Woody Merry can do a lot of things, but keeping his mouth closed is not one of them.

Not when it comes to civic affairs, at least.

The Augusta native, widely known as the voice for the concerned-citizens group CSRA Help, refuses to remain quiet on the topic of local government, which he says is rife with corruption and waste.

The 54-year-old investment adviser sees himself as a modern-day patriot in the mold of Thomas Jefferson or Patrick Henry.

"I believe in 'Give me liberty or give me death.' I believe in 'We the people,' " he said. "I know it sounds corny, but I believe it with all my heart."

Community activist. Political watchdog. Taxpayer advocate. Do-gooder. Reformer. Gadfly. Loudmouth. Troublemaker. Racist. He's been tagged with all of those labels, and many more that aren't fit to print.

He created the CSRA Help name in 2005 to codify the various initiatives he had been informally spearheading for years, such as the Continental Challenge capital campaigns that raised more than $1 million to lure Continental Airlines to Augusta Regional Airport.

CSRA Help entered the political fray by filing a lawsuit against the city seeking to change the structure of the Augusta Commission to allow action items to be approved with a simple majority vote.

The lawsuit, which was struck down by the Georgia Supreme Court this year, sought to end the practice of using abstentions willfully to prevent the mayor from casting a tie-breaking vote.

Mr. Merry has been making headlines ever since, with the exception of a brief period last spring.

He said Augusta Mayor Deke Copenhaver -- who prefers quiet diplomacy to confrontation -- asked him during his May prayer rally whether he would tone down his in-your-face activism as a way to encourage civility at the often-rancorous Augusta Commission meetings.

Mr. Merry said he obliged until Augusta Commissioner Marion Williams called fellow Commissioner Joe Bowles "boy" and remarked he "was born with a silver spoon in his mouth" during a series of meetings in the spring.

"I was quiet for about a month," Mr. Merry said. "Then I told Deke, 'I can no longer be quiet.' "

Mr. Copenhaver declined to comment for this story.

Nobody's stooge

What makes Mr. Merry the wildest wild card in Augusta's political scene is that he is beholden to no one.

He speaks out with impunity because he has no government connections, contracts or affiliations. His income is derived solely from the family financial planning firm he runs out of a small office in the backyard of his west Augusta home with his wife, Ange, and daughter, Rachel.

His personal life is scandal-free, and he intends to keep it that way. He wears a seat belt, pays his taxes, doesn't philander and won't consume alcohol -- not even a glass of wine with dinner -- in public.

"The people who can speak out with credibility in this town is getting smaller and smaller," Mr. Merry said. "People are scared. Honest to God, they are scared of the repercussions. I'm the only person who can take the hit."

Nearly every one of the 600 people affiliated with CSRA Help operates in the shadows except for Mr. Merry and a handful of area lawyers who supply him with legal advice during his crusades.

"Woody ain't scared, that's for sure," said Augusta lawyer Joe Neal Jr., who worked on Mr. Merry's unsuccessful petitions to limit abstention votes and to block former Augusta Fire Chief Ronnie Few from running in the 2006 mayoral election. "He ain't scared of anybody."

Closet racist?

Many of the things his group has fought against -- including the commission abstentions, Mr. Williams' south Augusta drag strip plan, a taxpayer-funded Hyde Park neighborhood relocation plan and, most recently, the city's land acquisitions for a proposed judicial center -- often put him at odds with some of the city's black elected officials, stoking insinuations of racism.

He has butted heads most frequently with Mr. Williams (over his use of abstentions) and Mr. Few (over his eligibility to run for mayor).

Mr. Few has moved to Demopolis, Ala., where he now works as that city's fire chief. Mr. Williams, whose term on the commission ends this year, declined to comment for this story.

"I have no comment on Mr. Merry or any of the things his group is doing," the commissioner said. "I think that's the best thing to do at this point."

Mr. Merry's friends and supporters maintain that his decisions are race-neutral.

"He's not doing all of this to be divisive," said Brenda Morton, the assistant to the Rev. Charles E. Goodman Jr., the pastor of Tabernacle Baptist Church. "He's doing this to bring things together."

Ms. Morton, a former bank executive and business owner, has known Mr. Merry for more than a decade through the Augusta Metro Chamber of Commerce, where they both served on the board of directors.

"I just think he loves Augusta and wants to see it prosper and grow," she said.

Mr. Merry said many of his targets have included whites, such as former Augusta Metro Chamber of Commerce President Jim West and Augusta Commissioner Andy Cheek. He also points out that he and Augusta lawyer Robert Mullins helped Lisa Williams, a black secretary in the city's legal department, get her job back this year after she was fired.

"They've tried to paint me as a racist, but they can't do it," Mr. Merry said.

When friends refer to Mr. Merry, the word "bulldog" often enters the conversation. It's not because of his stocky build (5-foot-8, 180 pounds) or because he attended the University of Georgia; it's his dogged determination.

"When he gets focused on a particular project or endeavor, his passion drives him to its conclusion," said Ed Presnell, a longtime friend and former president of the Augusta Metro Chamber of Commerce.

Mr. Presnell, now an executive for SRP Federal Credit Union, said Mr. Merry is not on an ego trip: "He's on a mission."

Becoming a man

One wouldn't expect a man who grew up in a tony Hill neighborhood (his childhood home is now owned by former Augusta Mayor Bob Young), in a family with ties to the Merry Bros. Brick & Tile fortune, to be leading demonstrations in Hyde Park or squaring off with supporters of Mr. Few.

Mr. Merry didn't have the stereotypical "Hill" experience, though.

"We were one of those families whose parents beat into us that we were normal, that just because we lived on the Hill didn't make us better than anyone else," he said. "My parents were hellbent that we were not going to be snotty little rich kids."

He also said he never shied away from confrontation.

"If you were a bully, sooner or later you and I would get into it," he said.

The affluence that Mr. Merry's family had never trickled down to him.

He was 7 when his father, Brad, a landowner and early investor in the brick business started by relatives Ernest and Walter Merry, died of a heart attack. His mother, Alice Jane, remarried four years later to Paul Hathaway, who Mr. Merry said burned through the family finances by bankrolling his foundering real estate and construction businesses before dying of a heart attack himself in 1984. (Mr. Merry's sister, Lynn, a diabetic, died a year earlier at age 36).

Mr. Hathaway's first heart attack in March 1975 had left him hospitalized while his company, H&N Construction, was in the middle of a drainage project along Gordon Highway. There was no one to supervise work on the project, which was a highway department contract that carried penalties if the job were not completed on time. Mr. Merry was a senior at the University of Georgia on the verge of graduating with a degree in journalism when he got the call from his mother.

"At 7 p.m., I was in my room at Georgia. At 7 a.m. the next day, I was in a ditch on Gordon Highway yelling at big ol' construction workers to get back to work," he said. "I became a man that day."

Some of the work took place in front of Jerry Logan Subaru, where managers were so impressed with the young man's leadership abilities that they offered him a job.

Mr. Merry didn't consider returning to school; too much of the semester had passed. He also planned to marry his college sweetheart, Ange, and knew that he would need gainful employment. So he accepted their job offer -- but only after the drainage contract was completed.

On the Subaru lot, Mr. Merry discovered he had a knack for sales. The sale he made to the manager of a life insurance company turned him on to selling an entirely different kind of product.

Pounding pavement

Outside the political arena, Mr. Bulldog is really a softie.

"He really cares about people; you can see it, you can feel it," said Vicki Dale, who signed on as one of Mr. Merry's clients after taking his continuing education course on retirement planning at Augusta State University three years ago. "You never feel as if he is trying to sell you something just to sell you something."

Three decades ago, when Mr. Merry was selling Subarus on Gordon Highway, his affable, "aw shucks" personality impressed the sales manager for Life of Georgia, which was then one of the region's leading debit insurance companies.

Debit insurance companies specialized in selling low-cost policies to low-income consumers. The policies, referred to as industrial life, had low payouts and generally covered only burial expenses. Agents who sold the policies door to door collected the premiums weekly or monthly from policyholders who signed a "debit card" as a receipt.

The insurance executive offered Mr. Merry a job on the spot, which Mr. Merry accepted because a career in financial services, such as it was, seemed to hold more promise. The newly married 22-year-old soon found out the work was anything but glamorous.

"Debit companies use and abuse" the sales agents, Mr. Merry said. "I knocked on doors until my knuckles were raw."

His sales territory was the neighborhoods east of Eve Street and north of Dugas Street. He has fond recollections of many kind, hard-working customers but can also describe being in some of the "most vile, wretched" flophouses in the city, collecting pocket change from customers who ranged from drunks with vomit caked on their shirts to a prostitute who lost her legs to diabetes.

"You had to be very creative, and you could have no fear," Mr. Merry said. "No fear of rejection, no fear of getting hurt."

He said he narrowly escaped being beaten and robbed by a neighborhood gang at the Olmstead Homes housing project after being tipped off by one of his policyholders. Debit agents were common targets because they were mostly paid in cash, but Mr. Merry said he also was paid in other currency, including food stamps, green stamps and even return deposits on soda bottles.

"Everyone said they didn't have money for insurance. I said to one lady, 'Well, you've got money to buy Coke. Tell you what, why don't you just leave the bottles by the door for me and I'll pick them up for you?' " he said. "So I was paid 30 cents a week in Coke bottles."

He sold burial policies, cancer policies, single-parent policies and -- at 10 cents a week, his lowest-cost policy -- a "cumulative accident protector." Consumer advocates often criticized debit companies for taking advantage of the poor, but Mr. Merry said his customers were always paid for their claims.

"I probably paid a death claim a month," Mr. Merry said.

He sold $25,000 in insurance during his first year; his take was about one-third. Within five years he was selling $125,000 a year in a territory that had grown to include everything between 15th Street in downtown Augusta to Pollards Corner in Columbia County.

His success didn't go unnoticed. Agents with Mutual of New York, a traditional insurance company, asked Mr. Merry to join them in 1981. Working for pocket change was becoming less appealing now that he had two toddlers at home, so he quickly accepted.

Mutual of New York was later acquired by French insurance conglomerate AXA, which Mr. Merry is still affiliated with as a financial adviser. He's one of the company's top revenue producers in Georgia.

Home work

Mr. Merry's backyard office used to be a pool house. He converted it into a guest house so he could take care of his mother after the death of his stepfather.

His mother died in 1986.

"She died right there," Mr. Merry said, pointing to the area now occupied by the glass-top table where he does most of his work.

The office is tidy and packed with files. Most are files on the nearly 2,000 clients who pay him to handle their investments and retirement plans. Others contain legal papers, newspaper clippings, photocopies of government documents and other paperwork related to CSRA Help, the job for which he receives no pay.

The walls are decorated with various plaques and awards, ranging from a certificate for completing The Wharton School's retirement planning program to a diploma from the U.S. Army War College.

On this particular day, the scribblings on the dry-erase board near his computer outline a conspiracy theory about the judicial center land acquisition controversy. As he answers questions and fields phone calls, he frequently shouts to his assistant to "pull the file" on this or that or "look up the number" of so and so.

Ange Merry has been his assistant for 32 years, which is as long as she has been his wife. She knows the intensity he displays at news conferences and commission meetings is not something that he simply turns on and off like a light switch.

"He's full of energy," Mrs. Merry said. "He works hard and he plays hard."

They met at Middle Georgia College, a junior college in Cochran that Mr. Merry attended before transferring to the University of Georgia.

The school year had just started when Mr. Merry spotted the 17-year-old Atlanta girl on campus.

"She was so pretty I figured I had to try to get her early," he said.

That night he decided he would ask her out on a date. He chose to get her attention by throwing a pine cone at her third-floor dorm window. Because he threw the pine cone too hard -- and because it was the hard, green variety -- he broke the window.

"I said to her, 'You want to go drink some beer?' In Cochran, there isn't much else you can do," he recalled. "She said 'Yeah ... run!' I guess I've been running after her ever since."

Their older child, Brad, is part owner of wholesale distributor Highland Hardwood Sales in Augusta. Daughter Rachel is a registered investment adviser and Mr. Merry's partner in the firm.

Mr. Merry's family supports his civic involvement, though their interest level is much more casual.

"We don't really talk about it," he said. "They don't want to know."

Rise of the gadfly

Most of Mr. Merry's life has been lived outside the spotlight. There was a time when people would mention his name without a there-he-goes-again tone in their voice. Those close to him believe he never intended to become a public figure.

"I think if he could do these things without anybody knowing, I think he would," Ms. Morton said.

Mr. Cheek said people like Mr. Merry would not be needed if government operated as it should.

"Woody has had to step up in his organization and address issues dealing with the city that should have never had to be dealt with if the government itself would follow its own rules and behave as it should," said Mr. Cheek, whose commission term expires this year. "Quite frankly, citizens should never have to confront their government this way. I'm just thankful there are citizens who care enough to do it."

Mr. Merry's journey to center stage of Augusta politics started when he spoke out against a nonpolitical figure: Jim West, former Augusta Metro Chamber of Commerce president.

Mr. Merry, a longtime chamber volunteer, criticized Mr. West during a closed-door chamber board meeting in 2002, saying Mr. West failed to follow up on two "solid" economic development prospects provided by Mr. Merry.

Though Mr. West had privately fallen out of favor with other board members for different reasons, it was Mr. Merry's open criticism that led to his scolding by chamber board leaders and cemented his reputation as a person who is not afraid to rock the boat.

"He's very action-oriented, not process-oriented," said Marci Wilhelmi, a longtime friend and former chairwoman of the Augusta Aviation Commission. "When he sees something that has to be done, he actually goes out and does it rather than sit around and talk about doing it."

Mr. Merry's work on bringing Augusta Tissue Mill LLC and the Augusta Carriage & Collectibles sale event to town was done outside the auspices of the chamber.

He still participates in chamber activities, such as serving as a host at the annual Red Carpet Tour for visiting executives during Masters Week, but he has drastically limited his level of involvement in the group in recent years for the same reasons he eschews civic clubs, associations and other organizations:

He doesn't want innocent bystanders catching his flak.

"I've had to become socially sterile," he said.

Are people really out to get him? Mr. Merry says yes.

He said he was investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission last year. He said the inquiry, which resulted in no actions against him, was politically motivated.

"The investigator walked through that door unannounced, interrogated me for eight hours and looked at every one of my transactions since 1975," he said. "You don't get an investigation going unless you have political horsepower behind it."

An SEC spokesman said the agency does not comment on its investigations unless the investigation results in formal legal action.

End game

What will it take to make Woody Merry happy?

When will CSRA Help have completed its mission?

When will all the phone calls and mass e-mails and news conferences stop?

Mr. Merry wants to create a "shadow government."

He said it's not as sinister as it sounds.

The way he sees it, the main problem with Augusta's commissioners is twofold.

One, they tend to be out of touch with the city as a whole, responding only to "power brokers" and people of influence within their particular political subdivision.

Two, the city's structure allows commissioners too much influence over day-to-day operations, giving them the opportunity to make ill-advised decisions because they lack the managerial and technical experience of a professional city administrator.

Mr. Merry envisions a citizens council made up of dozens of concerned residents from each district to provide commissioners with a holistic view of the city.

He also envisions a commission advisory board made up of "loaned professionals" who can consult commissioners when they make decisions on specialized operations such as human resources and engineering.

If commissioners decide to disregard the advice of the larger groups?

"Then they go down there and raise hell," Mr. Merry said. "There's two things that work when you're dealing with commissioners: lawsuits and public pressure."

He acknowledges that the shadow government plan -- the details of which are in one of his many files -- might never come to fruition. Regardless, he said, he has no plans to stop fighting.

Mr. Merry said he truly does not care what his detractors think about him. Though that might be true, he is clearly frustrated by people -- including those whose causes he supports -- who believe there are ulterior motives to his political activism.

One of his favorite sayings is that most people are listening to "WIIFM radio," a station whose call letters, he says, stand for What's in It for Me.

"I'm only tuned in if there's something in it for me," he said, trying his best to mimic a radio announcer's voice.

Mr. Merry's voice returns to normal when the question is put directly to him.

"What's in it for me? Nothing." he said. "Absolutely nothing, except aggravation and heartache."

Reach Damon Cline at (706) 823-3486 or damon.cline@augustachronicle.com.