When Tim Woodward came calling on two hours notice, Tillie Hannebaum had a choice.
“Should I wash and fix my hair, or should I make Tim a pie? I thought, well, he’ll like pie better because he’s got such a beautiful wife.”
Woodward arrived to cherry.
Beginning in the 1970s, Hannebaum’s husband, Bellevue inventor Harold Hannebaum, was the subject of several Woodward columns. When he died in 2005, Tillie figured that’d be the last she’d hear of Tim. Instead, he stayed in touch, stopping by, dropping notes, calling.
“He would have been a wonderful grandson to me, that’s how I feel towards him,” Hannebaum said. “He was always sincerely interested. Tell him I miss him, will you? And I hate to see him retire.”
“If anybody has lived around here very long, they probably figure him as one of the family,” said Larry Jones, a retired Idaho state historian who’s read every issue of the Statesman from its first one in 1863. “He was somebody I always wanted to help, like a good friend.”
“They’ve never met him face-to-face, but readers feel they know him like an uncle,” said Bill Hall, a semi-retired columnist who’s written for the Lewiston Tribune since 1965. “He’s just one of the best, that’s all there is to it.”
The 40-year relationship is symbiotic. “It’s gotten me though some tough times, deaths in the family, a daughter who had cancer,” Woodward said. “I feel like if I can get it in print and deal with it there, it’s good for me. And if there’s some benefit in it for the readers, so much the better.”
George Kennedy, the actor, discovered Woodward when Kennedy moved to Eagle about 10 years ago, and likens him to famed CBS newsman Charles Kuralt.
“I like people who write about the mortar that keeps the bricks together, rather than the bricks. Tim writes about little people and barns that fall down. People don’t see what’s right in front of them; Tim shows them.”
Woodward, who’s already published six books, plans to keep writing. But he fears ending his newspaper job will impede the fierce curiosity that feeds his craft.
“I won’t have an excuse to bug people anymore.”
NEIGHBORHOOD PEST
Woodward grew up in Boise’s North End, making a name for himself by maiming friends, igniting garages, soaping windows and making noise with his guitar. His memories remain as sharp as the arrow he once landed in Timmy Hally’s ribs.
Returning to the house at 2500 Lemp St., where he lived from age 4 until he enlisted in the Navy, Woodward ticks off names as if they were fingers on his hands: Shillings, Anchustegui, Miles, Panko, Moody, Snyder.
“That’s Gertrude Moore’s house,” he said. “I came home from football practice one day, and there was an Oldsmobile through her bedroom window. She was lying on her bed taking a nap — almost had a heart attack.”
The North End was home to the “the best sandwich ever made,” Hamburger Korner’s Bellybuster; Ruth Iverson and the other lovely lifeguards at Lowell pool; and Crescent Grocery, where pennies from grandpa bought licorice, gum balls, suckers and little wax bottles filled with sweet liquid in out-of-this-world colors.
DEFINING COMMUNITY
Todd Shallat, a Boise State history professor, chose Woodward to work with architect Charles Hummel on a 2010 book about buildings and neighborhoods, “Quintessential Boise: An Architectural Journey.”
Shallat said Woodward is the leader of the garage band that captures the capital’s “special dance with nostalgia that’s at the core of who we are as a city.”
Geographically isolated but ambitious, Boiseans looked to Woodward to help them understand where they fit in.
“It’s like this: Once upon a time, Boise, still insecure, was striving to become modern, like Sacramento or Fresno,” Shallat said.
“Tim helped the community appreciate what it had. He was polite and unassuming, like Boise. He connected us to the time when the train still stopped at the Depot, Gernika was the Cub, waitresses roller-skated, and Murray’s meant Saturday night and station wagons. Tim’s a remnant of the city we were.”
Shallat came from San Mateo, Calif., where “nature was a traffic island, and we hung out at the liquor store.” Woodward’s stories were relevant to newcomers because Boise’s throwback charm had helped draw and keep them.
Even as Boise became more like what Shallat calls “the California nightmare of sprawl and endless congestion,” the city seems idyllic by comparison.
“That’s the secret of Boise’s boom, and I think that’s the secret of Tim Woodward,” Shallat said. “Sometimes, we forget that what we have is pretty cool. And Tim reminds us.”
Said Woodward: “We have a lot of people who haven’t lived here as long as I have. They need to know that history. Plus, I have a fondness for the places and people here, and I just like to write about them.”
A STORYTELLING FAMILY
Born in 1946, Woodward was the only child of his 44-year-old father, Bert. His mom, Marguerite, had a daughter, Joan, 10 years Tim’s senior, from a first marriage. “She was almost like a second mom,” Woodward said of Joan. “When my folks couldn’t afford it, she paid for braces for my teeth.”
Marguerite ran a credit reporting agency from a home office; late in life, she battled mental illness — something Tim had never mentioned, in all these years of soul-baring columns, until this year, when he worried people didn’t understand the sweep of proposed Medicaid cuts.
Bert was a food broker, storing candy in the one-car garage. Later, Bert started Evergreen Sprinkler Co. with his brother-in-law Wayne, a spinner of yarns.
“Uncle Wayne probably did influence me as a storyteller,” said Woodward, who spent four summers installing sprinklers. “He knew how to keep you waiting, keep you guessing, keep your interest and pace it well.”
Irrepressibility, another Woodward trait, came from great-grandmother Susie. Born during the Civil War, she came west on a covered wagon, outlived three husbands and two children, and saw three houses burn down with everything she owned.
Susie’s hair once caught fire in the toaster. “She laughed and said, ‘I’ve never done that!’ ” Woodward remembered, standing in the Lemp Street kitchen. “She was the most jolly person I’ve ever known.” She died when Tim was 11.
Other influences included the “unfortunately named” Uncle Adolph; cousin Weldon, who was charged with animal cruelty after running out of feed for his cows; and Aunt Amy, who farmed near Star. Amy enlisted Tim to pluck chickens for Memorial Day dinners after the family visited Star Cemetery. She used a blowtorch to remove anything he’d missed.
Woodward once spurned an offer from the Seattle Times. “Family and friends kept him here,” said Salle Uberuaga, a friend who went to St. Mary’s School with Tim. “There’s a certain security with all of us being together.”
A DECENT MAN
Bert Woodward hated dandelions and neighbors’ leaves landing in his yard, but he was loving, funny and honest.
“He would laugh until the tears came down,” said Sheila Woodward, who will celebrate her 40th anniversary with Tim on June 12.
Young Tim was with Bert at the original Albertsons at 16th and State one day when they spotted a nickel on the floor. “I said, ‘Finders keepers.’ He said, ‘No, it’s not.’ And he went to the checker and turned it in as lost property.”
Bert wanted his son to be a doctor or lawyer, telling him writers were starving on the streets. As a compromise, Tim chose journalism, writing with a regular paycheck.
He met Sheila while she was a student at Washington State and he was at the University of Idaho. Sheila crossed the state line for the lower drinking age, and saw Tim and his band, The Mystics, at The Alley in Moscow.
Tim played guitar with his back to the crowd. “He’d turn around and sing, and then he’d be back in the corner,” Sheila said. “He was always the quiet one, like George Harrison of the Beatles. That’s how I fell in love with him.”
During a break, Sheila sat with Tim and yammered for 15 minutes. “Finally, he said, ‘Excuse me, I hate to break this up but I’ve got to go back and play.’ And I said, ‘Oh my God, I didn’t let you get a word in edgewise!’ And he goes, ‘That’s OK, I like to listen.’ And that was it.”
“She knew I was the man for her,” he said.
AN EVENTFUL MARRIAGE
Andrea was born Jan. 28, 1975, followed by Jennifer on June 29, 1976, and Mark on Nov. 6, 1982. All three live in Boise; Andrea is a paramedic, Jennifer a nurse, Mark works in a shop that makes furniture.
From 1975 to 1988, the Woodwards lived at 1209 N. 24th St., a 19th century farmhouse that needed a bit of work. Woodward’s tales of remodeling woes became a staple of his columns, as did the family’s disastrous vacations.
Woodward called the house “Maintenance Manor,” and his mishaps remain legend. Salle Uberuaga, who lived across the street, recalls one incident when Woodward was in the attic, cut a ceiling beam and nearly clocked his father.
Woodward fled to her house, a refuge where pina coladas were offered as a remedy for Sheila’s being fed up with inconveniences like doing the dishes in the tub.
“I open the door, and it’s Woody,” recalled Uberuaga, about the only person who still gets away with the nickname. “He was like an out-of-space man. He had insulation on his head so thick it looked like he had a hat on. His face was black. He stood there with his curved back and looked at me, forlorn, and says, ‘Sal, I got something in my eye.’
“I said, ‘Woody, Woody! It’s not just in your eye. It’s in your ears. It’s probably in your nose and your mouth.’ He came in and I doctored him back up. This happened a lot. Things he’d hammered would just go out of whack. It would be straight one day, and two inches off the next. It was just hilarious watching him with that house.”
Tim never raised his voice to his family, Sheila says, but he did get angry at his failures as a handyman. He once shattered the window of their VW bus with a deadbolt after he’d cut a hole in a new door ⁄-inch too big.
“I’m a thrower,” he acknowledged.
He didn’t like disciplining the kids, usually making Sheila the bad guy. But when 13-year-old Jennifer, then following the dark style of a “Goth,” snuck out for a show at Crazy Horse teen night club, Tim retrieved her.
“Everyone’s staring at me because I don’t have a mohawk or a nose ring,” he recalled. “I got her home and we were speaking again after a week. That’s the year my hair turned gray.”
DADDY DEAREST
In 1988, Sheila began teaching fourth grade at Star Elementary. Tim took over much of the parenting duty, attending school plays, parent-teacher conferences and ball games.
When Mark, who has a mental disability, entered half-day kindergarten, Tim rearranged his schedule, staying home with him until 11:30 a.m., shlepping all three kids home from school, working evenings to compensate.
“That was the most wonderful thing he ever did for me,” Sheila said, tearing up. “I could have never have made it through that year without that.”
Jennifer got pregnant at 16 and quit partying, determined to have a healthy baby.
The family planned to put the child up for adoption, but when a friend said to Sheila, “You have four bedrooms,” they changed their minds.
Tim and Sheila were at Hailey’s birth and knew they’d made the right choice. “There’s no way this child is going up for adoption,” Sheila said.
For her first five years, Hailey, followed by sister Kelsie, lived with the Woodwards at their new home in the East End, until Jennifer married the girls’ dad. They had a third child, Ryan, before divorcing. A fourth grandchild, Chloe, is the daughter of Jennifer and her second husband, Wally Wolfe.
Hailey graduated from Timberline High School last month. “I still think of her as a toddler,” said Tim, who plans to spend more time fathering and grandfathering.
A SHIFT AT WORK
In 1993, then-Executive Editor John Costa decided Woodward was too small-town for a growing Boise and moved him to the features section. His column was cut back, from three times a week to one.
Woodward remade himself into a long-form feature writer, whose work on the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial won him the prestigious C.B. Blethen Memorial Award.
In 1999, he went to Sicily and Albania to cover the war in Kosovo. Accompanied by photographer Gerry Melendez, Woodward was so moved by a story about a town where all the men were killed that his notebook was damp with tears.
“To this day, the first thing we talk about is this one girl, wondering how she’s doing,” said Melendez, who now works at The State newspaper in Columbia, S.C. “It really had an effect on us.”
Woodward worked 14-hour days. “I’d say, ‘Tim, we’re in Sicily. We can have the most amazing six-course meal right now.’ And he’s like, ‘No, no, no, I’ve got my energy bars.’ I think he was just worried he would get sick and not be able to continue.”
IDAHO ORIGINALS
Woodward never surrendered his most popular brand, chronicling the lives of only-in-Idaho characters like Dugout Dick Zimmerman, Free Press Frances Wisner and Pinto Bennett.
Cort Conley, an author and literary program director at the Idaho Commission on the Arts, became a friend of Woodward’s because both sought an alternative to the “Famous Potato” license plate. Woodward ran a contest; now there are 29 other options.
Conley said Woodward heeded the advice of cowboy-boatman Johnny Carey: “Breathe through your nose when you go into new country.”
“Tim had his feet on the ground everywhere in this valley and lots of other places,” Conley said. “There just isn’t any place in Idaho where he doesn’t know some story.”
Bennett, the country singer raised in Mountain Home, topped the charts in England before coming home to struggle with alcoholism. Woodward last wrote about him in December, reporting that Bennett was, as he long promised, living out his retirement years in a sheep wagon.
Bennett has known Woodward since the early Mystics days. “The Mystics were pretty big spuds back in the ’60s,” Bennett said, adding that Woodward was good enough to make a career on the road. “But it’s an impossible way to live, and I think Tim figured that out.”
Of Woodward’s journalism, Bennett said, “He says he’s just a hack, but he’s brilliant.”
A FRIEND WITH A PEN
Lori Stueckle accompanied Woodward on trips to Russia and Britain in the 1970s with her husband, Duane, and Woodward’s fellow columnist, Jim Poore. Woodward and Poore wrote comic accounts of their travels.
Stueckle said Woodward provides relief from the often dreary news of the day. “You read Tim, and you have a laugh and it takes you back in time. People really enjoy reading about just common, everyday things.”
Woodward’s secret is his relationship with his subjects, who speak to him like a brother, and often become his friends.
Jonna Weber was living in Middleton, trying to fight an Idaho Power proposal for a big nearby power plant that was supported by the governor and area legislators. Tim wrote about the plant from a local perspective.
“We were being vilified,” Weber said. “Tim was the first reporter that listened to us, a couple of stay-at-home moms. He just sat down and had a cup of coffee with us, and we talked for three hours.”
The proposal was ultimately withdrawn in the face of time-consuming public opposition.
Three times, Woodward has written about Marguerite Lawrence’s family, most recently when the school where Lawrence taught music, Jackson Elementary, closed.
He championed Lawrence’s efforts to make former Gov. Phil Batt’s “Centennial Idaho” the state song. “To know that he found something valuable in what I was doing professionally was an incredible honor,” Lawrence said. “Wow, we did something unusual for the writing of children’s music.”
The public response was warm. “He carries more weight than he truly understands or cares about,” Lawrence said. “He’s a story keeper.”
BRUSHES WITH CELEBRITY
Woodward has interviewed presidents, actors, athletes, even Playboy’s 25th anniversary Playmate.
“You felt safe talking to him,” said Paul Revere, the rock star whose “Raiders” had a No. 1 hit in 1971, the year Woodward started at the Statesman. “He goes straight to it, like a little kid wanting to know things. You just automatically let your guard down.”
Revere, 73, wants Woodward to write his memoir, in the “as-told-to” style. “I need to corner him because he’s going to get busy. He doesn’t know how to do nothing, that’s for sure.”
Kennedy, who starred in “Cool Hand Luke,” “The Dirty Dozen” and “Airplane,” was so taken with Woodward that he paid for a TV pilot of a Kuralt-like show. They filmed Woodward with a sheepdog and his trainers in Owyhee County.
The show didn’t pan out, but Kennedy was impressed. “When he asks you a question, his eyes never leave you. I’ve watched him do it a hundred times. I like the fact that he listens to the answer.”
LAST TRAIL RIDE
Last month, Woodward was back in Owyhee County, his favorite in Idaho. “I love the wide open spaces and all the characters out here. And I love silence.”
The occasion was a story on writer Andrea Scott’s efforts to document and support buckaroo culture. Arriving at the Joyce Ranch, Woodward asked rancher Paul Nettleton about his plans. Nettleton said they had real work to do, moving cattle across Sinker Creek, but that would take a couple more hours than some make-work nearby.
“Let’s go for picturesque and real,” Woodward replied.
Real he got: Scott was knocked from her horse by a branch; Nettleton and his hands, Paul Magart and Gordon Thompson, roped and dragged calves across the swollen creek; Woodward even pitched in, stepping in front of bewildered cattle and waving.
“Tough way to make a living,” he observed. “And the price of cattle falls, and it’s all for nothing.”
For Woodward, the people are the story, not the politics. Nettleton, atop his horse, offered a speech about how natural resource industries are misunderstood. Woodward listened politely but didn’t take a note.
When Nettleton was played out, Woodward asked after an old acquaintance, “Do you know Tish Lewis? She stayed on the place after Gene died, right?”
“Yeah,” said Nettleton. “She’s still there.”
“How about Shirley Kroeger?”
Later, Woodward pronounced himself satisfied, “An occasional day like this makes the cubicle bearable.”
AN ICON HIMSELF
The Arts Commission’s Conley has been urging Woodward for years to write a memoir, so he’s re-reading New York Times columnist Russell Baker’s “Growing Up” as a model.
“It would be fresh stories, or stories I could only tell part of before, stories I would have more freedom to tell the way I wanted,” Woodward said.
That should please fans who lament his retirement, including 93-year-old Pete Cenarrusa, who spent a half-century in state office and once showed off his sheep operation for Woodward.
“He gets Idaho right,” Cenarrusa said. “It’s a loss of knowing Idaho.”
In 1980, Woodward wrote a tribute to Ernie Pyle, the beloved roving reporter and war correspondent killed in combat in World War II. Woodward sought to reintroduce the Pulitzer Prize winner to readers who’d not known him, or forgotten.
“The object of this adulation was a simple, unassuming man, who was pleased that his work was appreciated, but didn’t really understand all the fuss. He probably didn’t even know how good he was. At his best, he was one of the finest prose stylists this country has produced.”
Hearing the paragraph aloud the other day in his living room, Woodward said: “I still think that.”
He didn’t get his questioner’s point. Sheila Woodward did.
“That’s Tim. Yes, that’s Tim.”
Woodward just laughed, flashing the big grin his sister paid for, back when Boise was still simple and unassuming.
Dan Popkey: 377-6438
