Dr. Chester Lee "Chuck" Todd, a caring husband, father, doctor and community member, went home to be with Jesus on July 29, 2024.
Chester was born to Georgia Lee and Chester Soles Todd in Monroe, Louisiana. He pursued a major in medicine in order to become a medical missionary doctor. During medical school he made a summer mission trip to a TB hospital in Mbeya, Tanzania, and fell in love with Africa. In 1967, he met and married his bride of 57 years, Alice, a nursing student at TCU. Fulfilling their common medical mission calling, Chester and Alice moved to Mbeya where Chester ran the TB hospital he had visited during medical school.
Later, the Todd's were stationed in Kigoma, Tanzania, on Lake Tanganyika. Chester provided mobile medical clinics by distributing medicine, Bibles and supplies by boat to small villages up and down the lake. There were multiple Todd family adventures in Africa, everything from having their Land Rover turn over in the Serengeti where lions and elephants prowled, to Chester having to drive the Land Rover in reverse for 25 miles one time due to a broken car part, to killing a spitting cobra climbing the back stairs into their house.
In 1979 the family returned to Texas settling in Rocksprings where for the next 42 years Chester served, as he liked to say, as "the best doctor in the county . . . because he was the only doctor in the county!” Chester adopted the Rocksprings and surrounding Hill Country community as his own and loved the people, the town, and the land. He met each challenge with determination and ingenuity: from dispensing his own prescriptions when the pharmacy closed; to creating his own full-service office when the hospital ceased operations; to continuing to serve the community long past retirement age until alternative medical care was available locally for the community.
Because he served in Rocksprings for so long, he often treated multiple generations in the same family. He was known for his gentle shots and for giving out smiley-face stickers to all the kids and entertaining them with his favorite song, “You Are My Sunshine.” He listened attentively to his patients, and he loved to pray with them, and often invited them to come to church, shared about the love of Jesus, and looked after other needs they might have. He was surely one of the last doctors in Texas still carrying a black medical bag and making house calls! The Todd’s dog Snoodles greeted all patients and was known and beloved by the whole community.
Chester is survived by his wife, Alice; his daughters, Allison Todd, Jennifer (Pete) Leininger, and Tonya (Rich) Jarvis; six grandchildren and two grandchildren-in-law; and two soon-to-be-born great-grandchildren.
His family will host a come and go celebration of life visitation on Saturday, August 3, 2024, from 10:00 a.m.–11:30 p.m. at The Rocksprings Cemetery.
*All obituaries are submitted by family and friends of the deceased.
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