Sidney Wood
as remembered by his sister Catherine Wood Johnson

 

This is another one that will be very hard to write.  My brother Sidney probably committed suicide.  He was employed in industry related to automobiles, in Toledo, Ohio.  He had the hot job of pouring molten metal into forms.  He was quite active in the union.  A strike was about to start.  He was over-involved.  The night before the strike, Sidney went into his garage, used the hose from the vacuum cleaner, ran it from the car's exhaust into the car's trunk, climbed into the trunk and died.  There was a bruise on his head.  We have wondered whether he was killed by strike-breakers.  Or did he change his mind about suicide and bang his head trying to escape from the trunk?

He left two sons, Billy and Bobby, who were in their late teens/early twenties then. Sidney had been disappointed that both sons had been offered football scholarships and could have gotten a college education, but both chose instead to marry.  Sidney's widow Gladys was a very (very) religious woman who lived to be over 90.  Most of all, I remember Sidney's letters to my children.  He wrote children's stories about his dog -- wonderful, delightful, imaginative stories -- and mailed them to my daughters.  Sidney loved children, dogs, and storytelling.