City Councilwomen with "Passionality": Part 2, Judy Wood
She had no fear of 1970's and '80's Louisiana politics! Part 1 was about Pamela Holder, a current City Council candidate in Brevard NC
Recently I wrote about Pamela Holder, a Brevard NC City Council candidate, who, at her campaign kickoff, said she’s been told she has “passionality”. That’s the kind of personal, compassionate energy that gets things done for all the people in your community.
This reminds me of another City Councilwoman, Judy Wood. In the 1970’s and ‘80’s in Louisiana, I worked with her in our neighborhood, and then she went on to serve the people in our town and parish (our county).
Her motivation? She has said,
It’s not enough to complain. We must work for the changes we want to see.
In the early ‘70’s, young families from all over the country were moving to the New Orleans area to work in the booming aerospace economy. We brought with us ideas of what other places were like, and we found that in Slidell we wanted more for ourselves and our children.
So in our neighborhood in 1974, Judy and I and a few other mothers organized weekly children’s activities, calling it Summer Fun.
The next summer we took our program to the local library, open to the public. Today, Judy reminds me that,
if you remember, when we moved to Slidell in 1973 there were two libraries in the town. The main library on Erlanger and a very small library on Third Street for the Black citizens. The smaller library was closed in 1974 or ‘75 and the Slidell library became integrated.
The year after our neighborhood Summer Fun, we took it to the library so the whole community could participate. The library was in the center of town and our program was integrated, one of the first integrated activities outside of the schools, I think.
Also, around 1980 when I got on the Library Board there was still a Black library in Covington. I insisted that it be closed, and I remember one board member asking, “Where would they go for a library?” And I replied, “to the Covington Library.”
Back to that first year of Summer Fun in our neighborhood — we mothers also started a book group for ourselves. Judy Wood remembers in a 2015 video interview,
we as a group of women created our own book club … because we wanted to understand the south. The first book we read was Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, though I’m not sure now that that was the right choice.
Books! Judy Wood has always loved libraries.
One of the first things she did when she moved to Slidell in 1973 was to go to the small public library to get a borrower’s card. I’m astonished by what happened. She says,
I was told that without two male references, I could not have a library card.
I think they needed to be men that they could find in the phone book. We had just moved here so I didn’t know any men but I had heard of a couple of them. One was a neighbor across the street and one was a man I had met who worked at a restaurant. So I used their names and got my library card.
This library branch was far too small for the largest town in the parish, but the people who lived there had never demanded more. Wood felt it was worth paying attention to.
I always look at the library as the cornerstone of the community. … My vision for this library was different from what it was like then. [And] for me personally, I believe that if I’m going to complain about something I should be part of the solution.
Here are the steps she took.
I realized I needed to understand the structure of the library, the governing body, those types of things, so that we could be part of the change we wanted.
One day at a League of Women Voters meeting, Wood approached the new Library Director about starting a Friends of the Slidell Library. He didn’t think there would be much interest. But this was enough for Judy Wood; now the door to change was standing open.
Over 30 people came to her public organizational meeting. And what to do next? That would come. She says,
All we knew was we wanted this library to be something other than what it was.
Wood began going to Library Board meetings. The Board met in Covington, the Parish seat, a mere four times a year, but she convinced them to come to the Slidell Branch. In advance of that meeting, she says,
First, I went around to all four newspapers that covered Slidell and told them the Library Board was coming and invited them to come, too. At that time Slidell didn’t have a lot of news. At least three papers showed up.
At that meeting the budget was being discussed, and the press asked for copies of it. The Board was stunned. One person said, “I hope this doesn’t get in the newspaper.” And I said, “I certainly hope it does get in the paper.” I wanted the public to see the funding of the Library.
Since Slidell wasn’t the parish seat, it was always a battle to get library funding from the Police Jury. But Wood had succeeded in getting the Friends of the Library started, and to raise money they put on a Book Sale.
We were pleased to make well over $200. We had books left over, but since we didn’t have a place to store them, we offered to pay people to back their cars up and take the remainders.
Then when a Library Board seat came open, Judy Wood took it.
I had learned that the only way to make certain things happen was to be on the inside and really work for these things. My goal was to accomplish them in four years.
A survey was done that showed library improvements would be popular on the ballot, but people wanted them for all the branches, not just Slidell’s. So Wood went around the parish explaining to voters exactly what the plan would do for them where they lived. They listened, and the building millage was voted in.
Then a vote came up for money to operate the libraries. Wood says,
We picked a date in the Spring when it was a Democratic Primary with Jesse Jackson on the ballot. So in our library campaign we targeted those voters who were for Jesse Jackson, to make sure they understood they had to vote for the millage to operate the library. I didn’t want people to go to the polls who didn’t want more taxes.
There were other things Wood wanted to see done in the town.
There was no public art program, particularly one that involved children. I went straight to the Mayor. “You need to create the Mayor’s Commission on the Arts.” A hurricane was coming. “It won’t cost you any money, it will look good.”
He said ok. We went ahead and we did lots of arts programs.
Her path in local government was set. Here’s how she became the first female member of the Slidell City Council, in 1978.
The day before the end of candidate registration, she got a call from a man she’d been working with.
He said if I didn’t run, I would get the representative I deserved. So I consulted my husband, went down the next day and qualified.
I wasn’t organized. But I thought, “I ran campaigns in high school, so just get your brain working and go for it.” And I laid out a plan.
She won the seat. On the City Council, she was surprised by the way things worked.
Some City Council members wanted to trade votes; I said no. “If I propose legislation and you don’t agree with it, please don’t vote for it; and the same for me.”
We passed a tree ordinance, and an ethics code. I think our city government is the only government body in St. Tammany Parish where no elected official currently serving has ever been indicted for anything. It’s a tight code.
In the end, the real-world power structure blocked some of Judy’s goals, but she had rallied the community to take huge steps. For one, a large new Slidell branch library opened in 1989. She says in her video interview,
It took a long time and a lot of things went wrong, but we have this library now. We have a children’s librarian, a teen librarian, a reference area, the library I dreamt of.
Last week I wrote here in Postcards about a current candidate for Brevard City Council, Pamela Holder. In the post I told you how Sam and I had just watched the U.S. Open Women’s Tennis finals, where Chris Evert commented about the winner, Coco Gauff.
One of the things Evert said explains to me how someone like my neighbor and friend Judy Wood can have a vision for her community — and then make it real.
She’s not intimidated by power.
Awesome! Awesome!! Awesome!!!
Show up. Pay attention. Speak your truth. Don't be attached to outcome. (That last one is REALLY hard!)