In the cold darkness of the old cemetery, two glowing eyes gazed out from the gravestones.
Medina County motorists noticed the eerie stare as they drove past Sharon Center Cemetery at night along Ridge Road. The unblinking gaze seemed to follow them.
It could mean only one thing. Those darned kids were at it again.
In the early 1950s, juvenile delinquents with luminous paint repeatedly targeted a life-size, granite statue marking the rural grave of Akron businessman Samuel Woods. Mischievous vandals painted the eyes to glow in the dark.
Sadie R. Woods paid a sculptor in Barre, Vt., to create the 6-foot likeness after her husband’s death in 1940 at age 68.
The detailed statue depicts Woods in a double-breasted suit with pleated, cuffed pants. He stands with his arms at his sides, looking off to the west with a rather stern expression.
The sculpture tops a heavy marble slab bearing the chiseled inscription:
SAM WOODS
This sculptured memorial was erected to his memory by his loving wife. Besides being a devoted husband and companion, he was indeed an inspirational influence to his many friends and to the community at large. He loved art, music and books. His versatility was outstanding. He was known as musician, artist, poet, actor, director, reader.
Life’s a voyage that’s homeward bound.
According to Sharon Township historian Dorothy Morris, several morbid legends — all untrue — arose about the odd memorial in Sharon Center.
The statue is so lifelike that some people thought it wasn’t a sculpture at all but Woods’ carefully preserved body encased in layers of cement.
Another story was that Woods’ widow positioned the statue so its comforting shadow would cross her window every morning at her home across the street. In fact, Sadie Woods never lived in Sharon.
Rite of passage
Visiting the grave became a rite of passage in the township. A popular prank, especially around Halloween, was for teenagers to blindfold their friends, lead them to the cemetery in the dark and abandon them near the statue.
They called it “going to see Sam Woods.”
The glow-in-the-dark paint made the visit spookier. Vandals daubed the statue’s eyes, buttons, pockets, cuffs and tie.
“Probably a bunch of kids did it,” cemetery caretaker George Reich fumed to the Beacon Journal in 1952. “The township trustees and deputies tried to find out who did it at the time. When the paint was fresh, you could see it clear from the road. I think it was done to scare people.”
The delinquents may not have thought of their vandalism as mean-spirited, but it had an unintended consequence.
It frightened Woods’ widow.
Four years before her death at 83 in 1956, she told the Beacon Journal: “I’m afraid to visit the grave alone anymore for fear somebody will attack me.”
So who was the mysterious Sam Woods? With a little research, details emerge by dribs and drabs.
He seems to have been an ordinary man with an extraordinary amount of interests.
In 1930, cartoonist Web Brown saluted Woods as a “photographer, chemist, X-ray expert, actor, astronomer, violinist, saxophone player, bandmaster, composer, music teacher, radio expert, chiropractor, artist, writer, handwriting analyst, student of occult sciences and book collector.”
Woods was born Oct. 18, 1871, in the village of Whaplode in Lincolnshire, England, and emigrated with his parents, Ezra and Mary Woods, to the United States when he was 10.
His father worked at Ferdinand Schumacher’s milling company in Akron.
Woods attended Akron Public Schools and served as an apprentice for Akron photographer George J. Snook at his studio on South Howard Street.
In the late 19th century, Woods opened his own studio.
“Our motto: Every portrait a work of art,” he advertised. “Our commercial work is unexcelled.”
He unexpectedly made news in 1900 by passing out in his studio during a July heat wave. “He recovered in a short time,” the Beacon Journal noted.
Music and theater
Woods was manager of the Jefferson Dramatic Club, a troupe of 20 actors, and appeared in local plays such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Drummer Boy of Shiloh at the Grand Opera House.
“Like Alexander the Great, our own Sam Woods sighs for other worlds to conquer,” the Akron Daily Democrat wrote in 1901. “Sam will invade Wadsworth next; in a gorgeously painted bandwagon.”
He also served as a substitute music teacher in Akron Public Schools and helped direct the Great Western and Palmer bands.
Scandal erupted in 1902 when Woods’ first wife, Ida, filed for divorce “on the grounds of absence.”
Woods replied that his wife was “so unreasonably jealous,” accusing him of flirting with other women, that she made his life “almost unbearable.”
Two years after the divorce, Woods married dressmaker Sadie Rozelle Witner Allen, a Barberton native.
The couple lived for decades at 577 E. Market St. near Akron City Hospital.
Although they never resided in Sharon Township, they did have family ties there.
Woods’ father, Ezra, retired from Quaker Oats and moved with his wife, Mary, to Medina County. The elder Woods served as justice of the peace.
Ezra died in 1913 and Mary died in 1925. They were buried in Sharon Center Cemetery.
In 1927, Sam Woods took his wife to England to see his native land. While touring the countryside, Sadie noticed that cemeteries had graves decorated with statues of the deceased.
She liked the idea.
Late in life, Woods closed his photo studio and switched careers. He served as president of the Akron College of Chiropractic at 829 E. Market St. in the late 1920s. Unfortunately, the business folded by 1931.
Samuel Woods died July 11, 1940, during a trip to Wichita, Kan. His widow commissioned the statue soon afterward.
Its epitaph, “Life’s a voyage that’s homeward bound,” is a quote from Moby Dick author Herman Melville.
Sadie Woods took up ice skating at age 68, saying it was safer than walking on icy sidewalks.
The Beacon Journal hailed her as “probably Akron’s oldest ice skater” when she passed away at age 83.
She was buried next to her husband beneath the 6-foot sculpture in Section C, Row 2, of Sharon Center Cemetery.
The statue stands out among the headstones, a true curiosity in an otherwise average-looking cemetery.
Caretakers have removed the vandals’ paint and restored the statue to its original, nonspooky condition.
Despite the legends, Sam Woods was no one to fear.
He was just your typical photographer, chemist, actor, musician, composer, poet, writer, teacher, astronomer, radio expert and chiropractor.
If it weren’t for an unforgettable tribute by a loving wife, he might be forgotten today.
Beacon Journal copy editor Mark J. Price is the author of The Rest Is History: True Tales From Akron’s Vibrant Past, a book from the University of Akron Press. He can be reached at 330-996-3850 or mjprice@thebeaconjournal.com.