Thomas Joseph Rogers
(1915-1997)
Memoirs
Copyright (c), 2006 by Charles Rogers. This is a privately published family historical record. Anyone may copy it; but you may not sell it or use it for commercial purposes.
Click to see a larger copy of the portrait.
Dedication
I dedicate this work to my descendants. Without the encouragement of my granddaughter Christine and my daughter Joess, it is doubtful I would ever have attempted the task.
In going thru pictures of people I have known,
places I have been and construction jobs I have worked on I realized
that my family actually knows very few of the details of my life. In fact I find it impossible to remember all
the names, locations, sequences or dates.
Early Memories
I was born on 29 September l915. My father was Willie D. Rogers a furniture finisher. Mother was Lena Myrtle Rogers (Allen.) I have one sister who is 22 months older than I. I am unable to remember anything for certain that happened until after I started to school in the fall of 1921. I know that Mother and Daddy were always arguing and fighting because of Daddy’s drinking. I can remember no instant where Mother, Daddy, Sister and I were all together. My earliest memories are of events where I am with my relatives and with only one parent. If two parents are involved it is either Daddy and Willie Mae (my stepmother) or Mother and Bill (my stepfather).
After Mother and Daddy separated Mother stayed
close to members of her family. Sister and
I spent a lot of time at Uncle Johns and Aunt Carry's playing with Reva
and Johnny their kids. Nantie and Uncle
Walter lived close by and all the kids had a preference for Nantie,
everyone’s favorite Aunt. Daddy lived in a rooming house and I stayed with him for a
while. The woman that ran the place was
supposed to watch out for me during the day. This
was about a mile from where Mother's Uncle John and family lived on
Live Oak St. in Dallas, Tx. Nantie and
Uncle Walter; and Uncle John and Family, Mothers Aunt and Uncle, lived
about a block from there.
Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins
I lived with Mother across from Fair Park in a
two-story house with a large tree growing thru the floor and roof of
the porch. It seems like during the period
we were at this location that Uncle Sam, one of Daddy’s brothers, Aunt
Vergie, and Margarite enter the picture for a period.
There was
also a place about six blocks from Exall Park where I remember playing
in the yard with a kid from down the block, we would play farming in
the back yard. We used string for wire fences and all types of small
items buttons, corks rocks etc. to represent farm animals.
We built imaginary houses barns and other farm buildings for our
imaginary farms. We pulled the trolley
connection to the streetcar power cable for our trick or treat on
Halloween, stopping the car and putting it in darkness.
Uncle Earnest was married and had two daughters. I don't know as I ever saw his wife or the girls. They lived someplace in Oklahoma. Uncle Ruby met his wife Pearl while in Oklahoma. They moved back to Dallas and bought a small house on one acre in Lisbon,Tx. They had a daughter Ruby Louise and a son Marvin. Uncle Ruby was the only one of the family that owned a house. It was considered the Rogers Home by the family.
Daddy had two sisters Gertrude and Mary Agness. Both were married several times and neither had any children. I seldom saw either until after we moved to San Antonio and I was in High School. Daddy’s family kept in touch with each other thru Pearl Rogers, who took care of Granddaddy until he died. Anytime there was any news it was relayed by Pearl.
Aunt Mary came to San Antonio shortly after
Mother and Bill bought the house on Recio St. Aunt Mary was divorced
from Author Wicher. Mother had introduced
Aunt Mary to Mr. Witcher. Mother introduced her to Mr. Sexauer; they
eventually got married. Aunt Gertrude came
to San Antonio to visit, and Mother introduced her to Allen Campbell
whom she married. Neither Aunt Mary nor
Aunt Gertrude had any children.
Uncle John had a baby son and a
married daughter, we called her Bill. She died in child birth. Aubrey is the boys name.
Nantie (Mothers Aunt and Uncle Johns sister)
lived about a block from there, in a two story house on the corner
across from Exall park. We kids spent as
much time at Nantie’s as we could. She was our favorite.
Grandpa had ten (10) children; seven boys,
Ruby, Athey, Sam, Willie, Earnest, Eugene, and Edgar, three girls
Gertrude, and Mary Agness, and one died in infancy.
The story I have heard is, When Grandma Rogers died that Grandpa
lost interest in doing anything. I
remember him only as an old man chewing tobacco and sitting in a
rocking chair on the porch or in the yard.
Uncle Eugene lived with a Mrs. Montgomery
about two blocks from Exall Park. Mrs.
Montgomery also boarded Grandpa Rogers for some time.
I'm not sure but that most of the Rogers boys stayed at Mrs.
Montgomery's at one time or the other. Uncle
Ed had a small haberdashery. He was the
one in the Rogers family that everyone else went to for financial help.
He was married but had no children. I do
not remember ever seeing his wife, Aunt Effie, I never went to their
house and don't remember anyone else talking about going.
Uncle Ed visited Grandpa and Uncle Ruby about every two weeks.
He paid Mrs. Montgomery and Pearl for taking care of Grandpa.
Uncle Earnest was married and had two
daughters. I don't know as l ever met his
wife or the girls. They lived someplace in
Oklahoma. Uncle Ruby met his wife Pearl
while in Oklahoma, they moved back to Dallas and bought a small house
on one acre in Lisbon,Tx., they had a daughter Ruby Louise and a son
Marvin.
Grandpa Rogers was moved from Mrs.
Montgomeries' house to Uncle Ruby and Pearls when they got settled in
Lisbon. Daddy and Willie Mae also rented a
house about a block from them. I was
living with Daddy and Willie Mae while they lived there.
I went to school in Lisbon. When Daddy came
home drunk I would go stay with Uncle Ruby and Pearl until things
cooled off.
Aunt Mary and Aunt Gertrude were around and
usually trying to not be embarassed by the rest of the family. They both liked Mother very much and visited
her often. In fact Mother introduced them
to men they married. Aunt Mary became Mrs.
George Sexauer and Aunt Gertrude became Mrs. Allen Campbell and lived
in San Antonio, Tx. Both are buried in San
Antonio. Neither had any children.
Uncle Athey was the first of the boys to die,
then Uncle Sam, Eugene, Earnest, Willie (Daddy), Ruby, and Uncle
Ed-(ward) Grandpa and Aunt Effie are all buried in the same plot in a
North Dallas cemetery.
To complete the genealogy of the Rogers family
as I know it: Sam had 1 girl Margurite,
Earnest had 2 Girls (names ?), Ruby had 1 boy Marvin, 1 Girl Ruby
Louise. Willie had 1 Girl Ruth Virginia, 1 boy Thomas J.
The Rogers name from Joseph Edward Rogers ends with the son of
Thomas J. Rogers, ie:. Charles W. Rogers. Marvin Rogers was married and had a son whose
name was changed to that of his mother’s second husband who adopted the
boy.
Working as a boy
When I got big enough to do some of the chores
around the house and yard, I would occasionally get an offer of a
nickel or dime to do something for someone else. I
learned that was the way to pay for little things that usually I
couldn't get. I looked for ways to earn a few cents.
I normally had some small change even though I never expected or
received a regular allowance.
Uncle John and Daddy told Johnny and me to dig
some worms for fish bait and we could go fishing with them. Johnny and I had discovered that the horse lot
where the Ice Co kept their horses was a good place to dig. We got a can full in just a few minutes. They stopped at a bait store to buy some
minnows and the man there told us he would buy what we could bring him. We could fill a gallon bucket with enough
worms to get 50 to 75 cents any day after school. We
would take the worms to the bait store, then we would go to one or two
shows at 5 Cents each eat a couple of hot dogs at 5 cents each go to
maybe two more shows before going home.
Kids were not restricted in those days to the
yard or block. We pretty much had the
whole town to roam in, as long as we got home for meals and when we
were told. Parents didn't have the worry about where kids were or that
someone had kidnapped them. Nearly
everyone knew kids by sight. And most people stayed outside most of the
time except in winter. Very few families had automobiles, and only
farmers or the rich had horses
In my running around I discovered a junk yard
where they would buy soda water bottles, milk bottles, jake bottles,
scrap copper, bronze, brass, aluminum, paper, rags, in any amounts we
brought to them. I also found out that I could buy newspapers at
wholesale and sell them on the streets. I
could make a few cents almost any time, in Dallas, just by keeping my
eyes open.
I won second place as the best marble player
at Exall Park, the winner won by a flip of a coin for first shooter. I would play with the other kids win their
marbles then sell them back.
The Abilene Reporter had two or three extra
sections for its Sunday edition, these
were printed early and put to gather before and after press Saturday
night. This supplementing was done by boys
going to one of the local Colleges. I learned how it was done and
sometimes I would help one of the guys catch up when they got behind.I
would stay at the print shop until time to get my papers and sell them
to the people that didn't take the paper regular.
I bought myself a second hand bicycle for
$5.00 and until the bike broke down I occasionally delivered telegrams
out in the residential section. In Abilene.
Bill got a job with a contractor that
specialized in building school houses. He had a contract to build two
small schools one in Boling and one in New Gulf, Tx.When school was out
for the summer we moved to Boling and I got a job as Water Boy on the
school houses. I was 10 years old at the
time.
My job was
to carry water to all the workmen on the job, I had to carry two water
buckets with dippers. One bucket was for
the Whites and one for the Blacks. I was
paid $1.00 day plus time and half over 8 hrs. I
was on the payroll any time Bill was. One
time when a concrete floor slab was being poured I received 36 hrs pay. I kept my pay checks to buy school clothes. In fact the company bookkeeper sent me a
letter telling me to cash the checks.
I got my first experience at removing forms on
this job. One section of a floor slab was
too close to the ground for anyone in the wrecking crew to crawl under
and remove the lumber. I could get under
so with the help of the pusher telling me what to do,
I removed the lumber piece by piece. The
schools at Boling and New Gulf were built by the same crews. This kept
everyone busy.
We moved from Boling to Mexia, Tx. I went to school in Mexia,
from there we moved to Abilene, with short stops at several
small towns in between. We eventually
ended up in McCamey.
McCamey
In l927 Bill got a job in McCamey Tx. and we
moved there. It was a typical oil boom
town at the time and Bill’s job was on a new brick school building. The
West Texas Utility Office was the first masonry building in town. The
new school was the second.
We lived in a typical clap board three room
house, with electricity, one light bulb each room, no bath, salt water
in the yard, none in the house, drinking water $1.00 per 25 gal barrel
-- hauled by tank truck and delivered twice weekly.
We had an outdoor two hole toilet, a wood bench for the water
barrel, a trench out behind the toilets for garbage, boards on the
ground to walk on to stay out of the mud, no screens on windows or
doors. Sand was 1/8" to 1/4" thick on all
horizontal surfaces after a sand storm. There
was practically no vegetation and the wind was pretty strong most of
the time.
School was in a clap board building just like
the houses. It had been built the quickist
way possible to have some protection from wind and rain.
None of the streets were even graveled. There
was work going on every where you looked but first priority was given
to that related to the oil field.
We arrived in McCamey in a Dodge coupe with Bill's tool box on the back bumper, Mothers cedar chest on the front bumper, Sister and I sitting on the back trunk and Mother and Bill in the front and every thing else we owned tied on. Bill had anticipated tire trouble due to weight and the condition of the roads, trails would be a better description. We started the trip with two new tires and two good spares, bought one more new tire in route and arrived in McCamey on one tire, one rim and two flats. The car was parked by the side of the house and there it stayed until Bill bought a new Whippet. We lived only one block from the new school location and about five blocks from everything else. Walking was not that bad except in a heavy rain. It didn't rain that often.
I joined what I thought was a Boy Scouts of America that turned out to be a scam to get some quick money from the local business people. Under the supervision of our organizer, we scouts-to-be hauled, in a borrowed dump truck, donated gravel from a local graved pit and filled up pot holes in the streets of the business part town. Mr. Organizer collected donations, to help the Troop get supplies, etc. needed to get started. He pocketed the money and disappeared.
On 11 November, Armistice Day,
Bill had an accident on the job. He cut his finger off in an electric
saw.
One day while I was on the school
play ground, I heard an loud explosion. I looked up and saw a large dark cloud of
smoke. An oil tank had exploded at the
refinery. It burned for several days. Two welders were killed.
Several boys and I decided to
build us a den in the garbage ditch out behind the toilets. It was more like a storm cellar than anything
else. The garbage dump had plenty old tin,
lumber, etc, for a dirt roof. We widened
the ditch for about eight feet, We filled one end of the trench in and
slopped the other for an entrance.
When we wanted to hide we went to the den. A couple of the boys and I would make excursions to the abandoned oil rigs to gather up scrap metal like brass, copper, aluminum to sell to the junk dealer. We kept ourselves in pocket change and had fun too.
Bill and a couple of men from his
job decided to go dynamite fishing. I went
along since I had never been to the Pecos River, I also had never seen
any fishing with dynamite. They took a
half stick of dynamite tied to a weight to make it sink and a float to
keep it about a foot off the bottom, lit the fuse and tossed it into
the deep part of the stream. The fish all
sizes would be stunned or killed and float to the surface.
You gather up the kill and it was a good one. We had a real good
fish fry when we got back to the house.
With Nantie and Uncle Walter
Mother had an aunt, whom the entire family
called Nantie. When Mother was a baby she
said Nantie for Auntie. The other
relatives took it up. Her real name was
Vergie. Nantie came to visit us around
Christmas time and I went back to Paris with her. I
would graduate from the same grammar school as Mother did.
I could visit with Daddy and Willie Mae, and other relatives,
and help Nantie out in the garage pumping
gas.
Uncle Walter owned a garage and auto paint
shop. Nantie kept the books, and tended to
selling gasoline and oil. Daddy was
working for Uncle Walter as an Automobile painter.
He was also teaching Roy Murphy, Uncle Walters son by his first
wife, how to paint cars. Daddy must have
been very good as a painter. All the shop
owners knew Daddy was an alcoholic but they would
give him a job if he was sober.
Willie Mae and Daddy rented a little house at
the edge of town and I attempted to visit with them for a while but
Daddy’s drinking had not changed. He would
work and get a pay day then go on another drunk. He would get mad about
something and would take it out on Willie Mae and if I happened to get
in the way I was included in the abuse.
When the abuse got too bad Willie
Mae would go and stay with some of her relatives for a while. Daddy would promise to not drink so much and
beg her to come back to him. He would be very good until he got another
good payday and another drunk.
Uncle John Goodwin, Mother’s
uncle, and Aunt Carrie lived in Paris, they had three children, Reva
Mae, Johnnie, and Aubrey.
Aunt Millie, her three children by her first husband, Girlene, Mary, and Lester Boltz, and Evelyn Stone her daughter by Russell Stone, Grandma and Grandpa Goodwin all lived on a farm about 15 miles from Paris. During the period while I was going to school Lester died of a ruptured appendix.
Working for Uncle Walter
Uncle Walter had obtained a farm thru some
deal about a car. The farm had about 5
acres of black eyed peas and about the same amount of tobacco. He would get me, Johnnie and Sam, a black
handy man who worked for him. We would all go to the farm to get the
tobacco bugs off the tobacco leaves, pick the peas, or cut weeds. We would pick a big bunch of peas and what he
couldn’t sell he tried to eat. We had peas
on the table three times a day.
Uncle Walter had several second hand cars that
people would leave with him to sell, or that he would buy and fix up to
sell. They taught me to drive so that I
could run errands. I used a Model T Ford
Sedan. No license was required for anyone;
all you needed was a car. During the time
Lester was in the Hospital and the burial I was kept pretty busy.
I did a lot of work around the garage. I waited on customers, general cleanup, pumped
gas and put oil in cars, took care of the dogs. I
was even using the cash register when an adult was not present. The gas
was pumped into a glass bowl with markings by quarts to 10 gals, using
a hand pump. The oil was taken from a 55
gal barrel and put into the cars using a quart can with a spout. We also cleaned the windshields and checked
air in the tires. It was nothing unusual for a car to have two or more
spare tires. We also fixed flats.
Uncle Walter was given a female cur when they
lived in Dallas. They called her Pat and
made a housedog of her. When she got old
enough the usual happened and Pat became a Mother of one. It was about
the time the puppy’s eyes opened that Uncle Walter brought home another
puppy that didn't have its eyes open. Pat
adopted the new puppy. It was a male solid
white Eskimo Spitz. Some one referred to
him as Murphy Jr. and the Murphy stuck. Nantie & Uncle Walter kept Pat &
Murphy until they died.
Schools
I started to school in Paris, Tx. in the Fall
of 1921, from there I was transferred to Dallas. I
do not know how many times I transferred from one school to another or
back to one I had attended before. I
finished Elementary School (7th Grade) in Paris, Texas in 1928. I started Hi School (8th Grade) in Abiline,
Texas. transferred to Harlandale, Tex., back to Abiline back to
Harlandale, then to Brackenridge Hi in San Antonio, Tex.
I graduated from Thomas Jefferson Hi School in San Antonio,
Texas on June 2, l932. (11th Grade)
At one time I attempted to recall just how many times I changed
schools during the 11 years. I came up
with the number 21. Six of those times
were in Hi school
Several times I would transfer out of one
school and back to one I had previously attended.
Grammar Schools Attended
Fourth Ward Paris
Hi Schools Attended
Abilene Hi Abilene, Tx
Harlandale Hi Harlendale, Tx Brackenridge Hi San Antonio, Tx,
Correspondence Schools.
Chicago Technical College Chicago Ill., International Correspondence
Schools Scranton, Pa.
Attendance
by Semesters (? indicates uncertainty of actual date)
|
Fall 1921 |
Spring 1922 |
|
Paris |
Paris ? |
|
Fall 1922 |
Spring 1923 |
|
Paris ? |
Dallas ? |
|
Fall 1923 |
Spring 1924 |
|
Paris ? |
Dallas ? |
|
Fall 1924 |
Spring 1925 |
|
Paris |
Dallas |
|
Fall 1925 |
Spring 1926 |
|
Lisbon |
Mexia |
|
Fall 1926 |
Spring 1927 |
|
Big Springs |
Abilene |
|
Fall 1927 |
Spring 1928 |
|
McCamey |
Paris |
Hi School
|
Fall
1928 |
Spring
1929 |
|
Abilene |
Harlendale |
|
Fall
1929 |
Spring
1930 |
|
Abilene |
Harlendale |
|
Fall
1930 |
Spring
1931 |
|
Brackenridge |
Brackenridge |
|
Fall
1931 |
Spring
1932 |
|
Brackenridge |
Thomas
Jefferson |
My changing of
schools so often didn't seem to bother me during the elementary Grades,
I was just an average student, good in some subjects and just passing
in others. Often before I would get to know my teachers or fellow
students we would have to move again.
Bill Hashert
would bring home Plans for the jobs he was working on and study them. I would get down in the floor and look too. He would tell me what he was finding out. He had bought a 4 book set of Audel's
Carpenters guide, which he was always referring to.
It helped him to verbally explain it to me. I learned from this
and made up my mind that I wanted to go to college and become an
Architectural Engineer. When I started Hi School I picked my elective
subjects toward preparing me for that goal.
Thomas Jefferson High School
During my
semester at Thomas Jefferson I was asked by my trig teacher to stay
after school. She asked me why I didn't turn in all of my home work.
I explained to
her that I was taking 6 subjects and if I didn't pass in all 6 subjects
I wouldn't graduate. I was almost failing
in some of my subjects so what time I had for study at home was
diverted to those subjects. I was more interested in graduating than
getting a higher grade in a subject that was easy.
That I had been doing my Physics homework in my Trig class and
my Trig homework in my Physics class. She agreed that I had never
failed to work any problem correctly when called on in class.
About two weeks
after that meeting she again asked me to stay after school for a talk. She asked me if I planed to go to
college. I explained that my stepfather
was working on the campus of A & M College, that the family was
moving to Bryan as soon as we could rent our house after graduation.
She was the only
qualified trigonometry teacher in the school and as head of the math
department she had been inquiring about the possibility of hiring me as
an understudy Trigonometry teacher for the next semester.
This would have required my going to Summer school and taking
special classes, which she might could
have arranged.
No offer was
made as I really felt like I would be going to A & M. I have often
wondered what would have happened had I become a teacher.
At Bryan/College Station
I had made up my
mind early in my schooling that I wanted to go to college and become an
Architect. When Bill found work on the
campus of A & M. I felt like I had it made. I
learned that I was not the only Hi School Graduate that wanted to go to
Texas A & M. I was told by the Dean
that he could fill a school twice the size with freshmen if he could
help finance them. He did tell me that if
I could get the first year and keep good grades He could almost promise
I could get help to graduate. He figured
the cost at $500.00 for uniforms, tuition, books, school fees,etc for
the first year. There was no one in the
family that even had five hundred dollars.
I quickly found out that the job
market around College Station and Bryan for temporary, part time and
manual labor had very lengthy lines of football players and upper
classmen, weighing 200 to 250 lbs; waiting for the work. I weighed
about 150 lbs.
The
people that rented our house on Recio St. moved out and Mother and I
went back to San Antonio. I started the
job search there, same success. No jobs
available not even the part time jobs I had held before graduating from
Hi School. I tried everything I could
think of and talked to anyone that would listen, still no job.
This was in the
fall of 1932 and jobs of any kind were just not available.
I had tried in Bryan and College Station, all the construction
sites on the A&M expansion. Bill was out of work a large part of
the time, I tried just about every place. I
tried selling Hoover Floor Cleaners.
Bill found a few
days work just enough to keep groceries coming.
Job at Joskes
Aunt Mary knew
one of the managers, Mr. Tobin, at Joske's and in a conversation with
him mentioned my search for work, and he mentioned that Joske's was
planning on hiring Hi School graduates for training.
Aunt Mary made an interview appointment for me. Glory be, I was
hired. My salary was $7.50 per week, six
days a week.
I was assigned
to stock control in the mens wear Depts. It
was my job to keep a day to day records of all merchandise sold in
seven Mens Wear departments. Each item of
merchandise had a two part tag that showed, which department the item
belonged in, what the item was --size, color, who manufactured the
item, when it was received, original price, sale price.
When an item was
sold the lower part of the tag was torn off and
put in a box for stock control. Each box
received stubs from any Dept. I collected
the stubs and recorded the sale in a card file that contained all the
information concerning that item from the time it was first ordered to
the time of sale. I separated
them by Dept andthe above, and prepared charts for future planning by
the Dept. buyers.
Working with the
small pieces of tags and the size of numbers on the charts began to
bother my eyes, They were burning and watering all the time. There was an Optometrist's office in the
store, I consulted him and he sent me to see an ophthalmologist.
I was diagnosed
as having Granulated Eye Lids; a severe, infectious case of
Conjunctivitis. I started taking
treatments from him and home medication. The
home medication was for my eye lids and was so strong it had to be
gradually increased in strength to accustom the eye to the medicine. My
eyes continued to be blood shot, and I was continually wiping tears,
but the stinging was not as bad. I
continued to take teatment at the doctor’s office and increasing the
strength of the medicine at home. Eventually
the home treatments began to irritate my eyes, I complained to the
doctor and at his instructions decreased
the strength to weaker than when I started. I continued to complain and
eventually quit taking the medicine entirely, I also quit going to the
doctor. My eyes immediately cleared up and
got OK. The Optometrist at the store had
fitted me with glasses for astigmatism about two months into the
treatment and had given me focusing exercises for the astigmatism.
When NRA went
into effect I got a raise to $12.50 per week, I
was living at home with Mother, and Bill. Just before Christmas of 1934
I was transferred to the Toy Dept. assembling toys to help my eyes. After Christmas I was eased out because of my
eyes, I was told it was a reduction in
forces.
Jobs were really
hard to find about this time. Bill wasn’t
working. Eventually I tried my hand at
selling Hoover carpet cleaners. I sold one
small hand held cleaner to Mr. Kuntz our next door neighbor. He had bought a new car and used the cleaner
to keep the inside rug clean.
Advertising Salesman
L. D. Neal,
nephew of another neighbor had lost his job as a ready to wear salesman
and had worked for a newspaper selling special adds for some kind of
county fair. He had started promoting
these so called special occasions and selling adds for weekly
newspapers. He offered me a job with all
expenses paid and a commission on all ads I could sell.
I worked with him for about a year. I
didn't make much money but as long a we were away from San Antonio,
Neal paid for my meals and room rent. At
that period in time a person had no trouble in finding a rooming house
where you could stay for a night, week, or month, for $1.00 day and in
most instances get two meals. People were
hard pressed for money and an extra dollar went a long way.
I guess I can
say that I enjoyed the work that I did with Neal. There
were parts of it that I didn't like. I was living a lie most of the
time. I represented myself as being one o
the local boys from the area covered by the weekly newspaper that we
were working with. My mode of
transportation was to hitch hike. I would
normally plan on making 50 miles an hour hitchhiking and in most cases
I could beat that.
Afterword by Charles Rogers
My father, Thomas Joseph
Rogers, died in Fort Worth, Texas,
on May 11, 1997. He was 81 years of age. In
the weeks following his death we honored the wishes of his widow Kyong
by disposing of his property, his assets, and his memorabilia. Among
his possessions were an old computer and a number of 3-1/2 inch floppy
diskettes. I took these with me. The computer was eventually discarded, but I
put the diskettes into my files and carried them about with my personal
effects for almost nine years. In the
winter of 2005-06, I turned to the task of reviewing the data files
Daddy had left.
I found
this incomplete memoir. For me, the
emotional highlight is the narrative of his missed opportunity to
become a teaching assistant and his inability to attend college.
“I have often wondered what would have happened had I become a teacher.”
During the time
that he was doing this writing, Daddy’s health was rapidly failing. I
can almost picture him writing these words, then copying the file off
to a floppy diskette, and setting it aside.
He
returned a bit later and wrote an account of a time in which he sold
advertising while living in boarding houses and hitchhiking for
transportation. And then the story stops.
He didn’t have the energy or interest or motivation to continue.
But the rest of
the story is by no means poignant. It does not end with the “what might
have been” question. Nor does it end with the gypsy life of an
advertising salesman. Indeed, I consider
the rest of the story to be a part of the glorious epic of “America’s
Greatest Generation.”
Thomas J.
Rogers, sometime after his period selling advertising, re-joined Bill
Hashert to seek work on various construction jobs. Eventually, they
worked on a large bridge across the Mississippi River at Natchez. At the time, this bridge was second only to
the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge. While
there, he met and married my mother, Geneva Mathis.
About the time the bridge was finished, World War Two broke out
and Daddy joined the Navy Construction Battalion (the “SeaBees.”) He served in the Pacific Theater in the
Philippines and in China. When he was discharged after the war, his
rank was Chief Petty Officer.
After
the war, he returned to Texas and partnered briefly with Bill Hashert. Daddy recounted to me that Bill once gave him
the job of estimating a project. Daddy
made an error in the estimating process, and this led to a breakup.
My earliest memories that
specifically relate to where my
mother and father lived involve construction jobs and moving from one
to another. Daddy was an Inspector. He worked for the Army Corps of Engineers. He worked on dams and other projects. We lived in North Texas in places like Killeen
and Fort Hood. We lived in South Texas where Daddy worked on the Falcon
Dam and Reservoir. We lived in San Antonio where Daddy worked at Fort
Sam Houston.
In some ways, my
childhood reflected my father’s: We moved many times. I
attended at least 12 different schools before I graduated from High
School. Beginning at age 8, I always had a
job of some sort: I delivered papers, sacked groceries, worked at any
odd job I could find.
In other ways,
my childhood was radically different than my father’s:
I never saw my father drunk, although he was not a “tee-totaler.” He was not abusive. We always had a decent
place to live and we always had clothes and food. My
father was almost compulsive in his efforts at self-improvement. I have a strikingly vivid memory
of him sitting in his chair, deeply intent on his International
Correspondence School lesson, and smoking a cigarette.
Daddy was
not particularly involved in the home life. I
think his focus was almost entirely on providing for his family and
planning for his next job. I do remember
fishing and camping trips. They were nice.
But mostly, I remember that I was expected to do well in school, to be
sure I got into college. I also knew to get a job if I wanted any money.
My mother was
not happy. I think her unhappiness
affected my sisters more than it did me. This
may be because I am, after all, my father’s son. I
was uninvolved emotionally. I went to
school and went to my jobs. All I did at home was eat and sleep. My sisters and my mother lived in a different
world. I carried this pattern of behavior into my own first marriage.
After I went
away to college, my parents separated. Daddy
took a job in Korea and did not return to America for many years. I visited Daddy, Kyong, and Susan in Japan one
winter while I was in the Air Force and working in Tokyo.
But, aside from this visit, I never really had a chance to get
to know my father until after his retirement. Outside
his work the only interests he had that I know of were his Masonic
Lodge and photography. The photography was
an aspect of love for his work, of course. His best photographs are of
construction sites: men in hard hats, operating heavy equipment, moving
earth -- re-shaping the planet.
He took great
satisfaction from his work. The US
Pavilion at the Tokyo World Fair was one of his favorites.
Daddy spoke to me several times about this job.
The humor and the frustration of communicating through
interpreters was the focus of one story. But
it is clear that Daddy worked well with Japanese contractors. He stayed
in Japan for many years interacting with them in both large and small
jobs.
As I reflect on
what I want to say about my own father, I am left with this: He tried to be honest, and correct, and moral. He had a sense of honor. He had very precise
handwriting. He kept meticulous records of his income.
He knew to the penny what it cost to own and operate his
automobiles. He calculated his miles per
gallon with each tank of gasoline. His prejudices were a product of the
culture in which he was raised. His
accomplishments reflect the values of his society: work hard, study
hard, do your duty.
Even after he
retired from the Corps of Engineers, Daddy continued to work. He could not stay away from construction. He was employed for a while as the on-site
representative of an architectural firm on various jobs in North Texas. Daddy told me that he was actually making
“negative 75 cents an hour” in this position. The
Social Security offset caused him to lose more in retirement benefits
than he earned. But he loved “going to the job.”
My sister Joess
was with Daddy shortly before he died. She says he wanted to hold his
Masonic Bible. “He didn’t read it; he just
seemed to take comfort from holding it.”
I’m glad
that I got to know him a little bit; I wish I had known him better.
Charles W. Rogers
March, 2006