Lebanon remembers well-known former athlete who died Friday

Family and friends of Blake Wood remember him as a kind, patient and witty young man, well-loved by his community.

Wood, 26, died as a result of injuries he sustained in a single vehicle crash on Old Lebanon-Troy Road in rural St. Clair County.

“We’re going to miss him for sure. A lot of people around town are going to miss him,” his father, Brent Wood, said Monday. Brent Wood said he’s received messages from former teammates of Blake’s, including one from a Clinton County baseball league player who wrote in a text message that Blake “was the greatest teammate I ever played with.”

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“He worked hard at sports and a lot of people know him through that,” Brent Wood said. Blake was a four-sport athlete at Lebanon High School. He excelled at baseball, loved basketball and also played soccer and golf.

Brent Wood said Blake had returned home to Lebanon this summer after working a temporary assignment as an International Logistics Coordinator with the Trane Company in St. Louis. He was in the process of finding new work and was looking forward to leaving the day after Christmas for a ski trip in Breckenridge, Co.

“He was a great kid,” Blake’s mother Donna Wood said. “He enjoyed sports, being outdoors. He enjoyed shooting. And he was looking forward to taking the ski trip with his friends.”

Popular with community members of all ages, Brent Wood said his son was young at heart and had a knack for connecting with children. “He was good with them, patient, kind,” he said. But he also said Blake was “sneaky and witty” and was considered by his friends to be thoughtful.

“He’d come up with a zinger and you didn’t know you got zinged until a day later. His friends all say he was cerebral, he kind of thought on a different level. He loved politics, history, talked about astronomy, science, the outdoors” and would lecture his friends on selected topics, Brent Wood said. “I’d say in the last two years he came out of his shell and became an adult. We do have something to be proud about.”

According to St. Clair County Deputy Coroner Dennis Nichols, Blake Wood was traveling southbound on Old Lebanon-Troy Road near Lebanon around 4:30 a.m. Friday when his car left the road for unknown reasons and ended up in a field on the east side of the road. Nichols said Wood was thrown from the vehicle.

Wood was pronounced dead at 5 a.m., Nichols said. An autopsy was not performed. A toxicology screen is pending. Nichols said he could not detect any obvious signs at the scene to point to what caused the crash.

Lebanon High Athletic Director Chad Cruthis, who also coached Wood in basketball, remembers him having “a smile on his face,” ready to help with various sports programs even after he was out of high school.

This story was originally published December 21, 2015 at 6:30 PM with the headline "Lebanon remembers well-known former athlete who died Friday."