DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll pass it along just the same. Now, some men come to a place and leave it more or less the way they found it. And then there are men like David Gregg Wood, Sr. — the kind who show up and the whole town starts rearranging itself around the possibilities.
Wood first came to the Valley back in 1893. Young man, new country, that wide South Texas sky pressing down on everything. But he didn't plant his roots in Mission until 1908, and once he did, well, Mission had itself a different kind of neighbor.
He served as mayor. He served as city commissioner. He was president of the First National Bank.
Now, you pile those three things on one man's shoulders and you start to understand why the water ran cleaner, the sewage moved the way sewage ought to, and the irrigation systems got the kind of attention that turns dry ambition into something that actually grows. The marker credits Wood with leading the way on all of it — water, sewage, irrigation — the unglamorous infrastructure that quietly decides whether a town lives or dies out here in the Valley. And this man — this mayor, this banker, this commissioner — he built himself a bungalow.
Right there in Mission, in 1917, for his family. Bungalow style, with an open gable porch held up on broad piers. The kind of porch a man earns after a long day of running a city and a bank.
Then somewhere in the nineteen-twenties, they went back and added a second story. Because apparently one story wasn't quite enough for everything David Gregg Wood, Sr. had going on. He lived to 1965, having first arrived in that valley seventy-two years before.
The house is still there in Mission — porch, piers, second story and all — a landmark that outlasted the man who built it, which is just about the best thing a building can do.
What the marker says
David Gregg Wood, Sr. (1876-1965) originally came to the Valley in 1893 and settled in Mission in 1908. Wood, who served as mayor, city commissioner, and president of the First National Bank, led the way for many improvements in the area's water, sewage, and irrigation systems. This Bungalow style home was built for his family in 1917, with the second story added in the 1920s. The Mission landmark features an open gable porch supported on broad piers. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1984.