Okfuskee, OK – Obit - Woodrow Wilson (Woody) Guthrie, 1912-1967 Contributor: Rustie Lang Rlang90547@aol.com 08/1/1999 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- USGENWEB ARCHIVES NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the contributor’s legal representative, and contact the listed USGenWeb Archivist with proof of this consent. The contributor has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SOURCE: The Daily Oklahoman; entered by Rusty Danenhour Lang, 8-1-99. Woody Guthrie Rites Today Private funeral services are planned Wednesday in New York for Woody Guthrie, Oklahoma-born singer and songwriter who was stricken by an hereditary disease at the height of his fame. He died Tuesday (Oct. 3, 1967) in Creedmoor State Hospital in Queens at 55. The disease was Huntington’s chorea, which destroys muscle coordination. The same disease killed his mother. Among the 1,000 songs written by the Okemah-born guitarist-singer are “This Land is Your Land” and “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know You.” He sang and strummed his way across the United States in the 1930’s, appearing in saloons, chili joints, at country dances and in hobo jungles in 46 states. He began writing songs, recording them and became famous. He appeared in Madison Square Garden and New York’s Town Hall before the disease disabled him 15 years ago. His autobiography, “Bound for Glory,” was published in 1943. “I hate a song that makes you think that you’re not any good,” Guthrie once said. “I am out to fight those kinds of songs to my very last breath of air and my last drops of blood. I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work.” “This Land Is Your Land,” probably his most famous song, is the kind of song he described. Guthrie was once described by Clifton Fadiman in a New Yorker magazine story as “a national possession like Yellowstone and Yosemite … part of the best stuff this country has to show the world.” In 1966, Interior Secretary Stewart I. Udall presented Guthrie with a federal government award and called him a poet of the American landscape. Born one of five children in Okemah, Guthrie as a child sang and jigged for pennies in the streets of the oil boomtown. He dropped out of school after the 10th grade and struck out on his own. He served in the merchant marines and the army during World War II. Survivors include three children from his first marriage, all of California; and a son, Arlo, 19, and two daughters, Jody and Nora, of New York, born of his third marriage.Arlo is himself a folksinger. A sister of Guthrie, Mrs. Mary Jo Edgman, lives in Seminole.