Who was Mary McHale Wood, continued
In Boston, she met the actor Van Johnson who then affectionately called her "Miss Wisconsin." She adopted a cat named Virginia Woolf and she shared a psychoanalyst with Sylvia Plath, though not at the same time. There are photographs of her "chatting up" old people in Canada, waving a medieval sword in England while standing on the "poet's stone," where William Wordsworth was said to have written a poem. Mostly there are photographs of her singing and smoking and looking serene in Bellflower. She wrote her own songs.
She was born in 1952, the eldest of eight children of Frank and Agnes Wood, in rural Denmark, Wisconsin. She was followed by four boys, a circumstance which led to her developing a heaping portion of competitiveness from the start. A year later, her father purchased the Denmark Press, and the die was cast. By the time Mary became a reporter in 1981, her father had expanded his newspaper holdings to include the daily Green Bay News-Chronicle along with an ever-growing assortment of smaller Northeastern Wisconsin newspapers.
She was born in 1952, the eldest of eight children of Frank and Agnes Wood, in rural Denmark, Wisconsin. She was followed by four boys, a circumstance which led to her developing a heaping portion of competitiveness from the start. A year later, her father purchased the Denmark Press, and the die was cast. By the time Mary became a reporter in 1981, her father had expanded his newspaper holdings to include the daily Green Bay News-Chronicle along with an ever-growing assortment of smaller Northeastern Wisconsin newspapers.
Mary was a reporter for the Green Bay News-Chronicle until 1987, during which time she was also a frequent stringer for the Milwaukee Journal and the Milwaukee Sentinel. After leaving the News-Chronicle, she became a reporter for the Caribbean Business News in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Subsequently she became a speechwriter for Puerto Rico's Office of the Governor.
She died on Friday, June 7, 2002, of an overdose of insulin, in Normal, Illinois.
For Mary, the abnormal was normal.