Richard Hill "Dick" Bodine's Obituary
Richard Hill (Dick) Bodine, Jr., cofounder, with his wife Virginia (Jinnie), of the Bodine Company and the Bodine School, died December 16, 2015, after a long illness. He was 91. Dick was preceded in death by his parents, Richard H. Bodine and Mary Budd Stewart Bodine; his sister Mary Budd Bodine; his son Richard H. Bodine, III; and his first wife, Virginia Shannon Bodine. He is survived by his wife, Peggy Boyce Jemison Bodine; three stepchildren, Dr. David Marshall Jemison, M.D. (Hilda), Marguerite Bailey Jemison Bartlett (Mike) and Frank Zimmerman Jemison, Jr. (Jeanne); eight step-grandchildren; and one step-great-grandchild. He also leaves his cousins, Mary Janes Crisler (Jac), Nancy Stewart Dana, David Wood Stewart, Stewart Crile Crisler (Rhett),Katherine Crisler Moore (Mackey), Claudette McCord Oliver (Bill) and Elizabeth McCord Marshall (Jerry). Dick was born in Memphis on November 26, 1924. His early education was in Memphis, before he graduated from Baylor School in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He attended one semester at Georgia Tech, before his Army Reserve unit was called to active duty in 1942. The Army recognized Dick’s electronic and radio skills and engaged him in various functions in that field until the Battle of the Bulge in 1944 created a huge need for manpower. Dick was sent to Europe and finished the European war in Czechoslovakia. He then was transferred to the Japanese theater and was training for the invasion of Japan when the war ended. His unit became part of the Japanese occupation force. During his Army training in Nebraska, he met Virginia Shannon, and after a romance built mostly on letters, they began their 53-year marriage in 1946 when Dick left the Army. Jinnie had already earned an industrial engineering degree, and the two of them moved to Atlanta for Dick to finish his Electrical Engineering education at Georgia Tech. Dick joined his father’s lumber business, and he and Jinnie moved to Belzonia, Mississippi, where their only child, Richard H. Bodine, III (Rick) was born in 1952. In Belzonia, they both learned to fly and continued their interest in Ham Radio. After Dick’s father’s early death in 1956, they moved to Memphis to run and subsequently to sell the family lumber and cotton business. In 1961, they started the Bodine Company in the chicken coop behind their Germantown home. Originally the Bodine Company built and installed intercom systems and then added other specialty wiring jobs. Their real breakthrough came when Dick invented a way to light florescent lights to light signs on buses. This breakthrough led to Bodine’s major product, inverter ballasts that power emergency lighting fixtures used all over the world in hospital operating rooms, the New York Subway, and submarines. Jinnie was CEO, and Dick was chief product developer. They moved their business from the chicken coop to Collierville and built a business that invested in their employees and became very generous to the community. The Bodine Company was selected as the Small Company of the year in 1983 by the Memphis Business Journal, and Dick and Jinnie were inducted into the Society of Entrepeneurs Hall of Fame in 1994. Dick and Jinnie sold the Bodine Company to their employees in 1988. Dick and Jinnie’s only child, Rick, though very bright, had trouble in school because of his dyslexia. He made great academic progress after his parents found the Mills School, a school in Florida founded to help children with learning disabilities. However, in his second year at Mills, Rick died in a tragic drowning accident at age 17. Dick and Jinnie were sustained through his tragedy by their Christian faith and by plowing their energies and considerable entrepreneurial skills and resources into starting the Bodine School, a school for children with dyslexia, in memory of Rick. For 43 years, the Bodine School has continued to fulfill their vision, educating thousands of children in the mid-south. After the sale of the business, Jinnie and Dick retired to St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands and returned to Memphis when Jinnie became ill. Jinnie died in the late 1990s, and in 2000, Dick married Peggy Boyce Jemison, who had recently lost her husband of 52 years, Frank Z. Jemison. Peggy and Dick had over 15 wonderful years of married life together and their youngest grandchild is named Marshall Bodine Jemison and called Bo for his grandfather. Dick was a member of Second Presbyterian Church and the Memphis Country Club. The family requests that, in lieu of flowers, any memorials go to the Bodine School, the Pink Palace, the Trezevant Foundation or a charity of the donor’s choice. A Memorial Service will be held at Second Presbyterian Church on Saturday , December 19, 2015, at 10 o’clock and the family will receive visitors at Memorial Park, 5668 Poplar Avenue on Friday, December 18th from 4-6PM. Funeral arrangements have been entrusted to Memorial Park Funeral Home and Cemetery, 5668 Poplar Ave. Memphis, TN 38119. “Celebrating Life… Behind the Stone Wall”
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