Willona Woods
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Willona Woods is a character on the television series Good Times. She was played by Ja'net Du Bois.
[edit] Foxy and independent
Willona was born in 1945 in Mississippi, but then moved to Chicago, Illinois. she is the next door neighbor and best friend of Florida Evans. She and Florida met when they were both kids in Mississippi. Willona works at a clothing boutique and is often defined as independent and single. Having been divorced, and having been on her own since the age of sixteen, she has seen the tough side of life.
She is very exuberant and has a tendency to gossip about almost everyone. After Florida's first husband, James Evans, Sr., died in a car crash, Willona helped out as much as she could; mainly offering moral support to her friend, and did even more after Florida married a man named Carl Dixon, and moved with him down south for their health. Willona then became the surrogate mother for the Evans siblings, J.J. Evans; Thelma Evans and Michael, and also took in a young girl named Penny Gordon Woods. Penny had been violently abused by her biological mother, and after she abandoned her, Willona adopted her. Like Penny, Willona grew up in a single parent household, so she knew what it was like.
With Penny coming into her life, Willona, once the show's spitfire, settled down to become a stable influence for her. Although she still had a sharp sense of humor, shown most often when she clashed with the building's superintendent Nathan Bookman and the Alderman Fred C. Davis, who had a frequent tendency to mispronounce Willona's name, calling her Winifrieda, Wyomia, Winsomnium, and Willemina among others. When the show ended, Willona and Penny moved into the same luxury apartment building that Florida, Thelma, and her husband Keith Anderson, was moving into, in a nicer part of Chicago, and she was made head buyer at the boutique.
