Mr. James Roddy

When I got to Oakwood as an elementary education major I perused my class bulletin and to my dismay I discovered that I needed four PE classes and a methods of teaching PE class to graduate. 😫 This was not good news to me at all. Seriously, I am not good at sports! Me and balls, we don’t get a long! And up until that moment we didn’t have to be. As long as you really participated in PE class in elementary and high school you were sure to pass, but in college you needed to really learn a skill. I strategically studied the bulletin and tried my best to pick non competitive, non team sport PE classes. I chose weight lifting (Roddy), Step Aerobics (Shaw), and Physical Conditioning (Roddy). In spite of my best efforts to avoid the competition based sports I had to choose one more PE class. So I chose Roddy’s basketball class. At least I watched basketball, maybe that would help. 🤷🏾‍♀️

Even though Roddy knew me from weight training and physical conditioning (which I passed because Roddy had an emergency during my two mile run final and had to leave! Isn’t God good?), I realized that he would really get to know me in basketball. There was no charming my way out of this. My winning personality would not do the job. I either learned how to play or I didn’t. Roddy assured me, “Jennifer, I’m not grading you on how well you play. I’m grading you on how much you improve.” I knew Roddy thought these were encouraging words to me but  I knew there would be no improvement. Soon Roddy realized it too. At first he tried his hardest to get me to dribble and shoot but midway through the class he just stood on the sidelines in what I think was disbelief. I passed the class. Still to this day I don’t know how, but I’m grateful.

Similar to how I had to take certain PE classes to fulfill my Elementary Education requirements, as I look over what I know about Mr. Roddy’s life, and I consider the “life classes” that God had him take, I am amazed and astounded. God told this NC born white man, during the civil rights era of the 1960’s to move to Huntsville, AL. God told him to teach at a historically black college and love those black students as if they were his own; allow black people to not only be his colleagues and equals but his superiors; totally immerse himself and his family in their culture; become a lifetime member of their church even though the Central Adventist Church (the white church in Huntsville) would have been a welcomed diversion; send your children—your white children—to their schools, risking them being teased or feeling out of place, trusting that they would become better people because of it. I think those “life classes” were a lot to ask. But Mr. Roddy passed them with flying colors, and our entire Oakwood community is the better for it. 

However, God was not finished with Mr. Roddy’s matriculation. He had an even more rigorous class for him to take. Oakwood College students my age got the privilege of having a front row seat to witness this test. 

I don’t know if Mr. Roddy saw this one coming. I don’t know if he hoped he could avoid it, like I wished I could have avoided his basketball class. But we got to see him face it head on. We watched his son Jordan, while attending Oakwood, meet and fall in love with Gilda, a black young lady from Mauritius by way of Australia, and we also watched his daughter Jamie, while attending Oakwood,  meet and fall in love with a black young man named Stephen from Berrien Springs, MI. Boy did we watch! We knew Mr. Roddy loved us. But did he really love US? This would be the test I would remember the most. It was one thing to be a missionary of sorts to the African American Community. It’s a ‘whole nother thing’ to truly make us family; to become one with us. We don’t know what happened in his house or in the chambers of his heart. But the Mr. Roddy we saw gave evidence that he embraced it all. It only takes a look at pictures of him holding his very brown grandchildren to prove he passed the class.

I couldn’t help but giggle when it was announced that Royal Funeral Home, the oldest black business in town, would be handling his arrangements. I nodded my head in agreement saying, “Yeah, that’s about right!”

“Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.’”

Matthew 25:23 NKJV

*Mr. James Roddy served Oakwood College now University for 52 years in the Physical Education Department.