I know I haven’t been to active lately, but I really would like to use the platform I do have to inform the world of the passing of a genius, an inspiration, an icon, and one of the path-makers for the upcoming generation of innovators.
Dr. Woodie Flowers
Dr. Woodie Flowers, MIT and Louisiana Tech Alumni, collage professor, husband, and co-founder of FIRST Robotics.
FIRST Robotics is a life-changing organization that looked at sports, acting, video games, and writing, and then looked at STEM, and said “Now, how can we make kids interested in STEM, too?” the solution was by making a program that was a combination of all of the above.
Founded in 1989 by genius inventor, Dean Kamen, FIRST; For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. FIRST launched with a mission of spreading a joy for STEM in hopes of not finding, but *creating* the next generation of innovators. As the program was attempting to get it’s footing, in 1990, Dean Kamen approached the T.V Host for Scientific American Frontiers, Woodie Flowers. It was in 1992 with the assistance of Woodie Flowers, that Dean Kamen launched FRC: FIRST Robotics Competition. Four high schools constructed 38cm-50cm-34cm robots that weighed no more than 11kg.
Following the launch of FRC Woodie Flowers continued every year to be involved and active with the organization, and the people. He came up with innovative ways to introduce non-STEM enthused students to the program, coming up with the core values of FIRST as an all-inclusive, one of a kind environment.
Woodie Flowers has never been anything less than an incredible and kind person, describing himself as having a “genetic opposition to violence” with a “fierce, vocal loathing of any spectacle that involves crashing pieces of machinery into each other with deliberate force.” His goal was to create, and inspire, never to destroy. FIRST was a dream come true; FIRST mission to to have a fun, supportive, competitive environment where you must be cooperative with everyone or your team will fail.
FRC is not battle bots, it’s teams acting together as a solid force against others. It’s fun themes like video games, fantasy, steam punk. Or back in the old days, playing sports like soccer, Frisbee, basketball, using robots. Robots, that now are 4ft-8ft tall and over a hundred pounds. It’s three teams, paired randomly regardless of skill, language, or knowledge, in one alliance, against three times in another alliance, accomplishing tasks while controlling it via controllers that range from play station, Xbox, Wii, even Guitar Hero remotes.
It’s peaceful, it’s fun, it’s creative. There are other aspects in it where you get to write essays upon essays, record, video edit, act, script, and the award you get for it is the most prestigious, held above anything the robot does, in the eyes of FIRST.
This is Woodie Flower’s legacy, inspiring hundreds of thousands of kids from 83 different countries over 20 years. Being a professor at MIT, founding one of it’s most popular classes. He dedicated his life to helping others reach goals, so they can get to create life-changing things that his generation never could.
RIP Woodie Flowers, 1943-2019. My Hero.
This was beautiful.
Thank you. I’m sure you can tell this is something i’m very passionate about, especially as I’m one of the only Awards students on my team. I’m sure that Woodie’s passing will leave such a huge mark on FIRST and the STEM world as a whole, considering the legacy he is leaving. I just hope more eulogies, and essays come out praising Woodie for his incredible impact that can do more justice than my dumb Tumblr post could.
Your Tumblr post is far from dumb, mate! I wouldn’t have reblogged it if it was! But I’ll add my own story to the crowd.
We’re at the airport in St. Louis, waiting for our flight back home after Worlds, and we’re all exhausted cuz we had to wake up at like 3 in the morning to get to the airport. Some of the kids actually stayed up for the entire night since we were getting up so early. Then, who do we see with a gaggle of robot-shirted highschoolers lined up near him than Woodie Flowers himself? It’s eight in the morning, and Woodie came out to the airport to bid farewell to the teams and to sign autographs and give high-fives and all of that.
Of course, a bunch of us flocked right to him. I remember getting to him in line and thinking, “I need to tell him how great robotics is and how grateful I am to him for it.” So I did. I don’t remember what exactly I told him, but it was something about how I was so grateful that I’ve had this experience and that robotics has done so much for me. Which it has. It was simultaneously the best and worst experience of my life, and sometimes it makes me tear up, but more often it just makes me smile or laugh or [insert positive emotion here]. And Woodie looked kind of surprised, like this wasn’t something that students told him a lot. But he smiled and gave me a high-five, and he kept on writing autographs for all these exhausted kids.
This is the sort of thing Woodie Flowers did, going out of his way to do great things for other people. He had kids autograph his shirt in return for his own autograph. He would talk to you and give you high-fives. He hung out with our team in the stands at one event. (I was at Mass, so I missed it :| ) One of our mentors won the Woodie Flowers Award, and he legit went down on one knee when he presented it to her. When the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge was going around back in 2014, he made a whole wooden zipline contraption in order to complete it. It was awesome. I have more things that I could talk about in regards to him, but I don’t want to make this tribute too much longer than it ought to be.
But yeah, that’s Woodie Flowers in a nutshell. He was a fantastic person who wanted to inspire kids to not only learn and compete but to be great people while doing it. He always told people to “Make your grandmother proud!” And he lived that creed.
I hope Woodie meets his grandmother in heaven, and I hope she’s proud of him.
Thank you so much. Woodie really is such a marvelous person, I’m so devastated I never got the honor to meet him. I’m only a Sophomore, but my entire family has been involved with robotics since 2008.I of course did five years of FLL, and Woodie has been such an inspiration and hero to me.
I was so upset that I missed him at the Detroit 2019 Championship. I got to see Dean Kamen walk around but there was an entire mob of people following him, I literally cried because I got to stand near him.
Regardless if myself or many others got to tell Woodie how much his contribution to FIRST meant to us, I really hope he knows it.
FIRST is my motivation, my aspiration, my inspiration. I wouldn’t be anywhere without FIRST. My family wouldn’t be anywhere without FIRST. My cousin, and my brother, both went into engineering and mechanical design because of FIRST.
Woodie Flowers means a lot to our team, and we actually have multiple mentors that won his award at regional events. I can’t name how many as it might make it easy to find the identity of my team, but god.
FIRST is just my life and I can’t explain how much Woodie’s impact means to me.
