John Albert Wood Jr., Age 88, of Butte

I remember the first time I met Jay nearly seventy years ago.  He and Bob came to school on a rainy day to give Cherry and me a ride home.  The four of us spent the afternoon eating snacks and listening to classical music. The next day Jay called me to ask me out on a double date with Bob and Cherry.  I accepted, and fell in love almost immediately when he asked permission to hold my hand instead of trying to put his hands where they did not belong. After dating for about a year and a half we decided to elope.  That is when we experienced the first of many known miracles together.  Our car hit black ice and skidded toward a cliff.  The right front wheel went over the edge and the front end was sliding over when an overwhelming peace flooded the car and we were gently pushed back on the road by a miracle of God.

When we were married, people predicted that it would not last a year.  By the grace of God we celebrated our sixty-eighth anniversary this year. On our first day back home Jay went job hunting.  He was immediately hired as a desk clerk by the Bank of America. Six months later he was given the option of taking a layoff or joining the computer department as a data entry clerk.  God led him to take the job offer. Jay’s dad kept telling him to go back to college and get his engineering degree.  He said there was no future in computers because they were just glorified adding machines. Jay had an unusual gift that enabled him to visualize things, and manipulate them in his brain before doing them.  As a programmer he was able to create flow charts in his mind.  When he put them on paper they were almost flawless.

Jay retired after a forty-four years in data processing.  He was in middle management at Apple Computers.  That’s pretty good for an industry that had no future, right?  Another miracle is that during his career, although he had thirteen different employers, he never missed a payday.

Jay was always known as a quiet man.  I used to joke about it saying that if you ask him a question he will answer in a sentence of one word or less.  He was a kind, gentle, thoughtful, intelligent and wise man who had a dry sense of humor.  So, when he did speak people listened.

Neither of us had siblings and we wanted to have at least two children.  He was extremely conscientious about providing for me and our three sons. Therefore, he worked very hard long hours throughout most of his career.  Jay took a leap of faith and quit his first managerial job after only six months.  He had not been able to take one day off in all that time.  His shortest shift was seventeen hours, and the longest was fifty-six. But he loved to be home with the boys and me.   On his weekends and vacations he enjoyed teaching us about gun safety and how to shoot and to fish. On Saturdays, he often took his older sons hiking in the mountains, while carrying Mark in a back pack seat.

He enjoyed photography, and had a large format camera that he took on our outings.  Some of our best memories are of our family camping trips and days of target practice.   We have boxes filled with slide photos, to help us recapture those moments. Jay became a model train enthusiast as a teenager.  He and his best friend Bob worked on his train set together in his dad’s garage.  He had another layout in the garage of our first house.  He always dreamed of a dedicated room for a model railroad.  But as life got busier that was not high on his agenda.He liked to dabble in electronics, and built his own s50 watts per channel stereo system.  He also took a class in television repair, when tv was still black and white.

While we were living in San Jose, our whole family followed his lead, and joined the audio and video department in our church.  Jay became the engineer for our Sunday morning broadcast services and special events.

When he was anticipating retirement, our whole family began to seek God’s will for us with fasting and prayer.  Jay was led to the Song of Songs 8:5 (NIV) that says, “where your mother conceived, and she who was in labor gave you birth”.  That is Butte, Montana.  John and Jim were independently led to Deuteronomy 8:9 that speaks about God leading us to a land “where the rocks are iron, and you can dig copper out of the ground.”  That also describes Butte. Jay had always wanted to return to Butte, and to have a ranch like his grandfather had.  God gave John a vision of a ranch.  John drew a map for us to see the layout of the property.  Shortly after John, Deb, and Mark moved to Butte, God directed them to the property that matched John’s vision.  We bought it on the strength of the vision, and moved in on January first of 2000 right after Jay retired.

Jay has spent the past twenty-six years living his dream.  Now he has graduated to heaven, and is with Jesus and his loved ones who went before him.  We will miss him, but are looking forward to a great family reunion.

I’ll see you soon, Jay.  I love you!

Axelson Funeral & Cremation Services is privileged to care John and his family.

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