My father, your life’s journey has reached its end. I think we all should rejoice for there is no greater boon than to leave this world with the imperishable crown of a good name. You touched and immensely enriched the lives of many in a way that was uniquely yours and wonderful. My brother, Wade, and sister, Gail, and I were truly blessed to have you as our father. You were also my mentor, my teacher, and my best friend. Over the years you have given a gift of understanding about life and death that provides me comfort at this time of passing. You and I have talked about these important things; philosophy, religion, life, death, meaning, purpose, and God over the past 54 years that I can recollect. So I’d like to share your gift that has given me comfort with these dear friends and family who have gathered today to celebrate your life and you will forgive me if I brag a bit about your good deeds as you never would have done in life.
The most remarkable thing about Jim Rogers to me was that he was a superb teacher. In fact, my dad was the best teacher of all I have ever known. He taught from essentials and he taught not so much the facts but the process of thinking about any subject. It was remarkable for me because I never felt as if I had been taught something. Rather, it always felt like I figured out the answer for myself. Thus I was able to own the learning as mine. This was my dad’s gift. He had great skill at teaching and humility—never seeking credit for the deed. And so it was that through our discussions over the years, I came to view life like a fine novel where the people in our lives are our characters. I cannot tell you that this was the view of Jim Rogers. His teaching style caused me to view it as originally my own. Sometimes our ideas blended so maybe I cannot determine those that were original with me and those to which he led me. I can say though, that my father endorsed this analogy of life. One of the facets of this view is that, in death, when the novel reaches “The End” those left behind who were the characters in the novel as well as the readers, can regard with joy the finished product and rejoice and marvel at the beauty and glory that was created. In the case of Jim Rogers, I would call it a great book.
I will not say that Jim Rogers was “larger than life” because he was the exact size of life and it fit him marvelously. Jim was at ease and always comfortable in his own skin.
I suspect that Jim’s unpretentiousness atop a truly great mind, immense depth of character and his cheerful service and helpfulness were the traits that endeared him to so many of us.
In his journey through life, my father touched many other lives in positive ways. From the stories I heard about his youth in Arkansas from him, his mother, his sister Sally, and his cousins, I know that he was loved and respected then and had a happy time as a young person even though the times were sometimes tough. I heard the story of how he was salutatorian in his high school with the highest grades ever achieved at El Dorado high school with the exception of J. C. Simms, the valedictorian in the same class. I always enjoyed his stories from his youth from his exploits as an Eagle Scout to how he learned to drive and everything else. About how he worked his way through college all the way to earning a PhD after his father died at a young age so as not to create a hardship for his mother and sister.
I never tired of hearing the stories my mother and father told about their courtship and marriage. For 62 years, of marriage, my parents had a most wonderful marriage. For him to have had the intense love and devotion of Ruth, his wife and to have returned it in kind was a joyous aspect of my dad’s life and he was very blessed. I believe his marriage was a major source of the wonderful balance in his life. Lately we hear about work-life-family balance. My father’s life was superbly balanced which means that he had an appreciation for what was important and what’s not so important and he valued the dear folks in his life above anything else such as status, material possessions, or legacy.
Many of you know but perhaps some of you don’t that Jim Rogers was a college professor after graduating from LSU with a PhD in Chemistry and I think dad knew that his true calling was as a teacher. But he went to work for DuPont because the pay was much better. I think there were no regrets because DuPont became an extended family for Jim and our family. At first, I took it for granted that my father’s colleagues and their families would be our family friends. I fondly recall the annual DuPont picnic’s at the May Plant and that everyone treated each other as friends and extended family and not merely coworkers. When I was 12 years old and we were transferred to Wilmington, DE from Camden. I went to my first Boy Scout troop meeting there and a short bald headed man who was an assistant scoutmaster heard my name and came to me and said, “Is you father Jim?” I said “Why yes”, kind of surprised to enter a strange place and have a stranger know my Dad. That is how I discovered that the DuPont family extended through a wide network. The man was Roe Bloom and he had been Jim’s supervisor in Waynesboro. He knew my name because he was in my father’s life when I was born. I found out how much respect and esteem that he felt for my dad. As Ruth and Jim were transferred between Waynesboro, VA, Camden, and Wilmington our extended family of DuPonters grew and Camden became more and more the place that the family regarded as home.
Jim’s lessons as a master teacher often transformed the learner. My sister, Gail, had a tough time with an awful first grade teacher and a bad start to formal education. Jim Rogers jumped in as the master teacher that he was and he healed my sister’s wounds from that first grade experience. In the course of it, I believe, he revealed to her the gift of being a great teacher and made her into one herself. So, through my sister, my father’s gift of teaching became a great boon to more than 30 years of learning disabled children that my sister has taught. He taught my brother, Wade to be a scientist. One of my favorite photographs to see is the one where three generations of Rogers men, Jim, and Wade, and Brian were photographed together in their PhD hoods at Brian’s PhD graduation.
I had learned so much from my father that, not too long after his retirement from DuPont, I was visiting here in Camden and I suggested to him that he should write a book. He told me that he had been thinking about that and he figured that he would write about the history of science. I thought that was fitting since he taught me about the scientific method when I was about 5 years old and then using this method, in his way, he led me to have a great interest in discovering everything. So I felt he was uniquely qualified for such an undertaking. A while later, I asked him about how the book project was going and he told me it was on indefinite hold since he was working on another book project with his friend Bob Allen. It would later be published as “Tending Old Houses”. You see, to collaborate with his friend Bob and lift up others around him was more important to my dad than to create a legacy known mainly to strangers. And he decided to throw his energy behind projects with people he was close to such as at the Fine Arts Center and the Literacy Association.
Jim Rogers, it took a long time for me to learn this from you but I know now that you are with God. Beyond that, I don’t know what He makes possible. From time to time, I will continue to talk to you and I know that your voice which I shall carry with me through all my days will be there, as always, to encourage and support and advise. After all, when I have faced a great challenge in life I have always been able to ask myself, what would Jim Rogers do and that usually leads me to an answer as it will continue to do. Jim had an award he would present to his friends and families on the occasion of completing a major achievement. It looked something like this and he called it “A Round Tuit”. So Dad, this is for you. You got a round tuit for your life. Now I have to say well done for a life well lived and so long.