A different journey
A best-selling writer tells OKC Girl Scouts how the Iraq War changed her family.
Lee Woodruff’s life changed with a phone call.
On Jan. 29, 2006, her husband, Bob Woodruff, the new co-anchor of “ABC World News Tonight,” was badly injured by a roadside bomb while reporting on the war in Iraq. The impact and debris shattered his skull, cut into his face and neck and went up into his flak jacket. In a military neurosurgical unit made out of tents and run on generators, doctors removed a portion of his skull to accommodate his swelling brain.
“So, everything changed in an instant, and that began a really different journey for us than the one we thought we would be on,” she told
The Oklahoman during a recent Oklahoma City visit.
“We went from being sort of on the top of the world to not knowing if he would wake up and live. Five weeks in a coma, of really not knowing the outcome, teaches you an awful lot about what’s important. … We all recovered as a family. It does take a family. You realize that the family and the friends and the network of support and faith and keeping a sense of humor and so many things are a part of that journey.”
A New York Times best-selling author, freelance journalist and member of the Oklahoma City National Memorial National Advisory Board, Woodruff, 56, recently shared her family’s journey at the annual Juliette Low Leadership Society luncheon at Oklahoma City Golf & Country Club.
“Bob is doing great, first of all. I often forget to say that part,” she said. “But our story, I think, is one of just basic recovery (and) resilience. And it’s the story of so many military families and so many families. We’re all gonna hit stuff in life.”
The event was created as an opportunity for community leaders to support Girl Scouts programming throughout the western Oklahoma council. This year’s luncheon drew about 450 attendees and helped raise nearly $311,000.
“Lee Woodruff was selected as a speaker this year for her compelling storytelling, local connection to Oklahoma City … and Girl Scout experience. We have heard wonderful feedback about Lee, and we are so grateful she was able to join us as our keynote speaker,” said Holly Johns Rowland, Girl Scouts Western Oklahoma fund development manager, in an email.
Good time to be a girl
Along with speaking at the luncheon, Woodruff visited with girls at Millwood Public Schools about their goals and her experiences.
“It was so wonderful to see how many of them raised their hands, and they wanted to writers or they wanted to be an engineer or they wanted to be an architect. And how terrific that the Girls Scouts have a program where these girls can find the formation that they need, the mentorship they need, the direction that they need to go and do those things. Because there has never been a better time to be a girl than right now,” Woodruff said.
“When I think back to my Girl Scout days, I mean, honestly, a lot of what we were doing was about being a good wife someday. I was getting sewing badges and cooking badges.”
A native of upstate New York, Woodruff said many of the intangible ideas she learned as a Girl Scout have influenced her life. After her husband’s initial recovery, the couple not only co-wrote The New York Times bestseller “In an Instant: A Family’s Journey of Love and Healing,” but they also founded the Bob Woodruff Foundation, which in the past 11 years has raised and given away $45 million to nonprofit programs that help U.S. veterans, service members and their families.
“How can I not connect that impulse back to
being a Girl Scout? Of course I’m going to because what’s the greatest thing that you learn about Scouting?” she said. “It’s about your sisters. It’s about understanding and respecting authority. How much do we need that right now? … We are losing so many important things in America that have to do with respect and love and faith and just sort of staying in line and taking care of others. I learned that in Scouting.”
Not only does Scouting continue to teach these core values, she said the organization also has changed with the times.
“Fast-forward to our own daughters … and how big they can dream. The fact (is) that the mission of scouting has widened to incorporate that for everybody and to focus on leadership and to focus on all the opportunities that we want our young women to have. We all know that when we bring women to the table we have a much better chance in the world of compromise, of peace, of moving forward and including everybody so that all voices are heard,” said Woodruff, who has three daughters and a son.
“At the end of the day, even with the cooking and the sewing and the badges and everything else, we women, we’re the heart of the house, of the town, of the community, of the company, and of the country.”
Resilience in hard times
It’s hard to believe it’s been 11 years since the explosion that nearly killed her husband and forever changed their lives, she said.
“I look at him and I think, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re old now,’ ” she said laughing. “It’s a good thing. We’re going to grow old together.”
When the bomb went off, her husband was six weeks into his new job as the co-anchor of “ABC World News Tonight,” a role he and Elizabeth Vargas shared after the death of Peter Jennings. Now, her husband is back to reporting, covering the Asian region for ABC News and spending part of the year in Beijing, China.
“We have a commuter marriage, which, you know, after 29 years isn’t so bad. The girls and I have cereal some nights. There’s still no egg being boiled, no socks being darned, OK? Everything that I learned in Girl Scouts went by the wayside,” Woodruff joked.
“Two of our kids are grown and out of the nest, and the other two are juniors in high school, which is a challenging period in time. But we make it work, like everybody else. So, I’ll fly home from here, put on my jeans and make dinner tonight — a little late,” she told
Along with working as a journalist, she has written two more best-selling books, the essay collection “Perfectly Imperfect: A Life in Progress” and the novel “Those We Love Most,” and tours as a speaker, continuing to share her family’s miraculous story of recovery.
“There is no first, second and third prize for who has it worse. … We all go through loss and grief, we all experience hardship. And our story is really no different than anyone out there,” she said.
“We recovered in a way that you’re not supposed to recover. … People talk about miracles, and a lot of times in the medical community, they don’t want to hear the m-word. But I am a big believer that there are things out there that we can’t explain and there are reasons that things happen. And one of the most important things we can do when we have a good outcome — or we are as fortunate as Bob and myself and our family have been — is that you use your story to do something good with it.”