Mr. Roda was born in Fairhaven, MA, on August 22, 1917, to Remigio Santos Roda and Mary Elizabeth Foster (Furtado) but moved with them to Provincetown at the age of six months. At Provincetown High School, he was on the baseball (hence his nickname, "Moose," after Red Sox first baseman Dale "Moose" Alexander), football and basketball teams and a member of the National Honor Society, graduating in 1935. He began working in the post office shortly thereafter and was a postal worker for almost 40 years, retiring in 1975. He served as a signalman in the Navy for four and one-half years during WWII, serving in the Admiralty Islands in the Pacific. This experience spawned his lifelong hobby as a ham radio operator. After completing a correspondence course in radio mechanics, he built his own ham radio equipment and also was a local handyman, fixing radios and TVs for his friends and neighbors.
He served on the finance committee for a number of years and coached the Little League team, The Athletics, also for a number of years.
Always intellectually curious, he had numerous interests in addition to ham radios. He even bought a microscope in order to study the local waters. He raised beagles for hunting, his vegetable garden was beyond compare, and the flies he tied were in great demand amongst the local fly-fishing afficionados. Always a camera buff, after his retirement he became interested in developing and enlarging his own photos.
Mr. Roda is survived by his son, Steven Roda and his wife, Sandy, of Harwich, MA; his daughter, Sharon Dwinell and her husband, Dewey, of Warren, VT; grandson Schuyler Dwinell of Yarmouthport, MA, and granddaughter Sydney Dwinell of Warren, VT; two sisters, Ruth Souza of Plymouth, MA, and Nancy Codospoti of Fredericksburg, VA; numerous nieces, nephews, in-laws and extended family.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Roda was predeceased by three brothers: Charles who died in infancy, Richard F. Roda of Pennsylvania and Remigio S. "Ray" Roda Jr. of New Jersey; and three sisters, Mary Elizabeth "Liz"
Donaldson of Virginia, Jean Fish of Ohio, and Patricia Curtis of Indiana, who died earlier on the same day as Mr. Roda.
Calling hours were Tuesday, April 10, at the Gately-McHoul Funeral Home, 94 Harry Kemp Way in Provincetown, and a Funeral Mass was held on Wednesday, April 11, at 10 a.m. at St. Peter's Catholic Church with burial immediately following at St. Peter's Cemetery.
