Robert Kendall Dodge

Robert Kendall Dodge was born March 29th, 1941 to George Richard Dodge and Mary Elizabeth Dodge. His father was the shop teacher and his mother taught kindergarten in the school across the street from their house in the small town of Cincinnatus. He had an older brother, Richard. And the stories my dad told of his childhood were quite cheery. They had acres of woods behind their house, and his father kept a large garden. Richard and my dad raised chickens and sold eggs, bought a horse together and my dad mowed lawns for money. He was accepted to Rice University and narrowly escaped an unwanted career in medicine. He married Leslie Annette Rathbone in 1963. He got his PhD in English at the University of Texas where he and my mother discovered Mexican food. He taught briefly at the University of Wisconsin in Stephen’s Point, had 1 baby, me, Robert Dylan Dodge Rathbone, moved to Las Vegas to teach almost 40 years at UNLV, and have another baby, my sister, Sarah Anne Fultz. He loved teaching, reading, helping students, and baseball. He coached our soccer teams, baseball teams. He drove me to school at 6:20 in the morning one semester to go to a class I never should have signed up for. He published books on early American almanac humor and co-edited a book of Native American poetry. He was recognized for his work on almanacs by a University in Switzerland, which paid for him and my mother to visit and give a presentation. He will be greatly missed by his wife of 53 years, his son and daughter and 5 grand children.

Arrangements under the direction of Palm Downtown Mortuary, Las Vegas, NV.