Robert Winship Woodruff (December 6, 1889 – March 7, 1985) was an American businessman who served as the president of The Coca-Cola Company from 1923 until 1985. With a large net worth, he was also a major philanthropist, and many educational and cultural landmarks in the U.S. city of Atlanta, Georgia, bear his name. Included among these are the Woodruff Arts Center, Woodruff Park, and the Robert W. Woodruff Library. Early life Woodruff was born in Columbus, Georgia, the son of Ernest Woodruff, an Atlanta businessman who, among other things, was leader of the group of investors who bought The Coca-Cola Company from Asa Griggs Candler in 1919. His grandfather was Atlanta manufacturing magnate Robert Winship. After graduating from the Georgia Military Academy he attended Georgia Tech, where he failed out, and then the Emory University campus at Oxford, Georgia, for one term, where he excelled at "cutting classes and spending money". Career and Personal Life In February 1909, at age 19, spurning his father's work offers, he began work as a laborer at the General Pipe and Foundry Company foundry in Inman Park, Atlanta. For a week he shoveled and shifted sand, then worked a lathe as a machinist's apprentice. After a year he was fired. But then he was rehired by General's parent company, General Fire Extinguisher where he worked his way into sales. He then accepted a job offer from his father at Atlantic Ice and Coal Company but left after differences with him. Woodruff parlayed his love of early automobiling into a sales position at White Motor Company based in Cleveland, Ohio, and quickly rose to become vice president of that company. During World War I, Woodruff joined the U.S. Ordnance Department where he promoted a truck design that only White Motors could fulfill, giving the company huge war-time sales. In an effort to reconcile personal differences, his father Ernest offered Robert Woodruff the position of president of the Coca-Cola Co. On October 17, 1912, Woodruff married Nell Kendall Hodgson (October 20, 1892 – January 23, 1968), a nurse from Athens, Georgia. The couple had no children. In 1926, at the age of 37, Woodruff built Coca-Cola into an international company, establishing a foreign department. In 1955, he stepped down as president but remained on the board of directors until 1984. His large shareholding and influence on the board's powerful Finance Committee gave him significant control