Jeanna Duerscherl | The Roanoke Times

Elmer Hodge hugs his wife Sue in the back yard of their son's house. The couple met at the College of William and Mary, where they attended school with Darlene Burcham, now Roanoke's city manager.

Stephanie Klein-Davis | The Roanoke Times

From left, Roanoke county board chairman Richard Flora, president of English Construction Doug Dalton, Roanoke County Director of Economic Development Doug Chittum and Elmer Hodge talk after breaking ground for a new recreation center.

Stephanie Klein-Davis |The Roanoke Times

Anne Marie Green, who was the director of community relations from 1989 to 2000 and is now director of general services, has worked with Elmer Hodge for 19 years.

Stephanie Klein-Davis |The Roanoke Times

Elmer Hodge chats with Doug Dalton, president of English Construction, which is building the new recreation center in North Roanoke County, at a groundbreaking ceremony for the facility. They were walking over to grab their shovels for the actual groundbreaking ritual.

A lot of people know the story of Elmer Hodge's first day as Roanoke County administrator:

How he rode with state troopers to get from Chesterfield County to his new job on Nov. 5, 1985, the day the Roanoke Valley was submerged under what the National Weather Service now considers the second worst flood in the state's history.

How his co-workers describe him staying cool in the midst of disaster, organized in the midst of chaos, tireless in the midst of seemingly unending work.

Hodge jokingly refers to that day as his birthday. Certainly, it was a baptism.

But as deep an imprint as that event had on his 22-year tenure, another a few years later and less widely known has proven to be a pivotal experience Hodge carries with him into retirement today.

It was another catastrophe. The date was Dec. 14, 1989.

Just after 2 a.m., a resident of Shenandoah Homes retirement community off Williamson Road activated an emergency alarm.

Although the manager responded immediately, going to the third floor apartment, smoke was already so thick she couldn't get to the resident. An electrical fire quickly spread and there was a mad scramble to get residents, many of them disabled, out of the six-story building.

It took 20 minutes for firefighters and rescue workers to arrive. At the time, the Hollins Fire Station had no overnight crew, and there was no mutual aid agreement that would have transferred the call to a nearby Roanoke fire station.

When Hodge arrived, rescuers were already at work evacuating the 170 residents. But he found himself joining neighbors and passers-by, even reporters who put down their cameras and notebooks, to help move people in wheelchairs or with trailing oxygen equipment into buses.

Four residents died.

The incident helped inspire Hodge to work to expand the number of career fire and rescue workers supplementing the volunteer system. And it helped prod him to work for mutual aid pacts that ensure the closest available crew, even if it is outside the county, can respond to an emergency.

But it also made him think that if he ever took up a second career, he'd like to have some medical training he could use to help people, as his grandmother, a nurse, had.

And that has led Hodge to train as an emergency medical technician.

In September, Hodge, 64, will join the next class of trainees in the county's EMT program, then take his place as a volunteer, probably with the Vinton Rescue Squad.

As he's worked with the Roanoke County Fire and Rescue Department over the years, "I've seen how helpful you can be, the impact you can have on people's lives."

In an interview this week, Hodge reflected on the people and events that have shaped his life and career, and now his retirement.

As those who have known him longest and best could have predicted, Hodge mentions three people who have had the greatest influence on him -- his father, his mother, his wife.

John Chambliss, who has been one of Hodge's assistants since 1985 and will serve as interim administrator until a successor is hired, noted that "the first word that comes to mind in describing him is 'family.' "

By that, he said he meant not only Hodge's biological family, "but also the way he allows employees ... to work almost like a family as well."

It's a sentiment echoed by Dianne Hyatt, the county's chief financial officer, who was assistant finance director when Hodge arrived.

He has always been concerned about individuals, she said. "You're not just here to work ... it feels like being part of his family, too."

Family is high on Hodge's short list of retirement plans, he says. He and his wife, Sue, will spend time with their five grown children and seven grandchildren.

But he's not quite ready to settle under the throw presented to him by the board of supervisors as a parting gift this week.

In addition to his rescue squad duties, Hodge will continue to represent Roanoke County and Virginia on the committee planning the 75th anniversary celebration of the Blue Ridge Parkway in 2009 and 2010.

The parkway has become another of Hodge's great loves since moving here, and represents one of his few regrets at the end of his career. He recently said he wished he'd been able to do more to protect the views from the parkway.

His appreciation of nature dates to his childhood, when he lived in rural Mecklenburg County where his grandfather was a tobacco farmer. He "picked tobacco, worked mules, milked cows, slopped hogs, made sausage, churned butter" and worked in the garden.

But, much as Hodge loved the outdoors, the hard work of cultivating and picking tobacco was an incentive for two major decisions, he said: first, not to smoke; second, to go to college.

At the College of William and Mary, Hodge majored in psychology, "designing personnel systems, that type of thing. Experimental psychology and what they then called industrial psychology."

He minored in business, getting his first taste of the new field of computers.

"That was my first love in business."

But while he was falling in love with computers, he was also falling in love with a classmate, Sue Rankin. She, Hodge and Darlene Burcham, now Roanoke's city manager, were friends and classmates, all psychology majors.

Hodge and Rankin married in the fall of 1966, shortly after graduation.

Hodge went to work as a software programmer for Burlington Industries, which he left in 1969 to work for Price Waterhouse in Charlotte, N.C.

That same year, a chance conversation on an airplane provided another pivotal moment in his life.

His seatmate was eager to talk about recently joining the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as the Mormons.

Hodge was intrigued, and though he never saw the man again, he decided to find out more. Eventually he and his wife converted to what has been another lifelong passion.

Soon, their children were coming along and Hodge was eager to spend more time at home. He went to work as information technology director for Santee Cooper, South Carolina's state-owned electric and water utility.

Then in 1976, he came home to Virginia as information technology director for Chesterfield County. He had risen to assistant county administrator when Roanoke County came calling in 1985.

Curiously, his reaction to the flood he walked into here was foreshadowed by an incident his father faced 16 years earlier in September 1969.

The remnants of Hurricane Camille swept through central Virginia creating flooding that killed 117 and caused a half-billion dollars worth of damage.

At the flooding's height, E.C. Hodge, a track supervisor for the Southern Railway, was called out to check for damage. He found a trestle on the Amtrak passenger line completely washed out -- although the tracks, welded together, still crossed an angry Tye River.

He called in time to stop the train.

On his way home along U.S. 29, mudslides blocked his progress and trapped him in his car overnight. Another railroad worker, witnessing the slides, assumed Hodge had been buried and killed. He called Hodge's wife with the grim news.

The next day Hodge was able to get out and reassure his family that he was OK.

But he didn't go home.

For the next 30 hours, he went into the surrounding neighborhoods to help who he could as he waited for railway repair equipment to arrive.

"In the lightning flashes, he'd seen mobile homes washing down there, had heard people yelling and screaming," his son recalled. "He stayed and helped them recover from the flood.

"That was the kind of determination I learned from him -- perspiration, determination, perseverance."

Hodge says to accomplish what he has in Roanoke County, he combined those lessons with the big one he learned here: "We are stronger as a team than we can ever be individually. And that applies regionally, as well as to us as a county.

"That's been borne out time and time again. Look at the [Spring Hollow] reservoir." Conceived as a regional project before Hodge arrived, he helped push the board of supervisors to complete the project even when other localities backed out.

In the drought of 2002, Roanoke city residents faced severe water restrictions and the benefits of a regional water supply and distribution system became obvious. In 2004, 10 years after the reservoir was built, the Western Virginia Water Authority was created and the city and county utilities were joined.

"As great as that project [the reservoir] was, it's far greater now because we're working regionally," Hodge said.

But, faced with a long list of accomplishments during his tenure, Hodge over the past few weeks repeatedly has deflected praise to the county staff, particularly his department heads.

"I haven't done any of these things by myself. And many of the things I've been given credit for were ideas others came up with.

"I get energized by their vision and enthusiasm, and we've worked it out together. I helped get the tools to do what they wanted to do.

"That's been a real privilege to me."