The Late Keith Wood Continues to Serve ALTA
By Lynn Lee, The ALTA Foundation President
With a generous endowment from the late Keith Wood, The ALTA Foundation is pleased to announce the new L. Keith Wood Scholarships to benefit ALTA’s college-bound junior tennis players. Wood was ALTA’s chairman of the board in 2012.
Four $5,000 scholarships will be awarded this spring to deserving freshmen entering college in the fall. Recipients must be residents of Georgia and have been paid members of ALTA playing in the Junior Leagues or on the Junior Challenge Ladder for at least one year.
Students with proof of college acceptance can be nominated by a coach, director, team manager or themselves. The application, which can be found on the ALTA website at altatennis.org, should be mailed to the attention of The ALTA Foundation President at 6849 Peachtree Dunwoody Road, Building 1, Atlanta, GA 30328.
Wood’s family relocated to Atlanta when he was very young. He considered himself a proud native Atlantan, growing up in the Emory area. Wood was an avid swimmer on the Druid Hills Swim team. He attended Georgia Military Academy (now Woodward Academy) and graduated in 1969, which was the first graduating class of Woodward after the transition.
He continued his education at Georgia State University, earning a degree in business. Wood’s career was managing the family plumbing manufacturing business, L. Keith Wood & Co. His passions were many and one of those was traveling the world, sharing many wonderful memories with family, friends and business associates.
No passion was greater than that for the game of tennis, and he and his wife, Lynn, were active members and volunteers of the Atlanta Lawn Tennis Association. Wood served ALTA in many capacities, including team captain, coordinator, Men’s League VP, Executive Committee president and chairman of the board. On the court, Keith was a member of many Men’s, Mixed Doubles and Seniors Leagues teams at Horseshoe Bend Country Club, where he was a longtime member.
One cannot speak of Wood without mentioning his love of Jimmy Buffett and his Jeep, known by its Parrothead license tag. Wood was not known for his singing ability, but when a Buffett tune was playing, he was signing loud, off-key and happily.
His love for ALTA was demonstrated in the endowment he left with a desire for it to benefit college-bound ALTA juniors. We hope we honor this wonderful man for at least the next five years with these scholarships.
