Marion Marle Woodson Conquered Insanity, Injury Is Fatal.
VINITA, Oct. 5.—The last door banged shut Thursday upon
Marion Marle Woodson, 54 years old, author and news writer
who had spent most of the last three years in a battle for
sanity locked inside the Eastern Oklahoma hospital here.
His death at dawn was a tragic anti-climax after the
stirring fight Woodson had waged and won against mental
disorders attending dipsomania.
He died of an incurable physical growth just seven months
after a Tulsa judge restored him to full citizenship.
When a feature writer for the Tulsa World in 1931, Woodson
had friends here commit him, and while dragging his clouded
intellect from the depths of illness he jotted down what he
saw and experienced at the institution.
Colleges Use His Book
The resulting book, “Behind the Door of Delusion,” was
published anonymously as the work of “Inmate, Ward 8” and
since has been selected as parallel reading for students in
sociology at several colleges.
Woodson suffered a broken arm in an automobile accident
while taking a brief holiday with one of the hospital
physicians during the past summer. Close examination when
the arm failed to heal showed a “sarcoma” (cancer) of the
arm, shoulder and lungs.
Though in intense pain, Woodson declined to grow despondent
as death crept close. Fully aware his hours were few, he
wrote recently to a Tulsa friend, sending a “cheery
farewell.”
Woodson’s chief worry at the last was that his death would
hinder completion of the “Marle Woodson Library,” which he
founded at the asylum and which is named in his honor.
Youngest College President
It is just a conglomeration of used volumes which he cajoled
from friends all over the country, but it is the only
library in an Oklahoma institution for mental sufferers.
Woodson had spent almost a year getting the books and
devising a simple lending system which the inmates could
use. The library now has several thousand volumes.
A graduate of Oklahoma A. and M. college, Woodson became
head of the Connell School of Agriculture, at Helena, when
he was 29, and was the youngest college president Oklahoma
has had.
Later he served as an Associated Press staff correspondent
during the Balkan wars and in India. He worked on numerous
newspapers in America.
Funeral services will be held here Saturday morning, with
burial in the city cemetery. Woodson’s mother, Mrs. Nellie
Woodson, and a brother, Mortimer, of Dallas, and a sister,
Mrs. Glen Dark of Oklahoma City, survive.
From The Oklahoma, 10/6/1933
Donated by:
Emily Jordan
