Appreciation

Beverly (Taylor) Shamana ’61, who oversaw the California-Nevada Conference from 2000 to 2008 as the United Methodist Church’s second female African American bishop, died Aug. 1, 2021, in Eagle Rock. A native of Pasadena, Beverly majored in music at Occidental. After graduation, she taught music history and led both public school and church choirs. She answered a call to the ministry in the mid-1970s, earning a master of divinity degree and winning a preaching award at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Ill. She was ordained deacon in 1979 and became an elder in the California-Pacific Conference in 1984. She changed her name from Anderson to Shamana following divorce: “I wanted a name that transcended time, space, and ethnicity,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 2000. Assigned to lead the California-Nevada Conference as bishop in 2000, Beverly also would serve as president of the United Methodist Board of Church and Society and as a member of the Connectional Table. She traveled with a Council of Bishops peace delegation to Pakistan and the Middle East, and made episcopal visits as well to Angola and Zimbabwe. Within the church, she addressed tensions between progressive and traditionalist United Methodists over LGBTQ inclusivity. She also pushed for racial minorities and women to be heard. “Women bishops stand on the strength of her shoulders,” Council of Bishops President Cynthia Fierro Harvey said. “Her commitment to the episcopacy and for women bishops was paramount.” Beverly sometimes played the piano for Council of Bishops meetings and annual conferences, and in 2001 she published Seeing in the Dark: A Vision of Creativity and Spirituality. She is survived by her husband, Walter Woods, and three siblings.

J. Grant Woods ’76, who served as attorney general of Arizona from 1991 to 1999, died Oct. 23, 2021, in Phoenix. A political science major and member of Phi Beta Kappa at Oxy, he graduated from Arizona State University College of Law in 1979. A longtime fixture of Republican politics in Arizona, Grant was a top aide to Sen. John McCain when he was a congressman, serving as his first chief of staff in the 1980s. The two remained close, and Grant delivered a eulogy at McCain’s memorial service in Phoenix in 2018. As Arizona attorney general, Grant helped lead negotiations on a massive nationwide settlement with tobacco companies that has generated more than $1 billion since 1998 toward the state’s Medicaid program. In 1999, he returned to private legal practice and went on to host a highly rated radio talk show on KTAR and KFYI in Phoenix. More recently, he wrote a crime novel and staged two plays, Dear Senator (2018) and The Things We Do (2019). In 2018, he changed his registration to Democratic because of his frustration at the party’s direction and then-President Donald Trump. Oxy’s Alumnus of the Year in 2000 and a College trustee since 2018, he moderated a conversation with former U.S. Senator Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) in Thorne Hall in February 2020 for the Jack Kemp ’57 Distinguished Lecture Series. Survivors include his wife, Marlene Galan Woods, and five children: Austin, Lauren, Cole, Dylan, and Ava. “Grant Woods was one of my best friends,” Cindy McCain tweeted following the news of his passing. “My only comfort is knowing [he] is laughing and joking with John now and watching over all of us.”

Trevor Moawad ’95 M’01 died Sept. 15, 2021, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. A native of Seattle, Trevor majored in politics at Oxy, where he played basketball and soccer, earning All-SCIAC honors in soccer as a junior and senior. The Trevor Moawad Leadership Award is given annually to two Oxy seniors. “Trevor loved Oxy’s student-athletes and came back many times to give talks,” women’s soccer coach Colm McFeely recalls. From 2000 to 2012, Trevor was both director of mental conditioning and director of the IMG Performance Institute at the IMG Academies in Bradenton, Fla. After IMG, he became vice president of pro/elite sports and mindset at EXOS in Phoenix. In 2014, he formed Moawad Consulting Group. Trevor worked with some of the nation’s biggest top college and professional football programs, including the Alabama Crimson Tide, University of Georgia Bulldogs, and the Jacksonville Jaguars. He worked individually with Olympic gold medal sprinter Michael Johnson and Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson, even starting a company, Limitless Minds, with Wilson and his brother, Harry, in 2019. Russell wrote a foreword for Trevor’s 2020 book, It Takes What It Takes. In a September 16 press conference, Russell recalled how Trevor helped him through the aftermath of Seattle’s shocking Super Bowl XLIX loss to the New England Patriots in 2015. “He called me the next morning and said, ‘How you doing?’ ” Wilson recalled. “And I said, ‘You know, the sun still comes up in the morning, Trev. The sun still comes up in the morning.’ And he said back to me, ‘You’re a winner. I believe in Russell Wilson. I believe in No. 3. What are we going to do about it?’ ” Trevor was divorced in 2015 and is survived by his mother, Marian.

Top photo: Powered by the play of Moawad, center, Oxy men's soccer charged to a second-place finish in the conference in 1994.