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Donald Kenneth "Don" & Jane H Woods
Headstone Photo
Green Acres Memorial Gardens
Sperry, Tulsa County, Oklahoma

© Dennis Wilson

Information by Jo Aguirre

Donald Kenneth Woods was born in Wichita Kansas to Earle and Helen Woods on February 5, 1928 and passed from this life on June 12, 2012 after a battle with pancreatic cancer at the age of 84.    

He was the first television weatherman in Oklahoma to hold a degree in meteorology and started his Oklahoma career in 1954 on KTUL the ABC affiliate television station originally licensed to Muskogee and to Tulsa after 1957. He was an American meteorologist and cartoonist and used a cartoon character called Gusty during his weather forecasts every night, drawing on-air, with a reference to recent weather as the focus of his simple line-drawn character. Gusty would demonstrate how to be weather smart during thunderstorm and tornado activity.  He would also be drawn swimming fishing water skiing or playing American football Gusty was always a  responsible individual — raking leaves in the fall, mowing the grass in the summer, or sometimes just relaxing with a good book.
 

Every night during the weather segment , Woods would announce a winner for that night's original Gusty. The Gusty drawings became one of the longest promotions for KTUL, lasting from the mid-1950s until his  retirement in 1989. Some drawings are installed in Tulsa's Gilcrease Museum and the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. Gusty  also became a fixture at KTUL's sister station KATV in Little Rock, Arkansas 1972.
 

Woods taught at Tulsa Community College for a time. 
 

Donald's  work was part of a 2010 exhibition on Oklahoma cartoonists at the Oklahoma History Center  . He received numerous local, state, and national awards and recognitions and  in April 2005, Gusty was named Oklahoma's state cartoon

Don served in the US Navy before joining the National Weather Service.

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