Stephen D. Dodge of Hampton Bays died in his home on April 24. He was 93.
Mr. Dodge was born to Stephen E. and Edna Dodge in 1916, and raised in the Bronx. He attended college for a few years and majored in English, but was engaged in the transportation industry for most of his working life.
He operated trolley cars, drove buses, ran BMT subway trains and ultimately served as a motorman instructor for the New York City Transit Authority.
Family members remember him as a skilled musician; he played the piano, organ, violin and various other instruments. As a teenager in the 1930s, he played the accordion on the Hudson River Day Liner, but over the past 50 years he focused his musical energy into providing arrangements for the Eastport Bible Church.
Remembered by family and friends as a devout Evangelical, he frequently wrote music for the church and helped to organize church-affiliated concerts.
Loved ones also remembered him as an enthusiastic Democrat, a boating enthusiast and a man who frequently wrote letters to the editor of his local newspaper, most of which, his family said, “demonstrated a clear mind, a well-defined position, a sense of humor and a command of language.”
He was active in the community and gave his time to the Rampasture Point Association, the Hampton Bays Civic Association, the Hampton Bays Beautification Association, Southampton Tax PAC, the Group for the South Fork, the town’s Architectural Review Board, and, though he did not win, he ran for Southampton Town Trustee in 1991.
He is survived by his first wife, Grace Havranek Dodge of Florida; a son, Stephen C. Dodge and his wife Marjorie of Florida and the Bahamas; a daughter, Grace Housley and her husband Don of Pennsylvania; two nephews, Bobby Bilheimer and his wife Heidi of Naples, New York, and Roger Bilheimer and his wife Courtney of Connecticut; two grandsons, Jon Dodge and his wife Lisa of Florida and Jeff Dodge and his wife Jamie of Florida; a granddaughter, Debbie Cooper and her husband Joe of Virginia; six great-grandchildren, Katie and Bethany Dodge of Florida, Noa Dodge, also of Florida, Ben Housley of Pennsylvania, and Petey and Nicholas Cooper of Virginia; three great-nieces, Amy Bilheimer of Naples and Alicia and Caroline Bilheimer of Connecticut; and a great-nephew, Evan Bilheimer, also of Connecticut.
His second wife, Ethel Gustafson Dodge, a sister, Dorothy Dodge Bilheimer and her husband Robert, and a nephew, Richard Bilheimer predeceased him.
The family received visitors on April 28 at R.J. O’Shea Funeral Home in Hampton Bays.
Funeral services will be held on Thursday, April 29, at 7 p.m. at the Eastport Bible Church on Montauk Highway in Eastport. Interment will follow on Friday, April 30, at 10 a.m. at Good Ground Cemetery on Montauk Highway in Hampton Bays.
on Apr 28, 2010