The Butterfly Tree: An Extraordinary Saga of Seven Generations

Woody Woodburn was born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1960; spent his adolescence in the '70s on the sweet-and-salty-aired coast of Southern California, and graduated from UC Santa Barbara; and for the past four decades has been a national award-winning newspaper columnist-sports originally and general interest for the past fifteen years.Now writing for The Ventura County Star, his honors include Columnist of the Year by the Associated Press News Executive Council, Copley News Service, and E. W. Scripps Newspapers; and induction into The Jim Murray Memorial Foundation's Journalists Hall of Fame and Ventura County Sports Hall of Fame as a journalist.Woody's work has also appeared in The Best American Sports Writing anthology and more than a dozen Chicken Soup For The Soul titles, and he is the author of two nonfiction books-the memoir Wooden & Me: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help "Make Each Day Your Masterpiece" and Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter.When he is not tapping away on a QWERTY keyboard, Woody can be found padding the pavement, park grass or local beaches as a "Streaker" who has run a minimum of three miles (and averaged 11.4 miles) every day without fail since July 7, 2003, for one of the longest officially recognized running streaks in the world."Woody's Holiday Ball Drive" has enjoyed an even longer streak while donating nearly one million dollars of new sports balls to underprivileged youth.Longer still, Woody has a marriage streak of forty-one years with his college sweetheart Lisa.