Stephen Bellew Rodi Jr.

Stephen Bellew Rodi, Jr., died of old age in his home on September 11, 2023. He was 82. In his 41-year career as a mathematics professor and department chairman at Austin Community College, Stephen was ever-devoted to the learning and success of his friends, family, colleagues, and students. Many young people said through the years that he was the finest mathematics professor they’d ever had. He eternally valued education, knowledge, service, and striving toward the good. At home, he was a loving and faithful son, brother, father, and grandfather, and we will miss him dearly.

Stephen was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on October 24, 1940, the eldest child of Stephen Bellew Rodi and Loretta O’Boyle Rodi. After bravely taking on the mantle of little man of the house while his father was in the Pacific for three years during World War II, Stephen had a traditional 1940’s boyhood, growing up in a shotgun double home on Fig Street and serving as altar boy at Incarnate Word numerous times each week. The priests knew Stephen could reliably open the church on his own and get everything ready. His whole life, he retained a genuine love of Latin, Gregorian chants, and Catholic Church history.

Stephen received a classical secondary education in New Orleans and graduated as salutatorian of Jesuit High School’s class of 1958, having especially enjoyed serving as the class president for several years and sports editor of the Blue Jay Magazine.

After high school, Stephen entered the Jesuit seminary at Grand Coteau, Louisiana, and then moved to Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, where he earned his Bachelor of Arts in 1965 with a triple major—mathematics, Latin, and philosophy. He next moved to Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he earned a Master of Science in Mathematics in 1967.

In the late 1960’s, many young people left their religious orders—including Stephen while at Marquette—but stayed close to the Catholic Church. While working on his master’s, Stephen met a young graduate student and teacher who had recently left the novitiate, Sue Bissell. They met, he said, on a golden fall afternoon in 1966 outside Gesu Church when a pesky pigeon flew over and did what pigeons do. Sue giggled and, with her trusty tissue, cleaned his sleeve. The two romanced and fell in love, meeting for mass each morning and playing fox-and-geese on the snow-covered lakefront.

Stephen and Sue married June 21, 1969, at Gesu Church. For their honeymoon, they took their first-ever plane flights together for an exuberant driving adventure through Europe. They would go on to enjoy more than 46 years of marriage—and thousands more miles of overseas travels—until Sue’s death from Alzheimer’s in 2015. Stephen’s affection for Sue and his devout care of her in her waning years signified a deep and ever-lasting love for his dear wife, a true example in heart and deed of living out the marriage vows.

In late summer 1969, Stephen and Sue moved to Austin to attend the University of Texas, both obtaining Ph.D.’s—Stephen’s in mathematics in 1974. He often spoke of his fondness for those special early years of family life spent in married student housing, highlighted by the birth of their two children, David in 1971 and Colleen in 1974.

In late 1974, the family moved to Staunton, Virginia, and then Washington, D.C., where Stephen worked as a statistician for the Food and Drug Administration and as a part-time assistant professor at Mary Baldwin College. His heart was always most drawn to full-time academia, though, and the family returned to Austin in 1976, when Stephen joined the faculty at the infant Austin Community College. Over the years, he held a variety of administrative positions at ACC, including serving as long-time Dean of the Division of Math and Physical Sciences. But first and foremost, Stephen was a teacher.

Stephen’s calculus students knew he was readily available for office hours and that his classes would be both informative and entertaining. Stephen could be quite the story-teller—always connecting the curriculum to the real-world and always a lot of fun. He was lively and quick-witted, both in the classroom and out, full of energy, ideas, and personal warmth.

Stephen also devoted himself to an extraordinary number of professional activities: president of the American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges; chair of the Mathematical Association of America Committee on Two-Year Colleges; chair of the advisory board for the calculus project at Harvard; co-editor in 2000 and 2005 of the Conference of the Board of Mathematical Sciences statistical survey of American undergraduate mathematics programs; and several others. He worked extensively, too, for the National Science Foundation as principal investigator and grant writer for countless projects across the decades.

Stephen took an active role trying to improve the City of Austin, spending many an evening speaking in front of the City Council, Planning Commission, and Library Commission, with a particular attention to improving Northeast Austin. He was the first President of the Windsor Park Neighborhood Association in 1983 and 1984. One of the most satisfying accomplishments of his life, he said, was getting the City to build the Windsor Park Branch Library on Westminster Road. With just a few neighborhood friends, he spear-headed the many-years effort with countless hours of research, proposal writing, speech giving, commission meetings, and some defeats. When the library finally opened in July 2000, it was the culmination of nearly two decades of Stephen’s dedication and tireless work. He was incredibly proud and gratified, and the neighborhood benefits enormously from his efforts to this day.

In his final years, after his 2017 retirement from ACC, Stephen continued learning, thinking, writing, and connecting. Indeed, he had just finished extensively annotating a massive tome about St. Thomas Aquinas and his Summa Theologiae and was eager to share his discoveries with his book club. Stephen’s circles of friends—from his former Jesuit brothers to his teaching colleagues to his big extended family—frequently received multi-page emails from Stephen containing well-researched dives into any number of interesting topics. These emails, usually sprinkled with Latin phrases, demonstrated the profundity of Stephen’s curiosity and his lifelong love of learning for learning’s sake.

But nothing was more important to Stephen than the nurturing of his children, David and Colleen. He would practice multiplication tables with them in elementary school, help create science fair boards in junior high, and suggest brilliant flourishes for their poetry declamation contests in high school. He stayed up late helping with trigonometry homework at the kitchen table and was a trusted advisor and confidant to them throughout their lives.

And perhaps the most fun role Stephen played in life was that of Poppy. To his grandchildren, he was a constant texter, playing word games and sending Latin riddles. He told long, animated stories over fajitas at Tres Amigos, and sat on the couch and detailed every aspect of Midnight Mass from the Vatican to them each Christmas. He had a soft heart for the human experience and valued both the joys and the melancholic sorrows life could bring. With a lovely, poetic nature, he shared those values with his precious grandchildren who learned so much from him.

Stephen is preceded in death by his wife of 46 years, Sue, and by his parents, Stephen and Loretta Rodi. He is survived by his son, David Rodi and David’s children, Zola and Jett, all of Houston, Texas. He is also survived by his daughter, Colleen Rodi Kolsti, her husband, Kyle, and their children, Matthew and Kathleen, all of Dayton, Ohio. Stephen is also survived by his younger siblings, Mark Rodi, Maureen Hoskins, and Eileen Russo, all of Louisiana, as well as a host of beloved in-laws, nieces, grandnieces, nephews, and grandnephews.

An Austin visitation and memorial service will be held on Friday, October 6, 2023, at 3:00 p.m., at Weed-Corley-Fish Funeral home (5416 Parkcrest Drive). A New Orleans requiem mass and burial will be celebrated by Archbishop Thomas J. Rodi on Saturday, October 14, 2023, at Lake Lawn Metairie Funeral Home and Cemetery (5100 Pontchartrain Blvd.), with visitation at 1:00 p.m., mass at 2:00 p.m., followed by burial.

In Paradisum deducant te Angeli.