Hartford’s generous hot dog man, Gary Wood, has died

Gary Wood, a Hartford hot dog architect whose creations included the nationally famous Deputy Dog, has died. He was 69.

A poor city kid who endured a rough childhood, Wood joined with wife Cindy to make Woody’s restaurant on Main Street a Hartford institution. The Woods also ran toy drives every year, benefiting the Boys and Girls Club and other organizations.

Longtime friend Mark Milward said Gary was a generous, hard-working hustler who never had a bad word for anyone.

“I’ve had arguments with a lot of people; I never had an argument with Gary,” Milward said.

Milward met Wood when they were freshmen at Bulkeley High School and played football together. Wood became captain of the team and also ran track. He was one of the best-looking guys in the school, cheerleader squad co-captain and fellow Class of 1971 alumnus Cathy Goodrow-Hartley said.

“He was so cute — all the girls crushed on him,” Goodrow-Hartley said, “but he never had an ego. He was the nicest guy. He had a huge heart.”

Married in 1977, Gary and Cindy Wood sold hot dogs from carts throughout Hartford, taking advantage of the prosperous 1980s and serving daytime office workers and nighttime concertgoers. In 1996, they moved the business indoors to 915 Main St., the former American Airlines building. The failed Patriots deal with Robert Kraft inspired the couple to open the adjacent Fish Tank bar, a haven for their fellow Miami Dolphins fans, in 2007.

Woody’s menu evolved to feature “Woody’s Posse,” a dozen loaded footlong dogs with creative flavor profiles — mac and cheese with bacon; a Reuben dog with Thousand Island dressing, sauerkraut and Swiss; and the “Dogfather” with marinara, peppers and mozzarella.

National exposure came in 2009 when Adam Richman, the host of the Travel Channel’s “Man v. Food,” included Woody’s dogs in an episode featuring Hartford-area favorites.

“That’s when the Deputy Dog really took off,” Gary Wood told a Courant reporter in 2018, referring to Woody’s signature creation topped with pulled pork, barbecue sauce and cheddar cheese. After Richman sang the praises of the stacked dog, the spike in business was so immediate that the restaurant’s computer system crashed several times.

The Woods later added a food challenge of their own: two footlong hot dogs with habanero mustard and some of the world’s hottest peppers: ghost chilis, Trinidad scorpions and Scotch bonnets. Denied the aid of a drink or napkins, participants had to sign a waiver and finish every bite in 20 minutes.

“My husband thought it was hilarious,” Cindy Wood said Friday. “I would get nervous. … Their faces turned bright red and their legs started shaking.”

The restaurant also became a reunion center for the Bulkeley football team and a hub for information on people from the old neighborhoods, Milward said. Gary Wood, who grew up in Stowe Village and the South End, the son of a single mother, never failed to help someone who was down on his luck, his friend said.

“If I were to describe his life, all the people he helped, what he did in his business — he was serving people,” Milward said.

The Woods closed the restaurant early in 2018 and went back to their roots, vending from a trailer at State House Square. But Cindy Wood said that lasted only one season before the COVID-19 pandemic ruined the business.

Her husband had been ailing for a while, Cindy Wood said, dealing with diabetes and one functioning lung. She remembered telling him that if all the obituaries describing virtuous lives were true, the world would be a much better place. In a tearful voice, Cindy Wood then said she wanted people to know one thing about her husband — “He was a really, really, really good person.”

A Mass is to be held Wednesday at 10 a.m. at St. Patrick-St. Anthony Church, 285 Church St., Hartford, with burial to follow in Mount St. Benedict Cemetery in Bloomfield.

A GoFundMe page — gofundme.com/f/passing-of-woody — has been started to help Cindy Wood pay funeral expenses.

Jesse Leavenworth can be reached at jleavenworth@courant.com