March 21, 1919 - July 26, 2007

    Mr. Woodrow Hall Arnold, who taught mechanical and architectural drawing at Maplewood, died July 26, 2007.  He was born March 21, 1919 in Rutherford County, one of six children, to Tony and Octa Arnold.  He is survived by his wife of 59 years, Emma Pearl Witty Arnold; his only daughter, Victoria Arnold (Mrs. Steven) Schoenly; grandsons, Steve Jr. and Paul Arnold Schoenly, and three great grandchildren.

    Mr. Arnold was in the military during WWII, serving in the 6th cavalry, part of Patton's 3rd Army.  An infantryman, he was in five major campaigns, including D Day and the Battle of the Bulge.  He earned his bachelor's degree from Middle Tennessee State University, a Master's degree from Peabody College, and a J.D. degree from Nashville School of Law.  He was a retired teacher in the Metro School System.  He was a proud member of the MNEA and NEA.   Lifelong members of the Church of Christ, he and his wife have attended Hillsboro Church of Christ since 1950.  Entombment was at the Cross Mausoleum.

    Vicki Arnold Schoenly, the only daughter of Mr. Arnold, says her father was very happy during his years at Maplewood and knows he would be happy to be part of Maplewood history and the Maplewood website.  Vicki adds that her mother, who still lives in Nashville at the Green Hills Apartment for Retired Teachers, also has the highest regard for the faculty and students of Maplewood during Mr. Arnold's time there.

     Vicki's husband, a retired professor (Computer Science at the University of Mississippi) and she (still teaching--gifted elementary, Loudoun County Public Schools in Virginia) moved to South Riding, a D.C. suburb, a couple of years ago to be near one of their sons, his wife, and their two granddaughters.  Their other son, his wife, and grandson (and another grandbaby on the way), live in Jersey City, NJ, a suburb of NYC.  Even as far-flung as they are, at least one of them visited the Nashville at least once a month and called every week to check up on her dad and mother.  Her father was weak, but sharp as anything up until the day before he died.  Vicki says they were all with him when he passed away, a comfort to them and, she hopes, to him.

Editor’s Note: After the above was posted, I sent Vicki some questions about her father. Following are the questions, and Vicki’s replies, unedited.    –January 3, 2008

Could you provide us with some insight to anything your dad mentioned that he had learned in life?

Well, sure, he learned a lot of lessons in life, but it's sort of hard to boil it down to a few sentences.  I guess if I had to do so, however, I would say that doing your duty and keeping your promises would rank at the top.  My grandfather, Daddy's father, always said that, in the end, all a person could ever really have was his good name and the way to keep a good name was to be honorable, take care of your family, be a man (or woman!!) of your word.  But for Daddy, it was also important to be brave and to do what you had to do no matter how afraid you were.  Daddy often said that of course he was scared to death most of the time he was in Europe in WWII, but the only options were to go forward or to turn and run, and turning and running wasn't an option.  Daddy had a temper, but I can't think of a time when it wasn't justifiable anger.  He was punctilious about doing what was right, legal, moral, however you want to phrase it, but if someone didn't agree with him, he could get pretty angry.  The irritating thing was, he was always right!!

Did his faith in Christ give him comfort as he faced death?

I will tell you honestly, he was a completely faithful Christian and we all thought he was a good man, but he worried and worried, mostly about the war.  He wondered over and over throughout his life if he would be forgiven for all the people he killed during the war.  He was proud of his service and I don't think he would have taken it back if he could have.  He knew that someone had to defend the country at that time, and he volunteered to do it, but he was a country boy.  He loved his cows and he loved roaming the hills where he grew up.  From that, he was thrown into the maelstrom of WWII where he was a machine gunner, not just killing people, but killing them very efficiently.  I think, from listening to Daddy all my life, and from listening to other aged veterans I've known (most notably my husband's father), that these men knew how horrible war was and sometimes were aghast at how easily people seemed to start wars when those people had no idea what it was like.  Even during Vietnam, while Daddy certainly supported his country and didn't think much of war protesters, he would say (and this is almost a direct quote) that what were people starting a war over there for?  Did they think the Vietcong was going to get in their little sampans and paddle over here and attack us?  So he personified the dichotomy of his generation:  they supported and loved their country, but they often thought their government was run by a bunch of people who didn't know and didn't care what they were doing to their own army and to the country as a whole.  So, to return to your question, yes, his faith helped him throughout his life.  But he was a hard judge, particularly when judging himself.  I think God understands and forgives, but Daddy worried.  That's all I can say--he worried.  But he did often say that he promised God and his mother that while he was gone from home, he would never do anything to make them ashamed-- not drinking, not swearing, not womanizing, and he kept that promise.  When he got home, he was a physical and emotional wreck from what I've heard, but he met my mother, who was, and is, a very sweet, innocent, good person.  They went to church every Sunday all their lives and they lived as good a life as I can imagine anyone living.

Are there any particular views he had of the world, and how it had changed since he was young, that you might share?

Daddy kept up.  He thought that education, both formal and informal, was extremely important.  He learned how to use a computer to browse the Internet when he was about 80 and would spend hours researching stocks.  It was endlessly fascinating to him that he could get email from his grandson (who was in Russia at the time) in real time.  He thought technology was wonderful and wished he had been able to have more access at an early period in his life!  He read the paper front to back every day.  When he got bored, he read a dictionary or looked at an atlas.  He loved history and, as I always told him when he worried about being forgetful as he aged, he had forgotten more than I had ever learned in the first place.  You could ask him the capital of Burundi and he'd know it, or ask him to name all the Stuart kings in order, and he'd do it.  He read and read and always thought that no matter what you were doing, you needed to keep learning something new.  He got a law degree, which he never used, just because he wanted to learn about contracts, labor law, and inheritance laws.  He took German at UT at night for several years just because he was interested.  He could NOT understand why people didn't want to learn as much as they could and he was somewhat discouraged at what has happened to the U.S. educational system.  He didn't blame teachers particularly, but thought that parents weren't strict enough with their children, that they didn't have high enough expectations.  On the one hand, he thought that people were not as moral and as hard working as they had been in the past, but on the other hand, being a student of history as he was, he knew that even Plato was complaining about the very same thing.  So he knew that every generation felt that it had worked harder, sacrificed more, been more upright than succeeding generations, and that it would keep being that way on into the future.  And there's one other thing that really irritated him in the last 10 or 15 years of his life, and that was the ignorance (and yes, I'll use that word) of Christians with regard to science.  He had no trouble reconciling his belief that God created the heavens and the earth and everything in them with his belief in the validity of science.  He thought evolution was totally reconcilable with his faith.  He thought that stem cell research was valuable and was irritated at people using it as some sort of religious/emotional blackmail to make people vote for one person or another.  Daddy believed in God, but he also believed God gave us a brain and expected us to use it.

Several of the people who read the website are interested in spiritual matters.  Many are divorced, have health problems, are disillusioned about life, or lonely.  Telling about your dad and his faith can be a moral booster for them—any closing thoughts?

Daddy loved kids.  He would do anything for children and if there would be anyone on earth for whom he would have no mercy, it would be for someone who hurt a child.  He really did adore children, kids, and young people, and would do anything to help them.  He loved his family and felt that no matter how hard it got, you did your duty to your family.  You stuck it out and you did what was right.  I speak from personal experience.  Once, not many years into my marriage, I wanted to chuck it all and come home but, when I called Daddy to ask him for airfare (being far away and without any resources), he told me (and this is a direct quote, seared into my memory), that I had made my bed and I would lie in it.  He told me that I had a duty to my husband and children and that running from that duty was not an option.  So to be honest, I don't know what he would have said to someone who left his family.  Now if the person is an innocent party, so to speak, and was deserted, I know Daddy would have been sympathetic and would have helped in any way possible.  But he didn't have much sympathy for people who cut and run, so would that be helpful to people who are suffering from divorce?  Probably not.  I think that people from his generation and background (remembering that the Church of Christ was probably much more strict about adhering to the letter of the law back then) didn't necessarily think that we were entitled to happiness.  I think that Daddy was happy for the most part, but there were long, lean times, hard times, times of struggle, but the concept of honor and duty kept him going and, in the end, imparted its own brand of happiness.  As for sickness, disillusionment, loneliness, I think he would have said that it rains on the just and the unjust.  Our reward is not on earth and there's no need to expect that things will go well or that you will be happy.  Sometimes things do go well and sometimes you are happy, and for that we are to be sincerely thankful, but the only reward we can count on is the one for those who have fought the good fight and have finished the race.

Daddy loved the book of James in the New Testament.  While he was unquestionably a man of faith, he also believed that we were to be judged according to our actions.  He was exceedingly generous especially when it came to young people and education and he helped many relatives, close and distant, with their educational expenses.  At his funeral, my sons read two of his favorite poems, If by Rudyard Kipling, and Abou Ben Adam by Leigh Hunt ( http://wwwcsif.cs.ucdavis.edu/~bharathi/poetry/lhab.htm)  (And, oh, how he loved poetry!!!  That's a whole other subject!).  So perhaps combining the book of James and those two poems will give as clear a picture as any of my Daddy.  He was gruff, he was tough, he was demanding, he was honorable, and he was at heart the biggest softie imaginable.

--Editor, Revised Posting January 4, 2008