Ray Woods remembered by friends, colleagues
Released: September 22, 2004
Nearly 300 students, faculty and staff members came to the UW-Whitewater Hamilton Center Tuesday afternoon to attend a memorial service for Ray Woods, a junior from Milwaukee who died unexpectedly on Monday afternoon.
The memorial was originally planned for a 125-seat auditorium in McGraw Hall, but response was so great that staff were able to make a last-minute venue change so everyone could attend.
The 21-year-old junior was an active and well-known student who served with the Black Student Union (BSU) as the organization’s recreational sports director. Friends and family described Woods as a fun-loving person who was also a difference-maker in the lives of those around him.
“He was like the brother I never had,” close friend James Hayes, a junior from Milwaukee, said during his remarks at the memorial service. “He opened his arms to me the first time I saw him.”
UW-Whitewater junior Timothy Moody said his close friend had two primary goals while at college. For the past year, all Woods talked about was “getting his grades” and becoming a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, an African-American fraternity on the UW-Whitewater campus.
Among Woods’ biggest accomplishments was helping to get his older brother Ron to “see the light” and turn his life around by attending college. Ron Woods spoke about this transformation during remarks at the memorial service.
“When I came back into his life he was a man,” a grief-stricken Ronald Woods told the gathering. “He wasn’t a little kid anymore. He was a grown man doing grown man things and I looked up to him.”
The UW-Whitewater freshman admits that his whole perspective of life changed dramatically thanks to his younger brother.
“Roles changed and I began to see him as ‘big brother,’” Ron said. “He believed in me when nobody else did. He believed that I was still somebody despite my past and the things I’d done. He is the reason that I’m here (at UW-Whitewater).”
Woods, a Milwaukee Juneau High School graduate, was majoring in criminal justice and was very committed to becoming an FBI agent, according to Dennis Baskin, budget director for Academic Support Services and staff advisor for BSU. Woods also worked at Academic Support Services on summer pre-college programs. About a dozen students from Burroughs Middle School in Milwaukee who had been mentored this summer by Woods came to the memorial to remember their friend.
College education was extremely important in Woods’ life. At one point he was forced to quit school due to financial reasons. Woods proceeded to work a third-shift job and sold his car as a means of earning enough money to resume his college career.
“Ray was a good academic student who believed in academic excellence,” Baskin said. “Following Ray’s funeral we will all return to UW-Whitewater and accomplish what we have come to do. We will study, go to class, receive good grades, be retained and graduate. We will then go out into the community and be the good productive citizens that each and every one of you are.”
More than 60 students went to Fort Atkinson Memorial Hospital on Monday out of support for Ray Woods. Numerous staff members from the university worked with grieving students that evening.
Woods was taken by emergency staff to the hospital after being discovered unconscious Monday afternoon by his roommate. Woods was pronounced dead upon arrival. He had become ill on Sunday with nausea, dizziness and severe headaches. He spent three hours in the emergency room being treated for dehydration prior to being released. The results of an autopsy on Tuesday were inconclusive. Officials are now waiting for lab and toxicology results before ruling on a cause of death.
UW-Whitewater’s office of student life will make a bus available to any students and staff wishing to attend funeral services for Woods in Milwaukee. For more information, contact the student life office at (262) 472-1533.
- Tom Pattison,pattisot@uww.edu
