Last week a former top Fidelity executive who later joined the second Bush administration died.

Sam Bodman passed away at home in El Paso last Friday at the age of 79. Bodman served as president and chief operating officer of Fidelity Investments in the 1970s and 1980s.

The Associated Press, the Boston Globe, MIT News, and the Washington Post all reported on Bodman's death, which comes less than two months after the death of another ex-Fidelity president.

Samuel Wright Bodman III was born in 1938 in Chicago. He earned degrees in chemical engineering from both Cornell and MIT, then became an MIT professor in the subject. He helped launch Fidelity Ventures, then rose to be Ned Johnson's number two at the overall holding company.

After 17 years at Fidelity, he left in 1987 to take over Cabot, a chemicals and materials company. In 2001, he joined the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, serving first as Deputy Secretary of Commerce (2001-2003), then Deputy Secretary of the Treasury (2004-2005), and then Secretary of Energy (2005-2009).

"I am proud that he was a member of my Cabinet, and I am proud that he was my friend," President Bush stated after Bodman's death.

Bodman was a trustee of Cornell, the New England Aquarium, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. He was an avid Boston Red Sox and New England Patriots fan and a Sudoku player.

Bodman is survived by his second wife, two daughters, a son, a stepdaughter, a stepson, a bother, 13 grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. 

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


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