September 26 | 10 AM |
Join us as we Celebrate the Life of Dr. Kenneth V. Dodgson in a Memorial Service on September 26 at 10 AM in the sanctuary of the First Baptist Church of Rochester. There will be a reception immediately following the service in Hubbell Hall with family and friends, memories, and pictorial remembrances.
Dr. Dodgson’s obituary:
Kenneth Vincent Dodgson, M.D., died on July 12, 2026, at his home at St. John’s Meadows, Rochester, NY. Born March 10, 1926, in Mentone, IN, Ken was the second of the four children of Arthur Stanley Dodgson and Ruth Naomi Roth Dodgson. He earned his A.B. degree from Franklin College, Franklin, IN, in 1946 and the B.D. degree from Colgate-Rochester Divinity School (now CRCDS) in 1948, and, entering medical school in 1949, received his M.D. from Temple University Medical School in 1953. In 1976 he received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Franklin, and in 2011 the Distinguished Alumni Award from CRCDS.
From a young age, he was committed to following in the path of his maternal grandfather, father, and older brother in becoming a minister in the American Baptist Church. However, to fulfill a science requirement at Franklin, he enrolled in a zoology course, which involved much drawing, which he enjoyed. At the end of the semester, his professor asked if he had considered a career in medicine. That question changed the course of his life: he began to consider how to pursue both ministry and medicine.
While in college, Ken had been active in Baptist Youth Fellowship, serving on the Indiana Executive Committee, the National Board, and then, while national president in 1948-49, leading a delegation of Baptist young people from the U.S. to the Third Baptist World Youth Congress in Stockholm the summer of 1949. That was his first trip overseas.
Ken met Sally Lewis when both were members of the Executive Committee of Indiana Baptist Youth Fellowship and members of the National Council of Baptist Youth Fellowship. They were married July 4, 1952, in the First Baptist Church, Terre Haute, IN. Their first years of marriage were spent in Moorestown, NJ, where their first daughter was also born. Ken finished his final year of medical school, his internship at Temple University Hospital (1953-54) and a general surgery residency at Burlington County Hospital, Mt. Holly, NJ (1954-56).
During his divinity and medical school years, Ken’s desire to intertwine the vocations of ministry and medicine remained. For both Ken and Sally, serving overseas was the answer. In April 1955, the Board of the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society (now Board of International Ministries) commissioned them to Jorhat, Assam, in Northeast India, which became their home from March 1957 to mid- 1981. As chief surgeon at the Jorhat Christian Medical Centre, Ken expanded the surgery program, trained colleagues in surgery, and, by necessity, acted as a hospital architect for the 175-bed hospital, 50-bed tuberculosis sanitorium, and 30-bed leprosy clinic. He designed a new nurses’ hostel, leprosy clinic, outpatient department, and operating room suite, among other building projects.
The 10 years that Ken and Sally had expected to spend working and living in Jorhat grew to 24 happy and fulfilling ones for the Dodgson family, which by 1961 included the addition of two more daughters. Throughout the rest of his life, Ken spoke of the years at the Jorhat hospital as challenging and enriching, perhaps the crowning achievement of his long career in medicine. He was proud of the quality of medical and surgical care he and his colleagues at the small hospital were able to provide for the 100,000 patients admitted in his time there, over 33,000 of them for surgical or obstetrical procedures. He continued to remark, with gratitude, at how the hospital has continued to flourish in the years since he and Sally left India.
His medical career took a different, but equally satisfying, path in 1981, when he was named a visiting associate professor of surgery at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry and then associate general surgeon until 1993. He was clinical assistant professor of environmental medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center from 1993 until his retirement in 2000 and was the clinical director of the Occupational and Environmental Medicine Program from 1990 to 1994.
Throughout his life, Ken remained a staunch liberal Baptist, and when he and Sally settled in Rochester, they joined the First Baptist Church, where he had been a student minister during his time at CRCDS. His church community was a vital part of his life, and at various times he served as moderator (helping to establish First Baptist as a Welcoming and Affirming Church), on the Board of Deacons, and on the Board of Christian Education, faithfully attending services right up until his death. He also served as president of the Executive Board and on the Ordination Council of American Baptist Churches of the Rochester/Genesee Region and as president of the Board of the Samaritan Pastoral Counseling Center.
His wife, Sally, died March 6, 2017. He is predeceased by his brothers, Stanley Dodgson and Wilfred Dodgson, and a son-in-law, Chris Cleary. He is survived by his sister, Lucille (John) Mayo of Sarasota, FL; his daughters, Kim (Marc) Labinger of Los Angeles, CA, Kathryn Dodgson of Arlington, MA, and Carol (Dale) Klooster of St. Louis, MO; five grandchildren, Cooper (Brittany) Labinger, Eli Labinger (Miriam Arellano), Jeremy Lyon Taylor (Alice Johnson), Alison Klooster (Michael Harrigan), and Anya Klooster (David Fleming); and two great-granddaughters, Chloe Harrigan and Isla Klooster-Fleming.