.”

“What you might not know is that without Woody Wickham, Active Voice would probably not exist. During the first years of  POV he firmly grasped the power of independent storytelling and how to leverage it. Early in Television Race Initiative’s planning phase he called me and asked, “I don’t suppose it would be helpful if we funded your station partners so that they could fully participate in this…?” (That idea galvanized TRI’s system change agenda. And those were the words, in italics, that he always used when making a generous and highly strategic suggestion.)  He saw promise in institutionalizing what we were learning, and took a risk with a multi-year grant to start up Active Voice. Yet he would never, ever take any credit for any the substantive work he helped spark over so many years.”

“Along the way, Woody became a good friend.   He had a way of listening – lips pursed thoughtfully, eyes narrowed, nodding – that I will remember always.  He cracked Nell up when she was a baby. He even improved the way I cook eggplant (more olive oil, less heat). When I asked him what he wanted to do during retirement he replied, without a moment of hesitation, ‘Well, I’d like to get a job where I can use films to put human faces on public policy, of course.’ The perfect deadpan.”

“Woody was a great man in every sense of the words. I already miss him.”

Woody was a good friend to all of us.  While we’ll be able to summon his spirit sitting in the butterfly garden he endowed at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Garden, it won’t be the same as hearing his voice or reading his crabbed scrawl in the margins.  But we’ll do our best to live by the standards he set.

Read more about their work, and a Q&A with Dr. Lubchenco here »

Visit the MacArthur Foundation online here »