Remembering former R-C owner Lynne Woodward

No service has been scheduled for former Record-Courier and Sparks Tribune owner Lynne Woodward, 85, who died Aug. 8, 2024, at her Bay Area home.

The wife of Donald L. Woodward Jr., she was editor of the Territorial Enterprise when the two married in Virginia City.

“In her early professional days, Lynne was a well-respected journalist, editor, and, along with her second husband, Donald L. Woodward, Jr. (“Don”), publisher of two award-winning Nevada newspapers, The Record-Courier and Sparks Tribune.”

Family members said that when Woodward graduated from high school at 17, her father advised her to pursue a career aside from those typically available to women at the time.

She earned a degree in journalism from Sacramento State in 1960.

Woodward’s first professional reporting job was with the Sacramento Bee, where she covered style, culture, and local events for “the women’s pages.”

“Although she loved journalism, she was perturbed that female reporters were then constrained to write only lighter stories,” according to her obituary. “After the birth of her first daughter, Andrea Lynne, in 1962, Lynne went on to write and edit for other publications, including the Folsom Telegraph, Sparks Tribune, Carmichael Times, and Sacramento Union.”

Woodward married Don, whom she’d met at the Folsom Telegraph. Their marriage was witnessed by the local judge and dog catcher in Virginia City where she was working for the Enterprise.

The couple purchased The R-C in 1971 and operated it until 1988 when they sold it to Swift Newspapers.

Woodward was born in Oakland, on April 22, 1939, to Rosalie Mae Philbrick and Ralph Aquilla Gilmer, who divorced when she was a toddler. 

Even as a child, she was a budding writer. Between the ages of 9 and 11, she published several short stories in the local paper. At 12, she moved with her father and stepmother to Dallas, where she hoped to ride horses.

“While the Texan horse did not appear, she did acquire a drawl, petticoats, and a ponytail that captivated her younger siblings when, during the summers, she returned to California,” family members said.

She received a kidney transplant in 2002, and she long expressed sincere gratitude for this life-sustaining gift. 

“We were very lucky,” she said of her 47-year marriage to Don. “Together, we could do almost anything.”

She was preceded in death by Don on Aug. 9, 2012, one day short of a dozen years before her death.

She is survived by children Andrea Lynne, Whitney Suzanne and Donald Lambert III; grandchildren Spencer and Allyson Arganbright and Tas and Talia Palcza; sister Wendy Wright Cunningham and many nieces, nephews, grand-nieces, and grand-nephews.