Joanne Rogers

Joanne (Shipley) Rogers passed away peacefully in her home in Milwaukie where she resided for over 60 years. She was born in Chicago to Millard and Pearl Shipley. The family moved to Waterloo, Iowa where she attended West Waterloo High School. Always musical, she played the bell lyre in the marching band and was an accomplished pianist, later attending Grinnell College, majoring in music. She transferred to University of Northern Iowa where she completed a teaching certificate.

In 1956 she married James Rogers and they moved to Milwaukie in 1960. While she gave up teaching 2nd grade to raise a family, Joanne was kept busy with their seven children. Somehow, she also found time to keep up her flower gardens and read. She was an avid reader and always had a stack of library books next to her favorite recliner where she could sit and look out her front window at her fountain. She loved her cats and over the years had eight consecutive Siamese cats as well as several others.

She also found time to volunteer, most notably through the St. Vincent de Paul Society at her church as well as being a patient liaison at Adventist Medical Center and a Eucharistic minister to patients at Kaiser Sunnyside Hospital. After her children were grown she and Jim became ardent advocates for child sponsorship. During their thirteen years of volunteering for Christian Foundation for Children & Aging (CFCA, now Unbound), they visited the communities of sponsored children in countries throughout Central and South America and Mexico. They retired from their work having found sponsors for 13,000 children and elderly.

Her favorite place to be when not in her own home was on the banks of the Metolius River. There she and Jim camped with their children, grandchildren and then great-grandchildren for over 50 consecutive summers. She also enjoyed the show MASH and would retreat to the family room every evening after dinner to watch it. She’ll be remembered for her “Friday Night Casserole” she served nearly every, well, Friday night.

She was preceded in death by her husband Jim last year and is survived by their seven children, Jan Gorder (Stan) of Milwaukie, Jeanne Davis (Jeffrey) of Milwaukie, John Rogers (Janet) of Tigard, Suzanne Rogers of Santa Barbara, Stephen Rogers of Milwaukie, Robert Rogers (Kristin Henderson) of Portland, Patricia Rogers (Scott Rosenberg) of New York City, 14 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

A funeral Mass for Joanne will be held on Wed. Oct 21 at11a.m. at Christ the King Church, 11709 SE Fuller Rd., Milwaukie, Ore. Arrangements by Gethsemani.

“The last time of anything has the poignancy of death itself…the last time how clearly you see everything; as though a magnifying light had been turned on it. And you grieve because you hadn't held it tighter when you had it every day…look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.

Betty Smith A Tree Grows in Brooklyn