Hodgson, head of UNC Press

He led press for 22 years

CHAPEL HILL -- Kate Torrey was puzzled by the clicking at her boss' office door.

She opened it to discover Matthew Hodgson repeatedly casting his fly fishing rod.

"That was his way of creating an environment that was inducive to thinking big thoughts," Torrey said.

A mix of playfulness and seriousness defined Hodgson, head of the UNC Press for 22 years. He died early Friday at the age of 79.

Hodgson, who grew up in Tennessee, graduated in 1949 from UNC-Chapel Hill, where he edited the campus humor magazine, the Tarnation.

During the 1950s and '60s, he sold textbooks to colleges for Appleton-Century-Crofts and Houghton Mifflin.

At each stop, he would hit local libraries to learn about town and gown history, gathering facts he later used to impress clients in his career at the UNC Press.

In one town, Hodgson visited a hardware shop and asked the cashier for a Bible.

When the clerk explained that the store didn't sell Bibles, Hodgson simplified his request to a copy of the New Testament.

Baffled, the cashier brought out his manager, who wondered whether his employee had heard right. Hodgson told the manager he just wanted a tack hammer.

"He was cerebral, but he had a wonderfully sly sense of humor," said Patricia Hodgson, his widow.

Hodgson brought his skills to the academic world first at the University Press of Kentucky. Two years later, he was named director of the UNC Press, a dream come true for him.

He soon learned the press was saddled with debt and had lost some of its former prestige.

By the time Hodgson retired, UNC Press had an endowment of more than $2 million and had published a Pulitzer Prize winner, "The Transformation of Virginia" by Rhys Isaac, as well as one of the first regional encyclopedias, the "Encyclopedia of Southern Culture."

Hodgson's retired life consisted of shooting sporting clays, hunting and fishing.

Hodgson read a book per day, said Patricia, but never boasted about it.

"He was the archetype of what a man should be in this life," said his son, Edward.

In addition to his wife, Patricia Kindelan Hodgson of Chapel Hill, and son Edward Telfair Hodgson of Greensboro, Hodgson is survived by his daughter, Laura DeVivo, and two grandchildren.

His burial office will be 2 p.m. Monday at the Church of the Holy Family in Chapel Hill. His ashes will be interred at Memorial Grove at the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery.

Memorial donations can be made to the Salvation Army or the North Carolina Wildlife Fund.

(Staff writer Lisa Hoppenjans contributed to this story.)