Wood, Jim

June 3, 1930 - July 30, 2002

San Francisco Chronicle (CA) - Wednesday, July 31, 2002

A giant in Bay Area journalism Colorful character on Examiner staff for decades 

Jim Wood, a widely respected veteran of Bay Area journalism who wrote about serial killers and risotto primavera with equal skill and artistry, died in his Orinda home Tuesday morning at the age of 72. 

Mr. Wood was known for his eclectic tastes, his speed at the typewriter and his prodigious memory. 

"I always said that being married to Jim was like being married to the public library," said Carol Pogash, his wife of 27 years. "He was as fast as the Net and a bear of a man." 

Mr. Wood grew up in Wheeling, W.Va. He graduated from the posh Phillips Academy, a boarding school in Andover, Mass., and in 1952 from Harvard University. His newspaper odyssey included stops at the Orange County Register, 

Richmond (Calif.) Independent and Oakland Tribune -- and a paper he bought in Angels Camp. In October 1968, he arrived at the San Francisco Examiner, where he stayed for 29 years, producing a few books along the way. 

Mr. Wood wrote about the 1960s student upheaval at San Francisco State and UC Berkeley, the Symbionese Liberation Army and its kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst, the Chowchilla school bus kidnapping, the trial of Dan White, slayer of Mayor George Moscone, and the retrial of serial killer Juan Corona. He covered courts, education and general assignment, edited the paper's investigative team and crowned his career as the paper's food and wine critic. 

In March 1997, Mr. Wood retired. This is how his final story started out: "The world of food abounds with slogans about health. My own favorite, as I've observed elsewhere, is Miss Piggy's counsel: never eat anything you can't lift. " 

It was a classic Wood touch. He took his work seriously but never himself. 

There was nothing small about Mr. Wood, a Santa Claus look-alike. A maverick whose interests were as wide as his girth, he was often unpredictable. 

In November 1985, he took Julia Child to a grease-encrusted eatery on Sixth Street in San Francisco. 

"The food was very good," said Child, reached Tuesday as she was heading down the California coast. "It was a very dirty place, but I enjoyed it and had no ill effects." 

Told of Mr. Wood's death at 72, Child, who is 89, said, "It's awfully young to die. He was fun and he was good at what he did." 

Mr. Wood died of complications from a stroke. Like most Wood stories, however, there was more to it than that. On July 19, Mr. Wood had just taken his dog Bagel outside, Pogash said. A child on a bicycle whizzed by and Bagel - - a Labrador-like canine of "debatable" breed -- started yanking on her leash. Mr. Wood fell, breaking his femur in several places. 

"He actually carried her (Bagel's) picture in his wallet," Pogash said. "We have two dogs and three cats. He loved all kinds of animals." 

Less than 24 hours after his fall, while at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley, 

Mr. Wood had a massive stroke and later developed pneumonia. Pogash said the family decided to take him home Monday night and keep him comfortable. Mr. Wood died at 10:30 Tuesday morning. 

In his final hours, Mr. Wood tasted an orange and drank peach nectar, said Pogash, an editor at Forbes ASAP who worked with her husband at the old Hearst- owned Examiner. 

"Having covered so much of San Francisco history, Jim became one of the better parts of that history," said Phil Bronstein, Chronicle executive editor. 

"He was also one of the few people on Earth who could be kind and bluntly honest in the same breath. He taught all of us who knew him an enormous amount about our profession and about life, and he supported great reporting and writing in the Bay Area as much as he practiced it." 

Retired Examiner and Chronicle reporter Larry D. Hatfield said: "Jim not only was one of my best friends but he was one of the best newspapermen I ever knew. He genuinely cared about connecting the reader with what was happening around him. He had the memory of an elephant, although I'm not quite sure how they measure that. Jim would have known, or at least had a plausible answer." 

Georgia Hesse, former Examiner travel editor, added: "I was impressed that Jim remembered every page of every book he ever read. And he always listened to you when you were talking, rather than looking over your shoulder to see who was coming in the door. He would have known who was coming in the door, too." 

Former San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos, who visited Mr. Wood in the hospital Monday afternoon, said, "He was one of those few reporters who you could be friends with who kicked your ass if you deserved it. Jim would nail you if you did something wrong. And in a way he kept you honest. 

"He was just so intelligent, he was truly awesome," Agnos added. "And yet he was so regular. He could make a truck driver feel like he was one of them. You felt like he was the guy next door." 

Carlo Middione, cookbook author and owner of Vivande restaurant in San Francisco, described Mr. Wood as "just a sweetheart" and a "mensch." 

"He was the last sort of person who would typify a food critic," Middione said. "He was rational and knowledgeable but he wasn't a hysteric." 

Larry Kramer, chairman of MarketWatch.com online financial news service and former Examiner executive editor, tried to sum up Mr. Wood's particular combination of warmth and acid. 

"He was the first editor who handled my copy in my first job writing for a daily newspaper," Kramer said. "He had this unusual mixture of being gentle, fair and extremely polite, even as he told me that no newspaper with a reputation to protect could print my drivel."