92-year-old ‘took pride’ in his Macon neighborhood. He died while picking up litter
Anthony Woodford said his father was always working and looking out for others, taking care of folks the best he could. That included the thankless chore of sprucing up his east Macon neighborhood.
His father, who died Jan. 2 at age 92 when he was struck by a passing SUV while picking up litter along his street, had been retired for decades.
Robert Mack Woodford, born in 1928, for a time drove taxis in New York City. He later found work as a machine operator at Stroh and Schaefer breweries in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
In 1993, Robert and his wife Julia Ann, returned to their Macon roots.
Their white, clapboard-sided house on New Clinton Road with its trimmed shrubs overlooked a manicured lawn just south of Companion Drive, about a mile out Jeffersonville Road from the entrance to the Ocmulgee Mounds.
The Woodfords lived there until Julia Ann, a former church secretary, died at age 71 in 2003.
A deadly crash
They had been married 55 years, having wed in the late 1940s when Robert was 19 and Julia Ann was 15.
Early on, they settled in Brooklyn, New York.
As a teen in Macon, Robert worked a pulpwooding job with his father.
“He said at the end of the week, his dad would give him 50 cents for a whole week’s work,” Robert’s son Anthony Woodford recalled the other day. “He said he got tired of that and that’s why he went to New York.”
Robert’s father, Alonza C. Woodford, was 70 when he was killed in 1964. A farm trailer he was riding in was being towed by a tractor and the trailer was struck from behind by a car rounding a curve south of town. Police at the time declared the crash “unavoidable.”
Sheriff’s deputies have yet to complete their full account of the late-morning incident on Jan. 2 that cost Robert his life.
Anthony Woodford said his dad kept his street litter-free and that every day Robert would be out along the sidewalk with his trash-plucking stick in hand.
“That little picker thing that you use when you’re trying to get something off the top shelf,” Anthony called it.
He said the police have told him the driver of the SUV that hit Robert may have been distracted. Anthony said the SUV’s right-front corner struck his dad. “He landed on his head and that was it.”
Helping those in need in Macon
Robert was a deacon at Swift Creek Baptist Church.
His son said that when the church building fund needed money, Robert pitched in.
“When the church would say, ‘We need $500 more,’ he would wait a while and if nobody said anything he’d stand up and say, ‘I got it,’” Anthony said.
Robert was also known to help relatives in need.
“I was going through his stuff,” Anthony said a few days after his father’s death, “and I see where he paid for people’s burials. I didn’t know that he did that.”
Anthony learned of his father’s death while he was driving to Macon from his own home in North Carolina for one of his frequent visits to check on his dad.
“We’d go for a walk and he’d have me tired because he’d be walking so fast,” Anthony said.
‘One of the most reliable people’
Robert’s granddaughter, Ashley Nevers, described him as “one of those guys” who could fix anything.
“And he always treated my grandma so good. Even after she was gone, when you walked into the house it’s like nothing ever changed. He kept things the way my grandma wanted,” Nevers said. “He always made sure that we were OK, that we were taken care of.”
She said that for her brother, Bryson, their grandpa was almost a second father.
Robert, she said, would tell stories of growing up in Macon and then living in New York, times when he’d pitch baseball to neighborhood kids at the park.
Nevers said Robert was “one of the most reliable people. He was always opening his arms.”
She said he stocked his refrigerator and pantry with food and drinks for anyone who might drop by.
He might not always seem to hear you when you were talking, but Nevers said, “He’d give you a thumb’s up.”
He loved his wife’s coconut pie, so Nevers would use her grandma’s recipe and make them for him.
“He was big on sweets,” she said. “Cakes, pies, anything sweet, he was about it.”
When he could no longer mow his grass, Nevers said he got someone to keep his yard tidy.
“He took pride in his stuff. ... He took pride in the community. That’s why he was outside cleaning up trash,” she said. “He wanted things to be nice for everyone, not just for him.”
She sobbed when she spoke of how his life ended.
“My grandpa was a strong-willed man,” Nevers said through tears, “and to know that something like that happened to him, it breaks my heart.”
This story was originally published January 12, 2021 at 5:00 AM.