Wood, Kenneth H. Sr. (1891-1964). Born in Stevensville, Michigan, he attended Cedar Lake Academy and Emmanuel Missionary College. About 1909 his mother moved West, taking him and his sister (who later became Dr. Belle Wood-Comstock) to California. In California he found work in the Glendale Sanitarium. Observing his energy and outgoing personality, E.E. Andross, president of the Pacific Union Conference, urged him to enter field work in the Southern California Conference. He assisted in several evangelistic efforts, demonstrating his call to the gospel ministry.
Always adventurous, and eager to carry the three angels’ messages to foreign lands, he applied for mission service. He then proposed to his fiancée, Miss Florence E. Nightingale, chief bookkeeper of the Glendale Sanitarium, with whom he had become acquainted while working there. They married August 28, 1912, and late in November sailed for China, where they served for almost 30 years.
Upon arriving in Shanghai, they were sent almost immediately to language school in Nanking. Within a few months they had a conversational acquaintance with the Chinese language and were returned to Shanghai to engage in evangelistic work. His eventual mastery of the Shanghai dialect was so complete that in latere years one national commented, “Without seeing who was preaching I couldn’t tell from outside the church whether it was a Chinese or an American.”
Soon he was made director of the Kiangsu Mission, with headquarters in Shanghai, and, in 1916, although only a licentiate, he was asked to be secretary-treasurer of what was then called the East China Mission. He was ordained the following year. (During this time two children were born to Woods – a daughter, Janet Evangeline; and a son, Kenneth H., Jr., who served as editor of the Adventist Reviewfrom 1966 to 1982.)
Elder Wood loved the Chinese people, and considered it his responsibility to train national workers so that eventually expatriate workers would not be needed. As director of the Kiangsu Mission, he selected H.C. Shen to be secretary-treasurer, thus becoming perhaps the first Adventist missionary in China to select a national for an administrative office. Also, he baptized both Mr. Hsu Hua and his bride-to-be, after Mrs. Bothilde Miller, a Bible worker, had won them to the Advent message. Later he performed their marriage ceremony. (Pastor Hsu was elected president of the China Division when expatriate workers were evacuated from China at the beginning of World War II.)
Though he served in administrative positions during most of his years in China, he spent a minimum of time in office work. He was a “hand-on” administrator, itinerating endlessly, instructing church members, and, by example, showing fellow workers how to advance the cause. His itinerating trips involved walking mountain trails, traveling on trains, sailing on small boats, and riding wheelbarrows and rickshaws. On these trips, which often lasted three weeks or more, he always carried a bedding roll and a medical bag. The bag contained an assortment of ointments, disinfectants, and medicines with which to treat cholera, intestinal parasites, skin diseases, and other common ailments. He believed in combining simple medical treatments with the gospel ministry, and never hesitated to give fomentations, lance boils, administer eye drops, flush out ears, apply alcohol and iodine, or bandage wounds.
His jest for living, spirit of adventure, and willingness to disregard tradition and convention were apparent in the fact that he alone among expatriate workers used a motorcycle and sidecar with which to transport himself and his family around metropolitan Shanghai.
In 1929, he was elected president of the East China Union, a post he held in addition to being director of the local mission. Mrs. Wood served as secretary of the South Kiangsu Mission Sabbath School Department, but became secretary of the union department while he was still in the local mission.
In 1937, he was elected president of the Manchurian Union, with headquarters in Mukden. He served there until 1941 when hostilities broke out between Japan and the United States. All expatriate workers were told to evacuate, but he stayed on until it was no longer safe to do so. He was the last westerner to leave Manchuria before the Japanese closed the border.
Back in the United States, he was assigned to serve as a civilian chaplain for Seventh-day Adventist servicemen stationed at Camp Roberts, not far from San Luis Obispo, California. His personal interest in each one endeared him to hundreds, many of whom later testified that his efforts to solve their problems and strengthen their faith had been a major factor in helping them be true to the Lord and the church.
At the end of the war in 1945, he expected to return to China, but was unable to pass the physical examination.This was a bitter disappointment, but in 1946 when the Central California Conference invited him to be Sabbath School and Temperance secretary, he accepted enthusiastically, and served in that capacity until 1958.Though he retired officially at that time, he continued work on behalf of temperance by serving as a field representative forListenmagazine, the national journal for the prevention of alcoholism and other addictions.