Mable Symons and John A. Woodside Memorial Scholarship

John A. and Donna R. Woodside of Orange, Texas established the scholarship you are receiving in memory of Mr. Woodside’s mother Mable Symons Woodside. Mrs. Woodside was born in 1884 in Cheltham, England, and immigrated with her parents to the United States in 1894. They settled in Jackson, MO.
Mrs. Woodside attended Central Methodist College in Fayette, MO, earning her master’s degree in English in 1903. She taught in Lake village, AR from 1903-1906. She took a teaching position at the Arkansas School for the Deaf in Little Rock in 1906, and moved to Jonesboro in 1907 to teach at Jonesboro High School.
Mrs. Woodside taught from 1910 to 1914 as one of the first faculty members at the State Agricultural School, the institution that evolved into Arkansas State University.
Mrs. Woodside married John Clare Woodside in 1914 and moved to Thomasville, MO. She and her husband were instrumental in establishing Thomasville High School in 1921. Mrs. Woodside returned to teaching in 1928 after the births of the Woodside’s four children. After teaching for nearly 40 years in Arkansas and Missouri, she served 15 years as a librarian of the Thomasville branch of the Current River Library until she retired in 1969. She died in 1976.
Mr. John A. Woodside, son of Mrs. Mable Symons Woodside, came to Arkansas State as a 16-year-old after finishing high school; he started school as a second grader and completed the fourth and fifth grades in the same year. He moved in with his grandparents who lived in Jonesboro and began as an agriculture major, but eventually switched to chemistry after taking a sophomore chemistry class. During his time at Arkansas State he also competed in football and basketball from 1932-1936.
Following graduation, Woodside earned his master’s degree while working for a company outside of Stillwater, Okla., in 1942 and that spring he married and took a new job in Kansas with Spencer Chemical. In 1965, he was sent to Kuwait by Gulf Oil, which had bought out Spencer and then to Spain three years later. In 1971 he retired from Gulf, but received a job offer from Occidental Petroleum and spent the next few years in Saudi Arabia before coming back to Houston in 1975. He worked at several different locations before retiring in 1981.
Since the endowment’s inception, it has assisted more than 50 Missouri students in receiving their education at Arkansas State and has reached the $1 million level. Mr. John Woodside was honored as the oldest living letterman in June 2014, at the age of 98. He was also honored as a Distinguished Alumnus in 2003.
Mr. Woodside passed away on January 4, 2021 at the age of 104.