Gary Arthur Wood

Gary Arthur Wood was born to Juanita McCourry Wood and Arthur Lee Wood at Mercy Hospital in Oklahoma City on May 27, 1942. Gary was released from the burden of his Alzheimer’s Disease and embarked on the next part of his life journey on February 11, 2025. We are sad and will miss him. But we are grateful that he has regained his keen mind, dry sense of humor and engaged and engaging spirit.

Gary grew up in Oklahoma City. While he attended John Marshall High School, Gary developed his life-long love of cars. His first was a 1957 Chevy Bel Air Sport Coupe, much envied by his classmates. A few years later, he drove in the Night Drag Racing Association Nighttime National Championship hotrod, sponsored by the iconic OKC Carp’s Drive-in. Gary graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 1964 and the University of California – Hastings Law School in San Francisco in 1967. Gary said he would have made better grades if he hadn’t been distracted by the local Bay Area bands like Jefferson Airplane and Big Brother and the Holding Company, featuring lead singer Janis Joplin.

Gary was proud of his Vietnam Era military service and was glad that he chose to be drafted as an enlisted man instead of becoming a lawyer and officer in the JAG Corp. He spent his time in the Army as a company clerk for a MP company at Fort Hood, Texas, where his commanding officer considered him a “Super Radar.” True to his inquisitive nature, Gary researched Army regulations and determined that he could legitimately be discharged sixty days early to return to his family’s seasonal agricultural business – the golf course at his father’s development of Incline Village at the north shore of Lake Tahoe, Nevada.

Gary had a wide variety of occupations. During college and law school, he worked summers as an earthmoving equipment operator and a rock-removal explosives expert, gourmet restaurant manager and golf course greens manager at Incline Village. After the Army, he practiced law for several years in Reno, Nevada. When he returned to Oklahoma City, Gary worked as an independent landman and land department executive for several companies and was an individual investor and consultant in the oil and gas business. He bought and restored vintage automobiles and sold them as well as antiques and art. Gary had a federal firearms license and was an owner of an antique gun business, Indian Territory Gun and Pawn. Many OKC residents “of a certain age” fondly remember Gary’s and his brother Pat’s Woodstock – The Bar and Grill, which had no-cover music every night and at which Pat’s daughter, Heather Potts, also worked. 

Aside from his work, Gary had many interests, hobbies, and collections. He loved music, especially rock ‘n roll, classic and Outlaw country-western, blues, bluegrass, 1960’s folk and Beethoven. His love of music never faded, surviving even the final stages of his dementia. He learned everything he could about military history, especially the U.S. Civil War and War II; Art Nouveau and Art Deco decorative art and furniture; Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture; the Knights Templar; English double rifles; Egyptology; pre-World II Austrian pistols, and innumerable other subjects that piqued his interest. He collected books of all genres, including first editions of many early-to-mid twentieth century mystery writers, hand-colored prints and Baedeker travel guides, the little red books one sees ladies carrying in British period movies. His most recent interests were 19th and early 20th century cameras and brass trains. Gary also had an unwavering, life-long passion for the Green Bay Packers. When his friend Erin Van Laanen told him that the team had issued a special class of stock that fans who didn’t live in the city could purchase, he immediately became a shareholder of the maximum allowed 0.001% of a share – enough to have bragging rights and to be invited to the annual stockholders meeting at Lambeau Field.

On August 2, 1985, Gary met Betsy, who, he said, was “the music of [his] life,” and who was his wife for one-day-short of 37 years. Betsy and Gary had a wonderful life together, filled with love, happy times and mutual respect. They particularly liked to travel. Though they traveled internationally, their favorite trips were tours of the United States in Gary’s 1997 40th Anniversary Edition Land Cruiser and in their class B motorhome, which Gary dubbed the Big Honking Van.

In addition to Betsy, Gary’s surviving family includes his sister Susan Regan, nephew Miah Ferrell, niece Heather Potts and many cousins. Gary is also survived by Tiffaney Brown, whom he met as a caregiver, but came to love and consider his person (“The Other One”), second only to Betsy.

Friends have said Gary was one of the sweetest people they’ve known, called him a Renaissance man and talked of his generous nature. He handled the challenge of his illness with the same poise and gentle spirit he had throughout his entire life. His was a life well lived.

A celebration of Gary’s life will be held February 21 at Will Rogers Theater, 4322 N. Western Avenue, in Oklahoma City at 2:00 pm. A live stream for those who wish to attend remotely will be available on the public group Facebook page Gary Wood Memorial Service. In lieu of flowers, Gary would be pleased with donations to the Oklahoma Humane Society, Special Olympics, or Skyline Urban Ministries or to any other charity of one’s choice.