Martha Edwina Rodie

Martha Edwina Rodie, better known to her many friends and family as “Betty”, died peacefully August 28th following a long illness.   

She was born July 8, 1925 in Macon, Georgia to Edward B. and Ethel Randall Asbell. 

She was a graduate of Savannah High School and attended Armstrong Junior College in Savannah, GA.  In 1945 immediately following WWII, she married Edwin Rodie, of Reedley, California, who had just returned from active military duty in Europe with the 9th Air Force and was stationed at Hunter Army Air Field just outside of Savannah. After Ed’s discharge from the Army, she and Ed moved to Reedley, California but after only just a short time there, returned to Savannah where they had met, and began a family, soon having two sons born to them. After a few years living in Savannah, Ed’s work brought the family to Cleveland, TN with him accepting a job at the then newly opened Bowater paper mill in Calhoun, TN in 1954. 

While her children were growing up, Betty worked primarily as a homemaker raising her two boys.  However, she occasionally enjoyed working part time as a substitute teacher in the public school system in Cleveland. Once her sons were grown in 1968, she embarked upon a new career with the Red Cross and served as director of the Cleveland Chapter office serving Bradley and Polk counties for 32 years. She was a member of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and, following her retirement from the Red Cross, she served for many years as clerk to the vestry at St Luke’s.

She was preceded in death by her parents, her husband Ed (d. 2005), and her older sister, Mary Virginia Cail of Marietta, Georgia (d. 2013). 

Betty is survived by her sons Charles Christopher Rodie of Winston Salem, North Carolina and his wife Janet, Edward Stephen Rodie of Chattanooga and his wife Sonya, and by numerous nieces and nephews.

The funeral will be held at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church with family visitation and reception starting at 12N Thursday, September 7th in the parish hall of the church, with the service to begin at 2PM during which her ashes will be placed in the church’s memorial garden. 

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made in her memory to the American Red Cross for help with the flooding disaster in Texas or to St. Luke’s Episcopal Church.