BIOGRAPHY
of
Bobby R. Woodall
Bobby R. Woodall was born in Oklahoma City in 1944. He spent his childhood moving
from state to state as his father followed the oil fields. Spent time in Oklahoma, Wyoming,
Colorado, Nebraska and Texas, all oilfield related. This constant moving played havoc with his
education. Woodall was in four different grade schools in one year. His father never got past the
fourth grade and his mother never past the eight, but they instilled in him a quest for
knowledge. The first of over fifty cousins to graduate from high school. He started
driving trucks hauling grain from Oklahoma to Texas and mattresses to Missouri. Transported
produce from Texas to Colorado and was a migrant worker in Oregon. Woodall has hoed, picked and
chopped cotton in Mississippi. He worked in the oilfield, first as a floor hand, then later as a
derrick man. He's pitched hay bales, worked the harvest and drove combines in Oklahoma. A
troublemaker in his youth and later the Marines he learned to be fast with his fists and slow to
handle his hot temper. Received an honorable discharge 9 January 1964 and quickly got
married. That marriage crumbled after four years, so he headed to California with a friend. They
made it as far as Mancos, Colorado. Woodall took a job shoeing horses and mules for a guest ranch.
It was at this guest ranch, Stupid Charlie's, he met his present wife. After a whirlwind courtship
of 30 minutes, he asked her to marry him. According to him, "I did have to know her name first!"
It took six weeks and they eloped in Oklahoma in 1969. Failing to make a go of it there, they
moved to Indiana. When they arrived in Indiana, he found his place of employment was shut
down and condemned. So he was 750 miles from his parents in Oklahoma and 750 miles from his
wife's parents in Virginia, with a wife and small child. They took in ironing, cleaned leaves out of
gutters and helped empty septic tanks. That went on for three weeks and he finally got a job as a
bag boy at a grocery in another town 18 miles away. He would get up and leave for work relying
on his feet as his car was broken down. This job lasted a week and then he was transferred to
another town 60 miles away. By that time he had acquired enough money to buy a 1955 Desoto.
This car had a hole in the diaphragm of the fuel pump and took time for him to make work. He
would have to go very fast down a hill and hope and pray that it would make it up the next. This
job brought him and his family to Columbus, Indiana. He worked at this grocery for almost two
years and then went to work selling insurance, first for Mutual of Omaha, then later for Allstate
Insurance Company. He had only worked at Allstate for six weeks when the unforeseeable
happened. He had a horrible car accident. His car hit two mail boxes, one telephone pole and
rolled end over end five times. Transported to the local hospital, he was given electric shock to
start his heart beating again. Then he was moved to a hospital in Indianapolis over 50 miles away.
His heart stopped beating three more times. He lay in a coma for 47 days and was finally
released. He gives high praise to his wife, "Here I was, a 30 year old man who could not walk
without the aid of a walker, could not dress myself and could not talk well. She had to take care
of not only me, but also our daughter who was 3 ½ years old and our son of nine months. A
terrific woman!" After coming home, he spent time in speech therapy and learned to walk with a
cane. Finally he was able to walk on his own. It was at this time, he was given an early type of
computer by the state of Indiana to rehabilitate him. There was a psychologist in Indianapolis that
had developed a program to help brain damaged people to cope with life. While tackling these
tasks, he started writing. It was only letters to the editor over problems he perceived to be wrong
in his small town, but he quickly found out he liked it. Having been an avid reader, mostly
westerns by Louis L'Amour and J. R. Roberts. He also liked to read thrillers by John Grisham
and Tom Clancy. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was also a favorite. He would spend countless hours
pursing myriads of educational books. "Why I can write as good as those guys," he thought. So
he started writing western novels. He wrote clean novels, which means there are no cursing and
no graphic sex. "I'm a Christian, so cussings are out and I'm not the world's Mommy and
Daddy. The parents should explain the birds and bees to them when they were younger." He is
presently working on another western novel. A horror story, hair-raising story, murder mystery
and a child's story are currently in the making. Bobby walks funny, because of a limp, talks
funny, starts to stutter when excited and looks funny, because of a patch, but as he says, "I'm
alive!" When people start to say something bad to him, he looks them squarely in the eyes and
asks, "Why do you want to rain on my parade? If I've done something wrong to you I apologize.
Besides, I can beat my own drum better. Sure, I've been bad, but hopefully I'm more mature
now." He is considered totally disabled by the Social Security, because of his brain damage and
his speech. Bobby can be reached at his email address: brwoodall@att.net and invites you to
visit his web sites. Be sure to sign his guest books also. SynergEbooks is his publisher.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?ref=profile&id=1133526657
https://members.tripod.com/bobbyrobert
http://geocities.com/murgratrood
http://www.synergebooks.com/clearwater.htm