Few people know more about the Town of Corning than Ron Hodge.
Hodge, the Corning Town Historian and former longtime member of the Town Board, is retiring from his position at the end of May.
Hodge, 90, has served as the Corning Town Historian in May 2018. The things he will miss the most about the job are working with local residents and working to detail the history of the Town of Corning.
“I’ve lived in the Town of Corning my whole life,” Hodge said. “I love learning about the history of the Town of Corning and sharing that information with others. I worked on putting a lot of our history books together for the last several years and it’s a lot of fun gathering that information.”
Hodge, who was on the Town Board from 2000-2009, said during his time as Town Historian people have called and asked about the town’s history all the way back to the 1800s, the history of Chemung River, about tobacco and many other things.
“The most difficult part is getting and explaining the information,” Hodge said. “Sometimes people have to come back to the Town Hall or call back because looking up the information takes some time.”
Documents at the Corning Town Historian office about the history of the Town of Corning goes back to the 1800s.
“We have books going back to the 1930s,” Hodge said. “I’ve worked on putting these books together for the past several years. We’re trying to get everything in category size. There’s information about some of the important people in the town, the former LPGA tournament, Corning Community College, of course Corning Inc. and much more.”
Diane J. Neune will replace Hodge at Corning Town Historian upon his retirement at the end of May.
“I’m so glad we found someone to be the town historian,” Hodge said. “It’s great that someone so capable will be filling this position.”
This article originally appeared on The Leader: He knows more about Corning than anyone. Ron Hodge is ready to retire
Reporting by Jeff Smith, Corning Leader / The Leader
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