Cogdell Creative

John Richard Cogdell was a devoted disciple of Jesus – faithfully loving his wife and children, skillfully teaching and advising students at the university, patiently working on innumerable house projects, and creatively baking all sorts of breads for family, friends, and fellowships.

John was born on May 24, 1936, in Quanah, Texas, to Willie Josephine Kennon Cogdell and her husband, Thomas Houston Cogdell. He grew up with his older brother Thomas James Cogdell and his sister Josephine Elaine Cogdell Doores. He was raised in Electra, Texas, primarily by his strong and beloved mother, who was known to family as “Jo-Jo”; but he also spent memorable summers on her family’s farm in Bono, Texas.

John earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at the University of Texas in Austin before attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1963. While working in Boston, John became involved with Intervarsity. His life changed when he went on a beach mission trip, because on the team was a lovely graduate piano student named Ann Safford Conkling. John and Ann wed on July 3, 1965. They moved with a new-to-them 1927A Steinway piano to Austin where John started as a tenure-track professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at UT. He taught at the university forty years until his retirement.

Dr. Cogdell’s teaching methods caused many students to complain that he actually made them think rather than simply expecting them to regurgitate answers! He became well-known as the long-term undergraduate advisor in the EE Department, but a better-kept secret was that he spent several summers mapping sunspots in the astronomical observatory at Fort Davis in West Texas. John published three successful textbooks – Foundations of Electrical Engineering (1990), Foundations of Electric Power (1999), and Modeling Random Systems (2004). He loved coming up with questions from ordinary life for the annual University Interscholastic League (UIL) slide rule, then calculator, contests. He was an active member of the Christian Faculty Association.

Ann and John had three children in rapid succession: Amy Jo Cogdell (1966), Thomas Tremaine Cogdell (1968) and Christina Grace Cogdell (1969). From 1974 on, the family lived in the Belmont family home on West 31st Street, a large Craftsman-style house that came to be known as the Bellmont-Cogdell House. John loved his woodshop, large garden, and caring for the historic home while Ann raised the kids, taught piano lessons, and accompanied many gifted musicians. In the early 2000s, they hosted the 31st Street Concerts in their home. So many people benefited from their hospitality through the years – and behind it all was John’s never-ending list of projects.

As a young undergrad at UT, John had an experience of God which defined the rest of his life. After marriage and relocation to Austin, he and Ann were seeking for a Spirit-filled Christian community. They joined The Well, a Jesus people coffeehouse, in the 1970s, where he served as an elder. When The Well dissolved, John and Ann went with many friends to St. David’s Episcopal Church, where they primarily attended the “five-o’clock service” folk mass. They then followed Thomas and Christina to Hope Chapel, which became a home church for several decades, and where he was ordained as a deacon by Dan Davis in the late 1980’s.

He and Ann never lost their connection with the Anglican church, often attending Christ Church Anglican in Austin and then becoming members of Christ Church Anglican in Waco after their move there. The move to McGregor, south of Waco, was for mutual care – John and Ann caring for the Brydon family after their home was destroyed by fire, then the Brydon family caring for him as his faculties began to fail. At the end of his life, living with his daughter Amy and her family, John reconnected with his Anabaptist leanings through their membership in the Homestead Heritage community – which provided Dad with lively services and loving pastoral care, especially in his final months.

In all of these local church bodies, John was respected as a husband and father … and baker! At Hope Chapel he became well known for providing the tastiest butter wafers for communion. He made homemade bread every weekend and self-published to great local acclaim Breads for Bruno: A Primer on Breadbaking, replete with advice on how to hold a wooden spoon for the best torque and math equations to calculate wafer output. This was how he lived, as an engineer at heart who was always joyfully thinking and teaching about life as a series of problems to solve. When the challenges of old age began to diminish his capacity, he found the courage to let go of his strengths. In doing this, he discovered new beauty in expressing emotions that had often eluded him before.

John passed away peacefully on December 10, 2024. He lived his last days surrounded by the love of family and community at the Brydon house in the Waco countryside. He was preceded in death by his brother Tom, sister Elaine, and his wife Ann. He is survived by his three children, his twelve grandchildren, and six (and counting) great-grandchildren. John is buried next to his beloved Ann in the Christ the Reconciler cemetery in Elgin, Texas.

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