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Submitted by Jackie Knowles

Constance “Connie” Wood passed away May 7 at Villa Gardens in Pasadena. She was born Constance Loret Simonsen on Sept. 21, 1919, in Portland Ore.

She graduated from Washington State University with a bachelor’s degree in writing and drama and a minor in chemistry. It was for her work in chemistry that she was selected to work on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos during World War II. There she met and married David S. Wood, and after the war moved to Sierra Madre, where his forbearers were among the founders.

He went on to earn a doctorate at Caltech, where he was professor of engineering for more than 40 years. They had been married 53 years, when he died in 1998.

Both were members of the Caltech Stock Co., a performing, musical group directed by Prof. Kent Clark of the Humanities Division. Connie founded the Caltech Playreading Group and was active in the Caltech Women’s Club. She also was one of the original members of the Sierra Madre Unit of the League of Women Voters Pasadena Area and was a co-author of a musical parody, “My Fair Leaguer.” In addition, she was a member of the Pasadena Civic Chorus - part of the Pasadena Orchestra directed by Richard Lert.

She is survived by her daughter, Alison, and her husband’s brothers, Roger and Alan, as well as the Simonsen family in Portland.

Services will be Saturday, May 12, at 10:30 a.m. at the Church of the Ascension, 25 E. Laurel Ave., at Baldwin. Interment will be at Pioneer Cemetery in Sierra Madre.

Douglas and Zook Mortuary of Monrovia is handling the arrangements.