Leo Scott Rodkey

Leo Scott Rodkey was born January 18, 1941 in Topeka, Kansas to Everett Marvin and Nola Ruth (Toni) Mitchell Rodkey. The family moved to Kiowa, Kansas in 1945 when Marvin and his brother Lyell established the Kiowa Locker System. Scott attended kindergarten through high school in Kiowa graduating with the Kiowa High School class of 1959 as class president. He was active in sports and earned letters in football, basketball, track, and tennis. He participated in both vocal and instrumental musical groups and earned letters in music.

He began his long academic career at Northwestern State College in Alva, Oklahoma. He eventually transferred to the University of Kansas in Lawrence and earned a B.A. degree majoring in microbiology in 1964. He stayed at KU and earned a Ph. D. degree in 1968 in microbiology specializing in immunology. At KU he was on the Dean’s honor roll, and in 1968 was awarded the Cassandra Ritter Award (Outstanding graduate student in the Department of Microbiology). Following graduation, he took a post-doctoral research fellowship position in Chicago with Dr. Alfred Nisonoff at the University of Illinois Medical School for two years.

At Northwestern State College he met Dixie Dee Croft and they were married on June 2, 1963. In later years they both clearly remembered the first moment they noticed one another and reminisced about it many times. They were blessed by the birth of their son Travis Lincoln Rodkey on November 7, 1976.

His professional scientific career began in August, 1970 when he was appointed assistant professor in the Division of Biology at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas. There he taught a course in immunology as well as a graduate level immunology course. He was a NATO Advanced Study Institute Fellow in Grignon, France in 1970 and was a visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology in 1975 working with Dr. Lee Hood. From 1977-82 he was the recipient of a National Institutes of Health Research Career Development Award grant. As part of the award stipulated, he took a year-long sabbatical leave in 1977-78 as a member of the Basel Institute for Immunology in Basel, Switzerland as an associate of Dr. Dietmar Braun and of Professor Niels Jerne who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1984. In 1982 he accepted the position of Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston, Texas (Now McGovern Medical School). At UT-Houston he gave lectures in immunology to first-year medical students and to graduate students in the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. He continued his research activities in immunology and in 1983 was a visiting professor in the Molecular Immunology Laboratory, Institute Jacques Monod (IRBM), at the University of Paris VII, Paris, France as an associate of Professor A. Donny Strosberg.

During his research career, he was the author/coauthor of 61 peer-reviewed scientific publications, 17 invited scientific articles and/or book chapters, and 69 contributed published abstracts of oral presentations or poster presentations. He also authored 11 United States and Swedish patents for specialized organic chemicals and for the use of Rh blood group substances. He was the thesis sponsor for 6 Ph. D. students and served as research advisor and mentor for 12 post-doctoral fellows. He served on the Ph. D. or M.S. advisory/supervisory committees for 20 students. He held memberships in the American Association of Immunologists, American Electrophoresis Society, American Society for Microbiology, American Society for Investigative Pathology, New York Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and was a member of MENSA and Intertel.

He enjoyed gardening, particularly in retirement, growing large crops of tomatoes and other vegetables, and maintaining bonsai trees. He was an enthusiastic member of the Gulf Coast Wing of the Commemorative Air Force. He spent many weekends working as part of the maintenance crew for the B-17G bomber Texas Raiders. He became a certified B-17 flight engineer and enjoyed the work immensely. He earned two Commemorative Air Force Maintenance Awards. He worked as a volunteer at the Wings Over Houston airshow and he particularly treasured the time spent with his son Travis working at the airshow where their favorite activity was filling garbage bags with gasoline for use by the pyrotechnics crew to simulate bomb explosions during the airshow bombing runs. He was the Wings Over Houston warbird czar for 12 years, in charge of approximately 75 WWII and Viet Nam era aircraft.

He leaves behind his beloved wife Dixie, their son Travis and his wife Molly Daniels and his cherished grandsons Joshua Grant and Alexander James Rodkey. He is also survived by his sister Susan Rodkey Briggs.

Preferred memorial recipients include the Youth or Music program at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church or the Houston Wing of the Commemorative Air Force.