George F Rodden

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Personal

Vocation

Lifestyle

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Family

American business executive with Ford Marketing and weekend conductor of youth symphonies for 30 years. A cellist and pianist, he conducted choral groups in youth and later, assumed leadership of the Meremblum Youth Symphonies, performing as guest conductor at Los Angeles Music Center and at Hollywood Bowl. After retirement to Northern California, he continued to conduct with the All Season Orchestra, leading musicians from pre-teen to seniors who were joined by a common love of making music. George was the son of a schoolteacher mother and a dentist father and grandson of the first Superior Court Judge in California, one of the state's settlers. He and his one younger sister recall riding the ferry from their home in Marin County to San Francisco before the Golden Gate bridge was built, and at 16, George worked for one summer on the bridge construction crew. On 1/03/1934 his dad was stricken with a stroke and died on 3/09/1934, cutting short George's education to one year junior college. He held several menial jobs before entering the army on 11/02/1942 during WW II. While there, he learned aircraft mechanics and flew as an engineer crewman. He was discharged 1/31/1946 and went to work for Slick Airways, a cargo company stationed at San Francisco Airport. He met Lois Fast on 3/31/1948 at the airport coffee-shop, and they married on 2/13/1949. In June, he went to work for Palo Alto Nash auto as a service rep until moving into sales with Dodge, 1/20/1952. On 2/20/1959 George began work with Holly Carburetor Co. From the beginning of their marriage, George and Lois were interested in UFO's and psychic phenomena, an interest that deepened into Agni Yoga after George met guru Ralph Houston in July 1955. For the rest of his life, he led weekly groups in the discussion of living ethics. George and Lois had six kids in rapid succession (one deceased). They left the San Francisco Bay area in late 1959, moving to the Los Angeles area. He began work as a traveling rep in 1952 and was home weekends from then until 9/18/1964, when he joined Ford Marketing as a service rep. He and his wife separated on 8/03/1965, divorcing the following year. George began assisting Peter Meremblum as assistant conductor in 1963 and was elected president of the California Youth Symphony Association in September 1964. On 11/21/1964, Meremblum offered George the chance to form his own group, the Pioneer Orchestra, from which kids in their teens and pre-teens trained for the prestigious Meremblum or California Youth Symphony. He married pianist Ann Jobe 11/21/77, becoming step-dad to four kids. His two families blended with a rather remarkable degree of harmony. In 1974 he had a vasectomy. In mid-March 1986 he and Ann sold their L.A. house and retired to the beautiful oceanside area of Yreka, California, moving on 4/13/1986. In the next few years, as George moved toward his 80's, he became familiar to glaucoma, diabetes in February 1988, an arrhythmic heart and a hip replacement on 8/23/1990. After driving hundreds of thousands of miles, he had a car accident on 11/12/1994, dozing off at the wheel and ending up in a canyon, embarrassed but uninjured. He was in the hospital in May 1995 with pneumonia and that same month fell and cracked his hip. He was always a tall man, 6' 4" and 200 lbs, ramrod straight and noble in carriage, but he began to lose weight and doze off in the late '90s. With all the thousands of kids whose lives he touched, and the nine kids who called him dad, George's own kids remembered keenly and with regret that he was away so much, traveling. His health became increasingly fragile and on 6/21/2001, he took a fall while stepping up to the curb, fracturing his skull. Seven of his kids traveled to his bedside, four from his first marriage and three from the second and he lived for six days, dying on 6/27/2001, Eureka, Ca.