Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Charles Woods, businessman, political candidate, dies at 83

Injured WWII veteran twice ran for Senate in Nevada

Charles Woods Owned Alabama television station for 40 years

Charles Woods, who overcame the scars of a fiery World War II plane crash to become a wealthy media and real estate owner and perennial political candidate in Alabama and Nevada, has died at age 83.

Woods died Sunday at Extendicare, a health and rehabilitation center in Dothan, Ala., according to WTVY-TV, the station he owned for 40 years.

Woods' face and hands were disfigured by burns in the crash of the B-17 he was piloting in 1944. But after the war, he started a house-building business and in 1955 launched Dothan's first TV station, the beginning of a media chain and other business ventures that made him wealthy.

"I consider myself an ordinary man who has been extraordinarily blessed by God," he said in a 2000 interview.

His holdings were reduced to a radio station and an office building when he ran into financial problems in the early 1990s. But he continued his unsuccessful quest for political office, including runs for president, the U.S. Senate and House as well as statehouse posts, with a final losing bid for a congressional seat in Alabama's 2nd District in 2002.

Woods ran both as a Democrat and a Republican, in both Alabama and Nevada, where he lived at times.

Running as a Democrat, Woods lost to Sen. Harry Reid in Nevada's 1992 primary but came within 16,000 votes in a 53 percent to 39 percent vote. The campaign led to a federal judge imposing a $50,000 fine for improper campaign contributions.

Woods ran for a Nevada Senate seat as a Republican in 1994, losing to Hal Furman. Democratic Sen. Richard Bryan won the general election that year.

"I want to spend the rest of my life further answering God's call to me," he said in a 1996 interview. "I want to make a difference for the rest of my life."

Woods said he was born in a shack in a coal mining community called Toadvine, near Birmingham, Ala., in 1921 and was given to an orphanage by his mother after his father abandoned them. Raised by a farm family in Headland, Ala., he became a pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force and then U.S. forces.

When his plane crashed on takeoff in northeast India and became an inferno of exploding fuel, he was burned over 70 percent of his body and spent the next five years in military hospitals, undergoing an estimated 100 operations.

Once a dashing airman, Woods was extensively disfigured and scarred. But he said later in life that it changed him for the better. "I was self-centered and selfish," he said. "Now I'm a giver instead of a taker."

Chairman of the Alabama prison board in the 1960s, he ran for governor in 1966 and 1970. One of his strongest showings was in 1974, when he led the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor but lost in a runoff to Jere Beasley.