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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