He’s Dr. Woodrow Hodges – and even after all the years that I have known him and worked with him, I still call him Dr. Hodges, not just to his face, but even when I’m talking about him – to his great chagrin, I might add. But the rest of the world knows him and refers to him as ‘Woody.’ And he is about to retire after 36 years of faithful service as a member of Carthage’s music faculty. This turn of events is the classic example of ‘bittersweet’ – sweet for him, at least for the most part – but pretty bitter for the rest of us who will go on teaching at Carthage without our good friend and devoted colleague. When President Campbell retired last summer after a full quarter of a century, I could scarcely imagine the place going on without him. If anything, the retirement of Dr. Hodges feels even stranger, even more bewildering, and hits all of us very close to home. He’s not that intimidating man on the third floor of Lentz Hall. He’s the guy right down the hall. He’s the guy who keeps us laughing and smiling . . . the guy who has kept the music department grounded in its own history . . . the guy who embodies why teaching is the most satisfying of professions . . . the guy who cares deeply and yet knows how to let things go . . . who is wise enough to know what matters most and what stuff doesn’t matter at all in the grand scheme of things . . . the guy who loves music because it loves him right back.
If I want to make myself really sad, I make a list of all of the things I will miss once Dr. Hodges has actually departed. I will miss the stories he tells in that inimitable way of his – the spirited “Time Out!” he will say in music faculty meetings (complete with the official referee’s hand gesture) when he feels like we’re rushing to judgment about something – the wisecracks he exchanges with students in the hallway – and I will especially miss his heartfelt compliments. My music faculty colleagues are all lovely people… but by and large we are not lavish compliment-givers, at least to each other. (For our students, we are quick with an encouraging and affirming word.) Of all of us, Dr. Hodges is the one who seems to best understand how much all of us need at least a bit of affirmation that we’ve done something well. Just because you’re 40 or 50 or 60 does not mean you have entirely outgrown such a need. Yes, what probably should matter even more is that you yourself know that you sang that song well or that the music you composed is a fine composition. At some point you shouldn’t require quite so much reassurance from others about such things. But maybe there is something else wrapped up in those open-hearted compliments: the reassurance that what we’ve sung or played or said or composed made a difference to someone else. They were impressed. They were inspired. They were touched. Maybe even thrilled. Given shivers.
Dr. Hodges likes to tell the story of the first time he really heard me sing. My good friend Everetta McQuestion had mentioned to him at a Kenosha Symphony function that a fine young baritone named Greg Berg had just moved to Kenosha and that if there was ever need for a baritone soloist for something at First United Methodist, where Dr. Hodges was the music director, I would be a good person to have. And not long after, when he decided to do The Seven Last Words by Dubois, he called me up and asked if I would like to be the baritone soloist. I was thrilled to be asked and didn’t hesitate to say yes. A few weeks later Dr. Hodges invited the soloists and a couple of other people to his house to sing through the work, with his wife Carol at the piano. And Dr. Hodges takes great delight in describing what it felt like when I rose from my seat, opened my mouth, and let loose with my first solo line. He says he felt the hairs on the back of his neck suddenly stand up- and felt goosebumps up and down his arms, just like that. And as he and Carol exchanged a look, Carol’s eyes just grew a little bit bigger, as if to say a silent “whoa” – the way a husband and wife can communicate without saying a single word.
That’s the story – and he loves telling it, all these years later. But the story is really not about me or about the kinds of sounds I could pour out back in my youthful prime. It’s a story about Woody and the way he experiences music. . . with all defenses down, with his heart wide open, ready to be excited . . . to be moved . . . to be changed. He is exactly the kind of musician that I want to be and I hope that I am to some extent- but he’s the gold standard in this regard. And there is something else worth saying about this. His primary teaching responsibilities over the years have involved Music Theory: the course where one learns how music is put together in scales and modes and tonalities. It’s where you take the whole of music and break it down into the elements which comprise it, and analyze them. It’s fun for a select few students – a chore for most – and an absolute nightmare for some, especially if they have little or no background in it. And a few of our music majors actually drop the major because of music theory- and many of them, as they make what I’m sure is a painful change in course, tell themselves and tell us that music is something they want to enjoy, and studying it too analytically crushes all of the fun out of it. To which I reply: Bullcrap ! (There! I said it!) And the person who clarifies that for me more than anyone else is Woody Hodges: a brilliant Music Theorist and brilliant music theory teacher . . . who loves music with a passion that verges on the volcanic!
At his farewell last week, a lot of laudatory things were said about him by students as well as past and present colleagues. Dr. Richard Sjoerdsma, who was an extraordinary force in our department for decades, spoke of how Woody came to Carthage at a time when the instrumental side of the music department was in a bit of turmoil. (I don’t know about my colleagues, but I didn’t know this.) He walked into that tough situation with all of the joy and passion and energy that we all associate with him, and played a huge roll in turning things around. And Dr. Sjoerdsma said that in the thirty-plus years that they taught together, he couldn’t ever remember a day when Woody was in a sour mood or acted unkindly towards someone else. The room got very quiet at that moment as those words were spoken.
It also got quiet when Dr. James Ripley, our current director of instrumental music, got up to speak – and very quickly found himself unable to get the words out, thanks to a huge lump in his throat. Fortunately, he had written out his remarks, and his wife Kathy was there to read them to us. The part that got Jim all choked up was when he was about to describe Woody’s kindness and generosity the day that they moved into their house on the south side of Kenosha. How Woody even knew that was the day they were moving in was beyond them, but there he was . . . to welcome them, to feed them dinner, to help make Kenosha feel like home.
There was one other moment when someone got choked up as they spoke – and it was Dr. Hodges himself, during his remarks at the end of the evening. He was in the midst of talking about losing his wife Carol to cancer- but the moment he got choked up was when he began to talk about the kindness which was shown to him and to Carol by his colleagues in the music department during that really tough time. What brought him to tears was not so much thinking about the sorrow – but thinking about the kindness, the same thing which brought Jim to tears a few minutes earlier. There is something about kindness that touches the deepest places in our soul, whether we’re giving it or receiving it. Which brings to mind one of the most beautiful stories of kindness I have ever heard. Woody and Carol’s two sons are adopted. And the younger son, Scott, went looking for his birth mother a few years ago (with Woody and Carol’s full blessing and support) and found her and enjoyed a joyous reunion with her. And Woody and Carol could not have been more genuinely thrilled that Scott’s circle of family could expand in that way. Not too long after that, Scott was married (I sang for the wedding) – and Woody and Carol did not hesitate to make Scott’s birth mother feel completely welcome and honored on that day. You hear so much about situations like that deteriorating into a nightmare of bruised egos and hurt feelings- but here was the clearest possible picture of what it means to be guided by kindness. As long as I live, I will never forget that.
If there was any cause for celebration in the midst of what for all of us is a sad goodbye, it was the news that I learned for the first time (but which I suspect other people maybe already knew) …. that once Woody marries Diane, his bride-to-be, in the middle of June, they are settling down right here in Kenosha. That makes this goodbye not nearly so painful, because it means there will be more smiles, more stories, more heartfelt compliments, and still more gestures of kindness from this amazing, one-of-a-kind man named Woodrow Hodges.
But he prefers Woody.
Pictured above: He has just been presented by college provost Julio Rivera with a special commemorative chair, engraved with his name and his years of service to Carthage. He taught here for 36 years, and as he retires he is the longest-serving member of the Carthage faculty.