For Carol and Robert Woody, home is where the art is
Tucked away in a quiet neighborhood near campus, over 700 works of art line the walls of a single-family brick home that better resembles a world-class art gallery.
As Charles Center photographer Tess Willett and I follow Dr. Carol Clayman Woody ’71 and Robert Woody into their living room, we pass the couple’s methodically arranged paintings, hung above symmetrical display cases filled with vintage bibelots. Their dog, Eleanora, a nine-year-old American Cocker Spaniel, playfully plods along underfoot.
We make our way through the house, and it is clear that we are within a miniature museum, curated with family heirlooms and works acquired with great care and attention.
I take a seat near Robert, who settles into a wingback chair, a wooden cane propped against his knee. Carol is on the couch across from me, Eleanora at her side. Separating us, an elaborate blue and white candle arrangement stands atop a round marble table.
Since 2015 the couple have supported William & Mary students’ passion for public history, art history, and museums through the Woody Internship in Museum Studies administered by the Charles Center. The internship matches undergraduates with mentors at museums for ten-week summer internships supported by $5,000 stipends.
This coming year, ten museums will host W&M students, including Colonial Williamsburg, the Charleston Museum, the Phillips Collection, the Taft Museum of Art, and Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library.
A half century of shared adventures
After fifty-two years spent together, the pair share an incomparable life story complete with adventure and a continuous desire to break barriers. Carol places her hand on Eleanora’s head as she reminisces about how she and Robert first met in Williamsburg during her senior year at the university and his first year at William & Mary Law School.
They met in Bruton Parish Church, in the tenth pew, Robert interjects.
Once Carol graduated with a degree in mathematics, she took a job with the federal government in Washington D.C. When the phone bills between them started adding up, the couple decided to officially tie the knot in 1972, “to reduce our long-distance charges,” Carol says.
Despite their busy careers, the pair refused to let business stop them from pursuing adventure. Robert specifically mentions that they would often attend the opera after Carol would finish writing software at work.
“They got used to seeing her sweep in with evening clothes on, hair up, and they would let me go up with her,” Robert muses, playfully.
“Well, you were in a tux, so we didn’t look like scrounges,” Carol laughs.
Robert, now retired, enjoyed a 50-plus-year career as an antiques dealer. They often worked antique shows together around the country and overseas while Carol earned an MBA from Wake Forest University and then a PhD in information systems from Nova Southeastern University.
Prior to their marriage, she fostered her love of music as part of the W&M choir and member of the music fraternity Delta Omicron. As one of the few women studying mathematics at William & Mary at the time, her career trajectory was not entirely clear.
Glass ceilings, broken
“I came to college planning to be a teacher in math, because my mother was a teacher and there weren’t many careers open to women at that point in time,” Carol explains. “But I spent two summers working as a camp counselor at a Presbyterian Church camp, and ten kids for a week just about drove me crazy.”
Carol is certainly not one to shy away from a challenge. Since then, she has worked for Textron Lycoming as a Financial Design Supervisor, Yale University as a Project Manager, and ImageWork Technologies Corporation as a consultant. She currently works for the Software Engineering Institute, a research center for the U.S. Department of Defense, where she heads the Cyber Security Engineering Team as a technical manager.
While at Yale, the couple lived on Carol’s salary, as Robert reinvested earnings into the antique business. He would sell at about 36 antique shows a year, with Carol joining him on his travels in the late 1980s. To Robert’s surprise, she actually increased business by engaging more women in conversations about antiques.
“We would swap customers, depending on people’s interests, but it was fun, it was a good challenge,” Carol says.
A radical vision for hands-on learning
Roughly ten years after graduation from W&M, Carol was contacted by an alum who mentioned that the university was setting up a Gender, Sexuality & Women’s Studies program. Rather than offer the program money directly, Carol insisted on creating an internship for women to attend meetings and networking opportunities, a decision she calls “radical” for the time.
After their internships, Carol asked the women to write her a letter about their experiences — treasures she keeps and continues to read to this day.
“The beauty of the internship was that they could also find out if they didn’t like it while they still had time to come back and refocus,” she mentions. “A lot of it related to the fact that very few women got exposure at home. It’s that added layer of interaction and building contacts.”
Eventually the couple decided to travel the world with friends on what they call a “Grand Tour,” scouting for antiques along the way. In their elegant living room, the pair recount trips to Milan, Paris, and Venice with an endearing nonchalance.
Robert calls to mind memories of taking the Orient Express from Venice to England (stopping in Paris) and sailing home on the Queen Elizabeth ocean liner, partly due to the fragility of many antiques and art pieces they had acquired. He explains that the ships would often have beds that lifted up and compartments under the closet floors to store valuable items. Robert leans back in his chair, deep in memory.
“She would go to the bar and have a drink or two, and I would deal with the porters,” Robert laughs. “By the time she strolled back to the cabin, it was like any other cabin, like nothing had happened!”
All roads lead home – to W&M
Carol and Robert’s adventures around the world have led them home, where they continue to create transformative experiences for William & Mary students in areas that combine their passion for nurturing women’s professional development, music, and museums.
In addition to founding the Gender, Sexuality & Women’s Studies program internship, they created the Woody Music Internship Fund, as well as the visionary museum internship that bears their name.
The Woody Internship in Museum Studies is one of the largest and longest-running such programs in the nation. Now in its 11th year, the program has funded a range of summer experiences in museums for 47 undergraduates — the majority of whom have gone on to pursue a career in museums or graduate studies in a related field.
“Students who studied at intern programs for museums were taught to hate antique dealers,” Robert comments. “But one of the things we’ve been trying to convince the students of every year is that yes, they’re going to see a lot of gorgeous things and learn about a lot of gorgeous things, but I want them to know who to call when the plumbing is leaking. I want them to know how to deal with the newspaper for advertisements, I want them to know the practicalities of it, too.”
A house requiring its own interview
Eleanora’s head pops to attention as Carol heads into the kitchen to make us a pot of coffee while Robert offers to show us around the home.
I've been talking to the Woodys for over an hour, and now it seems the house itself requires its own interview. Every wall and room we enter is adorned with paintings within elaborate, gilded frames, the faces of their subjects following us down the hallways as Robert lovingly explains each one's significance.
“I like paintings that show someone who’s proud of what they’re doing,” Robert says. He points across a sitting room to a portrait of a humble man, legs crossed, holding a wooden staff. “The painting above the cabinet over there, that’s a professor. He’s pointing to a map, and it dates back to about 1830 or something. I love that type of genre painting.”
But really, he says, his favorite painting is whatever the newest addition to the collection happens to be.
As we enter the kitchen, Carol points to stained-glass windows next to the dining table — pieces acquired for their former conservatory in Pittsburgh, where they used to live.
Lives of courage, creativity, and kindness
We sip coffee together at the kitchen table as the Woodys reminisce about their life together, the late afternoon sun now low on the horizon. Eleanora meanders around the table, lingering for a brief moment near each person’s feet, anticipating crumbs from the gourmet cookies the Woodys have shared with their visitors.
And for these final moments, I just listen.
Carol and Robert Woody are partners in every sense of the word. Outside of the art and adventure, the duo live a quiet life surrounded by beautiful things.
Robert’s eyes begin to water as he describes his relationship with Carol. His favorite thing about her isn’t her tenacity, courage, or candidness — he loves her because she’s kind. In a way, their relationship mirrors the very essence of their passion for art — it is a love that has been fostered through devotion, nuance, creativity, and time.
