VALERIE CONLEY WOOD (1945-2015)

EDUCATOR

Valerie Conley was a homemaker turned educator. For more than 40 years, Valerie Conley Wood was of service to her community. Her advocacy for the underpriveliged made her a champion of the less fortunate in the towns throughout New Jersey. A fierce intellect with a fiery temperment, she protected the weakest and defied the strongest.

She shepherded the lives and careers of dozens of parents of scholar-athletes and their families through highly selective processes including the Merit Scholarship, Merrill Scholars, Rhodes Scholarship, and application processes for America’s most competitive prizes. She assisted parents and students through community college applications with equal dedication that she showed to families grappling with the applications to the most competitive colleges and universities in the world.

Young Valerie Conley spent her early teenage years on the campus of the Alabama A&M, which hosted William Councill High School, then one the most prestigious high schools for Colored youth in America.

Remnants of the grand entrance to the Green Bottom Inn & Equestrian Resort. Valerie Conley’s ancestors maintained and managed the resort until its closure in the 1840s. It would eventually become the site of William H. Councill High School, which she attended.

EARLY YEARS:1945-1955

Valerie Conley Wood was born on March 28, 1945, to John Conley and Sara Pendleton Conley in Huntsville, Alabama. Through her father, she was granddaughter of Ed Conley, and great-granddaughter of Jonas Conley, 2x-great-granddaughter of Green Conley, and 3x-great-granddaughter of James Conley who was Equerry, Head Butler, and Stable Master of the Green Bottom Inn & Equestrian Resort.

Her Conley Family was a founding family of Alabama, as their presence in what was then ‘the Georgia Territories’ pre-dated Alabama’s formation in 1819. Her childhood in Huntsville, Alabama was spent under the tutelage of her aunt (and mother's sister) Mamie 'Jula' Pendleton Ward, who became Valerie's lifelong intellectual mentor. Encouraged by her Aunt Mamie and Uncle Perry Ward, Valerie showed great intellectual curiosity as a student in William H. Councill High School.

Valerie Conley grew up next to the ‘Big Spring’

1950 - 1960: ROCKET CITY EMERGES

Valerie, like many others in Huntsville, benefitted greatly from the presence of the U.S. military. Valerie enjoyed a rarified youth, immersed in Huntsville’s academic community at the height of “Operation Paperclip”. A top secret project, Operation Paperclip was a secret United States intelligence program in which more than 1,600 German, Austrian and Swiss scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from Germany after the end of World War II in Europe, between 1945 and 1960.

Most of those European scientists were relocated to Huntsville, and transformed the town in every way, from science & engineering to arts & culture. Wernher von Braun, and his brother Magnus von Braun, were leaders of the relocated rocket science cohort.

For example: The Huntsville Symphony was founded in 1955 by Alvin Dreger, a cellist from Huntsville, shared a love of the instrument with the von Braun brothers. Forty musicians participated, many of whom were scientists in German rocket scientist von Braun's team.

1960-1968 : SPELMAN COLLEGE

Valerie Conley spent her college years at Spelman College in Atlanta. The school had a profound effect on her.

After her teen years in Huntsville, Valerie Conley Wood attended Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, following Conley tradition. Conleys had attended Morehouse, Spelman, and Atlanta University, since the establishment of this institutions. Reconstruction Era Governor Benjamin Conley, helped establish Spelman in its current location in a Morrill Act land deal with John D. Rockefeller, who named the women’s school for his wife, Laura Spelman Rockefeller.

The 1960s brought about great social change. Valerie was in the last generation of students about whom high society would whisper, “those are Mrs. Rockefeller’s girls,” exempting its students from indignities common for Colored Women before 1970.

Spelman College women in 1965. It was a culture in twilight, before sweeping social changes transformed the small women’s college and America itself.

Valerie Conley’s dorm building at Spelman College.

1970-1980 CROSS COUNTRY

Bell Labs was once the premiere commercial scientific research lab in the world when Valerie Conley Wood arrived in Murray Hill, New Jersey with her young family.

Valerie’s son, a local youth sports star, in a football game against Princeton Day School.

After the birth of her first child in 1968, Valerie was on the move with her new husband, software engineer Roger Wood, who she met at Morehouse College.

Valerie’s professional ambitions were deferred for 20 years, as she focused on the development of her sons. During that time, her husband’s work in space technology and telecom took the family from Huntsville, Alabama to Orange County, California, then on to Westchester County, New York. They finally settled in New Jersey. By 1974. Roger Wood joined Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey and Valerie would remain in New Jersey for the rest of her life.

She and her family became a part of the community in the Greater Edison Township area, which encompassed over a dozen towns and about three million people in the suburbs of New York City.

Mari Bonini, close friend and fellow advocate for underprivileged children in NJ.

Union County Municipal complex, the place where her advocacy was most forcefully felt.

Valerie Conley Wood was a lifelong supporter of Police, Fire, Rescue and other First Responders in Middlesex, Somerset and Union Counties in New Jersey.

Valeries beloved ‘Cedarbook’ where she guided many students and the families through their education journeys.

Valerie Conley Wood in her garden at Cedarbrook.

1990-2010 THE PROTEGES

The list of families and students mentored, supported and guided by Valerie Conley Wood is extensive. After she developed her own scholar-athletes in her own sons, she used the formula to assist scholars and scholar athletes through New Jersey. These are some of those who benefitted directly from her academic, financial, or spiritual support: