Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Grahame WOOD
In the 1960's, Grahame Wood, George Wood's grandson, recognized the changing trends in the marketplace. Textile manufacturing was moving out of the area, and the need for the home delivery of milk had declined dramatically. Consumers were discovering supermarkets, and shopping patterns were changing. He realized that these changes represented an opportunity for a new distribution outlet for Wawa dairy products. Grahame Wood started the Wawa Food Market chain in 1964 and retired in 1977.
Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - Monday, November 8, 1982
Deceased Name: OBITUARIES - GRAHAME WOOD, 67
By Mark Wagenveld
Inquirer Staff Writer
Grahame Wood, 67, who built the Wawa convenience store chain, died Friday at his home in Wawa, Delaware County, after a long illness.
Mr. Wood founded the Wawa chain in 1964. There are now about 260 Wawa stores in Pennsylvania and other Eastern states with annual sales of $200 million. Mr. Wood was a grandson of the late George Wood, the textile executive whose hobby of raising cattle at his 1,000-acre summer retreat in Wawa had resulted in a thriving dairy business.
When the chain was born in 1964, an associate recalled yesterday, it both solved a problem and took advantage of an opportunity. The problem was that the Wawa dairy, with its home-delivery milk routes, was losing business to the supermarkets. The opportunity was that convenience stores were catching on elsewhere in the country and that there seemed to be an opening for them in this area.
Until then, Mr. Wood had been working in his grandfather's company, George Wood & Sons, which sold the cotton products of the family's textile mills in Millville, N.J. The textile business in the Northeast was in decline, however, and Mr. Wood, after inspecting convenience stores during a trip through the South, persuaded Wawa's board of directors to enter retail food marketing.
The first store opened in 1964 at MacDade Boulevard and Swarthmore Avenue in Folsom. Two more were opened that year, and five more the next. The chain now has stores in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Connecticut. It used the Wawa name, an Indian name for the Canada goose. "It was all his idea," an associate said.
The stores provided a new outlet for milk produced by the Wawa dairy, and at first they concentrated on that and other staples. Now they stock 3,000 items. They managed to slice away part of the supermarket trade by staying open on Sundays and late at night and by stressing quick, personal service.
Mr. Wood was until two years ago the chairman of Wawa Inc. He had succeeded his cousin, Richard Wood, in that post when Wawa Inc. was formed in 1968 by the merger of the food markets, the dairy, and the family's textile interests. He remained until his death an adviser to the company and member of its board of directors.
Mr. Wood attended Episcopal Academy and St. George's School at Newport, R.I., and was a 1939 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. During World War II, he was in combat in Europe, serving with the Army's111th Infantry Division and the 101st Airborne Division.
He taught Sunday School and served on the vestry of St. John's Episcopal Church in Concordville. He was a member of the Gulph Mills Golf Club, the State in Schuylkill, the Philadelphia Club, the Rabbit, the Pocono Lake Preserve and the Shakespeare Society.
Mr. Wood was a member of the board of directors of Southeast National Bank. He was also active with several other institutions in Delaware County. He was a past chairman of Riddle Memorial Hospital, near Media, and a member of the board of directors of Widener University. He was also a member of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
He is survived by his wife, Emilie Lennig Wood; three sons, Grahame Jr., Frederick L. and Christopher W.; three daughters, Emilie W. Corbin, Sibyl K. Borden, and Dorothea Moore, two sisters and a brother.
Funeral services will be at 2 p.m. Tuesday in the chapel of St. David's Church, Wayne.
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