In memory of my father

The following is the obituary that appeared in the October 11, 2003 Whidbey News-Times.

Master Chief Earl Allen Hodges, USN (Ret), died on October 4, 2003 at 7:58 p.m. after several months of battling a cancer in his lungs. He is survived by his wife of 47 years, his four children, four grandchildren, and the New York Time crossword puzzle (with which he carried on a daily argument). He was 79 years old and a veteran of WWII, Korea and Vietnam. Memorial services will be held at the Oak Harbor St. Stephen's Episcopal church on Saturday, October 11, 2003 at 1 p.m. A reception will follow in the church hall. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that remembrances in the Master Chief's name be directed to the Salvation Army. In accordance with his wishes and the role that the oceans played in his life, the ashes of Master Chief Hodges will be scattered at sea.
Master Chief Hodges died peacefully at his home, attended by his wife, his eldest son and his pastor. In one of those twists of fate that he would have loved and turned into another anecdote, his second son (whom had flown from Texas to be there at the end) had just gone out to get a take-and-bake pizza. Along with his sons, his daughters from Mount Vernon and Lynwood with their families had been near throughout the last days to share the vigil and celebrate the life and love of a man whose forthright character, laughter and stories will be long remembered and retold. He left us on a gray foggy day on Whidbey Island, an appropriate goodbye for a man who lived a colorful life, one of wide experience and rich tales, and whose passing will take some of that color with him, leaving a grayer world behind.

Master Chief Hodges first tried to join the U.S. Marines with several friends on December 9, 1941 but his father, who had been a WWI veteran of the Rainbow Division and had been gassed in France, refused to sign the enlistment papers for the underaged Earl, who was a precocious kid attending junior college. George Hodges finally agreed to let his son join the U.S. Navy in a program that sent him to the University of Kansas to become a ship's engineer and officer. He was sworn into the U.S. Navy on September 21, 1942, but could vividly describe his embarrassment at being an obviously fit young man without a uniform in Kansas City as he waited for orders to a school that didn't start until July of 1943. Through a bureaucratic mix-up, he was assigned two sets of classes (a 24 credit-hour load), that included two lectures that met at the same time. As he recounted the tale, the Navy couldn't understand why he couldn't be two places at once, so his poor attendance got him kicked out of officer training and sent to boot camp. During the remainder of WWII, he trained as a rear gunner for the TBF Avenger, flew as a photographer on anti-submarine patrol in blimps over the North Atlantic and, in 1945, volunteered to join Underwater Demolitions Team 28, which was formed and trained for the invasion of Japan. He was always thankful that the invasion never took place.

Demobilized after the war, he could not find his niche in civilian life, and so in 1952 he went back into the Navy as a photographer's mate and was stationed in Taiwan during part of the Korean war. While taking laundry to his folks' house in Kansas City in 1954, he met Mary Jo on the Missouri Pacific bus. They were married in 1956. After going through a change of rate program, he was assigned as an electronic instructor in Jacksonville, Florida. By 1959, he was stationed at NAS Whidbey with VAH-2. In the following years, he served as an avionics specialist with a sequence of A6 and EA6B squadrons, including several tours on Yankee station in the Tonkin Gulf. He rose to the position of squadron leading chief prior to his retirement in 1972.

In the 1970's he became known as a handyman, doing home remodeling and repair jobs around Whidbey Island. In the 1980s, he returned to college to finish the degree that had been interrupted in WWII. He could often be found at a coffee shop on the campus of Western Washington University, surrounded by young students who were enthralled by his stories and his forthright manner. No one ever accused Earl Hodges of hiding his opinions or running before the prevailing wind - making him a spot of bright non-conformity on a liberal campus. Many who know him and never saw him at the university can readily imagine his impact and can guess at how he may have helped open and challenge young minds. He was never afraid of an argument and always stood up for his beliefs. After finishing college in 1982, he worked as a manager with New Leaf, a charitable organization that arranged and supervised outdoor jobs for disabled adults. He served his community as member of the Oak Harbor Appeals Board and was a life-long Freemason. In the late 1980s he taught computer science at the Skagit Valley College branch campus in Langley, helping people understand and use their personal computers. He became an avid user of PC's (despite his opinion of Microsoft software), and over the years carried on a wide network of communication that reached well beyond Oak Harbor. In his later years, he revisited the photography of his youth, restoring old family photographs as part of a study of the family genealogy.

In the 80s and 90s, Earl and Mary Jo indulged a passion for travelling - visiting Europe several times, where they are undoubtedly remembered in many small towns as the funny old gray-haired couple who traveled with backpacks rather than suitcases. While the retired Master Chief had no desire to return to the ocean on a cruise ship, he developed a passion for river cruises. They hung up their backpacks and cruised on the Rhine, the Danube, the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Ohio, the Cumberland, the Tennessee, the Snake, the Columbia, the Rogue, the Squamish, the Hudson, the Erie Canal, and the St. Lawrence Seaway. Earl liked to say that "Other people collect art - we collect rivers." In the 1990s the couple took up RV'ing, where they became known as the Earl of Whidbey and his Lady Mary Jo. Through his travels he developed a wide circle of friends who will miss his stories, his laughter, and his entertaining views of life, politics and the human condition. In the past two years he had been thrilled to learn about the UDT-SEALS Association that included the early UDT pioneers with the present-day SEALs. Through this organization he was able to contact his shipmates from UDT 28, which provided a fitting closure for his WWII years. The family asks that his friends remember him by lifting their glasses in a toast to a life well lived, his service to family and country, and to the passing of this remarkable man.