Exhausted, Hodges nearly let go - but, just at the last second, he got the sense he should try to hold out a little longer.
"I didn't pray, I can't tell you that," he said. But "something told me just to hold on."
Almost immediately, a man ran into the road and slowed the horse.
From that moment on, Hodges knew that he was put on the earth for a purpose.
"God didn't take me then so He has a plan for me," he remembered thinking. "He's going to lead me in the right direction."
From then on, he lived his life with a steady, almost fearless determination. In 1957, at the age of 17, Hodges joined the Air Force, where he traveled to Texas, California, Guam, the Philippines and beyond. He always worked, whether cleaning barracks or selling oddball items, then sent the money he earned home to his mother.
When he left the Air Force, he joined the D.C. fire department, where he fought fires, rescued families and learned the importance of working together as "one" with his unit.
Coming of age during the Civil Rights era, Hodges said discrimination never much touched his life.
"I never was taught that I was different," he said. "I was always taught that God made you, you were a human being, one of God's children, and (to) make Him proud."
As a fireman, Hodges said he learned to be compassionate. He saved people, he saw people die. He was inside a church when the attic floorboards fell out from underneath him, leaving him and a fellow firefighter straddling a beam in the rafters.
"Don't let anybody tell you that firemen don't pray," he said. "There's a sense of companionship and there's a sense of God."
(Story continues below)
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Hodges' best memories are from his 10 years working on Engine No. 9, and as a fire fighter, then sergeant and eventually retiring at the rank of lieutenant.
Hodges met his wife, Margie, who lived near the fire station, and the two were married July 6, 1963, at St. Augustine Church in Washington. Together, the couple raised five children who attended Catholic school. Then, in 1979, the family moved to a house they built just south of Madison in Greene County. Though Hodges had, for five years, a long commute to the fire station, he was able to much more fully enjoy the outdoors, which he calls "magnificent even in its worst time."
"I've seen rain come sideways and thought it was pretty," he said.
On their 10 acres of land the family raised animals from pigs to chickens to sheep (they still have 46 goats), and planted numerous trees.
Even after retiring from the fire department in the early 1980s, Hodges, naturally, remained active. He took a job as a park ranger in Shenandoah National Park, where he occasionally ministered to people struck by lightning. He "ran" with the Greene County Rescue Squad.
In 1989, he went to work for the University of Virginia as transportation supervisor for the university's medical center, where he worked nights. This was followed by a stint as a fire safety officer, also at the medical center, where he trained employees and taught them what to do in case of a fire. He eventually was approached about being the safety director for the medical center, a job from which he retired (again) in 1995.