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RUTH WOOD, who was 97 when she passed away Saturday, always seemed younger than her years, according to her famous son, Clint Eastwood.

“When I was growing up, a lot of times, people would say, ‘Is that your older sister?’” Eastwood recalled this week. “She always looked extremely youthful.”

Vivacious, outspoken and an enthusiastic traveler, Mrs. Wood reveled in the big family that gathered regularly at Eastwood’s homes in Pebble Beach and Maui.

“We went to Hawaii four times a year, and it was always with a huge cast of characters — kids, grandkids, in-laws, you name it — and she thrived on it,” said Eastwood’s wife, Dina. “She was our matriarch, our queen.”

According to friends and family, Mrs. Wood took great joy in having a superstar son who could walk her down the red carpet at the Academy Awards or introduce her to movie legends. But she wasn’t pretentious about it.

“She was very proud of him and his accomplishments, but she didn’t talk about him a lot,” said a friend at Hacienda Carmel, Doris Durr. “She didn’t want to flaunt that.”

“She never went out of her way to tell people she was Clint’s mom, but when they found out, she loved it,” Dina Eastwood said. “She loved telling stories about meeting Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Barbra Streisand ....”

Mrs. Wood also liked to get involved in the details of her son’s career, reading every book and every screenplay. She once told The San Francisco Chronicle that she “was the first one in the theater every time” one of Eastwood’s movies came out. And she offered comments until right before the end about which projects Eastwood should get involved in, family members said.

The extremely close relationship between Mrs. Wood and Eastwood extended to his personal relationships as well as his career, according to Dina Eastwood.

“I met her before I met him,” she told The Pine Cone. In 1993, after “Unforgiven” won him Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture, the then-anchorwoman known as Dina Ruiz decided to do a congratulatory story about the achievement for KSBW — including an interview with Eastwood’s mother.

“The first time I met her, she told me that she and Clint had extrasensory perception,” Dina Eastwood said. “It was obvious they had an exceptional connection.”

And before Dina Ruiz ever went on a date with Eastwood, Mrs. Wood seemed to believe something would happen between the newswoman and her son.

“Later, she became my biggest supporter,” Dina Eastwood said. “She was an opinionated person, a flat-out person who would tell you what she thought, but she only reprimanded me once in 12 years!”

Born in 1909, Mrs. Wood had no ambition for her son — except for him to try his hardest.

“She just wanted me to do my best at whatever it was,” said Eastwood, whose strong work ethic is part of his Hollywood reputation. “In my family, we were taught it wasn’t a sin to work and that it was important to contribute.”

Growing up during World War II, Eastwood remembers moving a lot as his father tried to find something that would click for him. When the family settled in Oakland, Eastwood’s mother worked for IBM while his dad worked for Bethlehem Steel in San Francisco.

“I’m sure I wasn’t the easiest child to raise, especially with both of them working,” Eastwood said. “I was like most kids: It’s amazing how much smarter your parents get after you turn 21.”

After his success on the 1960s TV drama, “Rawhide,” Eastwood bought his first home in the Monterey Peninsula — a fully furnished house on Sloat Road in Pebble Beach — for $25,000.

When his parents retired, they also moved to Pebble Beach. And for the last 16 years, Mrs. Wood lived at Hacienda Carmel, which is very near Eastwood’s Tehama golf resort, where he plays regularly. Eastwood’s sister, Jeannie Bernhardt, also lives in Carmel Valley, as does actress Frances Fisher and another of Eastwood’s children, Frannie, now 12. All that family around — Clint and Dina have a daughter, Morgan, 9 — was a great source of energy for Mrs. Wood. And so was the menagerie at Eastwood’s home.

“We have a tortoise and a pig and a rabbit and some chickens — we’ve always been great animal people,” he said.

The most recent trip for the extended Eastwood family was to his home in Maui for New Year’s. Afterward, there was a visit to Piedmont, where Eastwood’s father, Clinton, who died in 1970, was inducted into The Piedmont High School Football Hall of Fame. “My mother got a big kick out of seeing everybody,” Eastwood said.

“We had so much fun, and she entertained everyone,” Dina Eastwood added.

Just ten days later, a big crowd gathered at the Eastwood home not far from The Lodge at Pebble Beach to celebrate Mrs. Wood’s Jan. 18 birthday.

Earlier, she had suffered a slight compression fracture of her back and had experienced a lot of pain, but she seemed in good shape, according to people at the party.

On Jan. 30, however, Mrs. Wood suffered a serious stroke. She died at Community Hospital less than a week later. “You’re never ready for it,” Eastwood said. “Even though she was 97, we thought 98 would be great and in just three years she’d have been at the century mark ....’”

His mother’s death has curtailed Eastwood’s public appearances at this week’s AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, where he has been a mainstay for decades. And he has not announced any plans for a memorial service.

“My sister and I decided we would take a few deep breaths and let everything settle down a bit before we decide,” he said.