Andy Woods Elementary School
Smith County
Tyler, TX
Discover our collection of Andy Wood Elementary School yearbooks in Tyler, Texas, now available in our archives. You can order copies for just $1.00 per page. Email us for easy ordering and payment instructions. We can copy any pages you need, and you can choose to pick them up or have them mailed to you.
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We have the following years:
1989
1993
2003
History of Andy Woods Elementary School
The Thomas Andrew Woods Elementary School is located in Southwest Tyler, 809 Clyde Drive on a ten acre site. The school first opened its doors to students in September, 1956.
The school was named in honor of Thomas Andrew Woods, who was a physical education teacher and a popular head coach at Hogg Junior High School during the years that Hogg-Roberts Junior High School athletic rivalry reached its peak. Attendance at these junior high school games exceeded 5,000 on several occasions. His teams always received strong support from parents, students and community people, for they knew that Woods inspired his players to do their best at all time and the he judged those boys fairly on the basis of their performance, with no outside interference.
He sometimes pointed out to teachers that the lines from the poem “It matters games not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game. . .” might apply to the game of life but that in sport it did matter; you must win if possible. This affable young coach enjoyed nothing better than playing a practical joke on some friend or teacher.
Woods, a great lover of boys, operated The Tyler Little League Summer Baseball program for eight consecutive years after the Korean War. In the midst of his busy schedule, he always found time to work with his church, where he was both a deacon and a trustee. This successful coach died at the age of 42 and was buried at Waldrop Cemetery near Beckville.[1]
Rites Tomorrow For Andy Woods
Funeral services for Thomas Andrew “Andy” Woods, 42, football coach at Hogg Junior High School, will be held at 2 p.m. tomorrow in Central Baptist Church with the pastor, Rev. Duane Pringle, officiating, assisted by Rev. Charlie Dyer of Marshall.
Burial will be in Waldrop Cemetery in Panola County under the direction of Lloyd James Funeral Home.
Mr. Woods died at 11 p.m. last night at his home after an illness of several months.
A native of Beckville, Coach Woods was a member of Central Baptist Church, the Pine Hill Masonic Lodge in Rusk County and the Southwest Football Officials Association. He taught in Tyler from 1940 until 1942 when he went to Panola County. He returned here in 1945.
Survivors include his wife, Mrs. Melba Woods of Tyler; a son, Milton, of Tyler; his mother, Mrs. Alta Woods of Tyler; two brothers, Leon Woods of Chapel Hill and Drenton Woods of Corpus Christi; one sister, Miss Marie Woods of Tyler.[2]
Dedication Sunday At Woods School
Formal dedication ceremonies for Tyler’s newest elementary school, Thomas Andrew Woods Elementary School, will be held at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, with an open house scheduled after a short program.
Mrs. P. M. DeCharles, president of the Woods Parent-Teachers Association, will preside at the dedication. Rev. C. Monroe King, pastor of Highland Presbyterian Church, will give the invocation.
Fifth and sixth grader chorus students, under the direction of Mrs. Richard B. Bennett, will furnish musical selections, accompanied by Ben Lauderdale.
Dr. Porter M. Bailes Jr., president of trustees of the Tyler Independent School District, will make the presentation of the building to Mrs. Charles Dawson, vice-president of Woods PTA, Robert Sturdivant, president of Woods student council, and Glenn Kidd, principal.
- F. Johnson will dedicate the building to the youth of Tyler and Rev. Wallace T. Shook Jr., pastor of Pollard Memorial Methodist Church, will give the benediction.
Located on a 10-acre site which was given to the Tyler school system by Mr. and Mrs. Tomas G. Pollard, the new school was named in honor of the Thomas Andrew Woods, who was physical education teacher and coach at Hogg Junior High School for several years.
The Woods school building contains 18 classrooms, a multi-purpose room and a cafetorium in addition to a clinic, office space and a teachers workroom.
The levels of the school were split to permit the most economical and advantageous use of the site. Classrooms and administration areas are located on the upper level and are approached by a covered loading-unloading walkway. Areas with a high noise level such as the cafetorium-kitchen, and the playground, are separated from the classroom by both distance and level.
All spaces in the building are naturally ventilated and lighted by window walls and skydomes. Each teaching space is equipped with amble tack and chalk boards, wardrobe and storage cabinets, sink and drinking fountain, acoustical plaster ceilings, intercommunication system, provisions for closed circuit television, and thermostatically controlled individual heating units.
The school was built at a cost of over $100,000. It is so designed as to hold over 35 students per room without crowding or giving a feeling of being crowded.
Following the dedication ceremony Sunday, the open house will be held with homeroom mothers, teachers and members of the school student council acting as hosts and guides.
Dr. Hollis A. Moore, superintendent of schools, urged all parents and adults to visit the new Sunday.[3]
[1] Lewis, Zella. Be It Remembered: The First Century of Public Education in Tyler, 1882-1982. Tyler, Tx: Tyler Independent School District, 1982, page I-N.
[2] The Tyler Courier Times, Friday evening edition, September 9, 1955.
[3] The Tyler Courier-Times, Friday evening edition, November 23, 1956, pages 1 and 7, Section 1.