Clarence Herbert Hodges Jr.

Clarence Herbert Hodges Jr., 90, of Salem, Va., passed away Wednesday, September 23, 2009. He was a graduate of Andrew Lewis High School and attended Roanoke College. After serving in the United States Army during World War II, he returned to Salem and led a quiet life. He was a familiar figure about town, especially at the Salem library. As a reader, Uncle Herbert, as we knew him, followed his curiosity. He read history, popular science, esoteric philosophy, ghost stories and scholarly treatises on the paranormal. He was a good story-teller too. His ghost stories were enough to frighten his young nephews, cousins and neighbors as we sat around him on quilts in the summer night, long ago. But his best gift to us might have been the family stories that he told hundreds of times, the details and punch lines worn smooth by many tellings. Surviving are his nephews, Don Russo and his wife, Elizabeth, of Miami, Fla., Dan Russo, of Roanoke, and Dave Russo and his wife, Lila, of Cary, N.C.; his cousins, Anne Elizabeth Banks and her husband, Randolph, of Woodbridge, and Nancy Street Williams, of Staunton; his friend, Wendy Seamster, at the Veteran's Care center in Salem; and his friend, Ann Tuck, of Salem. At Uncle Herbert's request, there will be no funeral service. He wished to go quietly. In one of his books, he underlined these lines from "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," by Thomas Gray: Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenour of their way.
Arrangements by Oakey's Roanoke Chapel, Roanoke, Va., 540-982-2100.