Edith Rode

1916 - 2011

Born in New York, Edith was the only child of Fred and Lillian Pace. Her college career was initiated in 1932, deep in the depression, with a two-year stint at Hunter College in New York. Having to support herself created what was to be a long hiatus in that career. She found a job, and then in 1940, married George W. Rode. In 1942 she became a full time in-house worker with the birth of her first child, Matthew in 1942. In 1945, she gave birth to Heather, and in 1948 Jon. In 1950, she and her family moved to Medford, Oregon where she gave birth to her fourth child, George in 1954.

Nearly 30 years after Hunter, she returned to college at what was then SOCE and, after taking a Masters, began her career teaching at Eagle Point High School. In 1966, she again returned to college, this time taking her Doctor of Arts at University of Oregon. She accepted a position at Lewis Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho where she taught until her retirement.

Edith's pleasures were many and intense. She traveled to Budapest and Cairo, to Mexico and Reykjavik, sometimes alone, sometimes with children and grandchildren. She gave parties that were big, noisy and often wild. She read with great appetite across a huge range of topics: economics and business, science and poetry, linguistics and Icelandic literature. She wrote and gave papers on subjects that brought the concepts of academia to the realm of everyday living: the ethic, for example, of the Viking surfacing in the literature of the trade unions. That kind of synthesis animated her classes and decorated her conversations.

She is survived by her four children, 7 grandchildren, and 7 great-grandchildren. Her love of learning, of history, and of travel have informed the lives of many of her students, as well as her family. She will be sorely missed.

Memorials in her honor may be left to: Greenhill Humane Society, 88530 Green Hill Road, Eugene, OR 97402-9111.

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