Sara K. Wood

COLUMBIA --​A private, family-only, graveside funeral service for Sara K. Wood of Columbia will be held at 11:00 am, Saturday, June 20, 2020, at Mt. Bethel United Methodist Church Cemetary, Ware Shoals, SC, with the Rev. Dr. George D. Crow, officiating.  The family will receive friends Friday, June 19, 2020, from 4:00 to 7:00 pm at Kornegay & Moseley Funeral Home, 4645 Hard Scrabble Rd., Columbia.  In lieu of flowers, memorials may be designated to Emmanuel College, 181 Spring Street, P.O. Box 129, Franklin Springs, GA 30639-9901.

Mrs. Wood died Monday, June 8, 2020, in Columbia.  Born in Newnan, GA, she was the daughter of the late Lena Ellard Dewberry and Homer Lee Kendrick.  Mrs. Wood graduatedfrom East Coweta High School in 1954.  A strong believer in education, over the next 22 years she doggedly pursued her undergraduate degree, completing one year each at Rheinhardt College (now University) (1955) in Waleska, Ga, Emmanuel College (1956) in Franklin Springs, Ga, where she first met the love of her life, Cliff Wood, and received an Associate of Arts degree, Georgia State University, in Atlanta, and, finally,received her Bachelor of Science degree from Central Connecticut State College in 1977.  She was the first in her family to attend college and receive a four-year degree.

In 1959, she married her husband of 51 years, Cliff Wood.  She and her family lived in Smyrna, GA, New Hartford, CT, Flower Mound, TX, Frederick, MD, and Conyers, GA until Cliff’s retirement in 1999, when she and Cliff moved to Columbia to be near grandchildren and other family.  Whether it was hoeing and picking cotton on her widowed-mother’s farm as a young girl, traveling and camping around the United States with her sons, touring Western Europe with grandchildren, teaching Sunday School or English and Grammar to her students during various stints as a tutor or teacher, or principally serving as a homemaker, she never shunned the difficult; “bored” was banished from her vocabulary.  Together, she and Cliff quietly served their family, friends, neighbors, and churches as they followed Cliff’s work from place to place.  She deeply cherished the many friendships made at each place she lived.  She was a member of Northeast Presbyterian Church and the JOY Sunday School class.

Mrs. Wood is survived by her two sons and daughters-in-law, William (Bill) Clifford Wood, Jr. and Tammy of Elgin, and Kevin Lee Wood and Stacey of Paris, TX: ten grandchildren, Catherine Wood, Sara Lucinda McDonald, and husband Tyler, Will Wood, Hannah Wood, Rebekah Wood, Beth Wood, and Claire Wood, all of Elgin and Columbia, Chase Wood and wife Hannah, Mallory Wood, and Zeke Wood, all of Texas; great-grandson Ryder Christian, also of Texas; and brothers Barge Kendrick, of Anchorage, Alaska, and Bobby Joe Kendrick of Greenville, GA.  Mrs. Wood was preceded in death by her husband, Cliff Wood, her parents, three brothers and three sisters.

To send flowers to the family or plant a tree in memory of Sara K. Wood, please visit our floral store.