Proud native of Hopkinsville, KY and Navy veteran leaves behind a son and a legion of friends and other family
🎶And you can tell everybody
This [was] your song
It may be quite simple, but now that it's done
I hope you don't mind
I hope you don't mind
That I put down in the words
How wonderful life [was] while you [were] in the world🎶
Elton John / Taupin Bernard J P
This may seem a bit cliché but the world lost a true individual, friend, father, husband, Hopkinsville proponent, and veteran when it lost Bobby Rogers. He reared avid sportsmen in his two sons, one of whom died in a tragic wrestling incident (Bobby), the other of whom was a college athlete who committed his life to swimming and coaching on varied and multiple levels (James “Jim”). We come together at the magazine today to mourn and remember our friend, reader, and great benefactor.
HB Lyon, Scouting Director, KPGFootball
Hopkinsville, KY: He graduated from Hopkinsville High School and grew up around the Walnut/18th Street area of Hopkinsville. Bobby Rogers’s father had retired from the post office.
Everyone called him “Bobby” and there can be little doubt Hopkinsville, Kentucky has ever had a better friend or a more avid and ardent supporter. Rogers served his country in the Navy, a fact of which he, rightfully, drew tremendous life-long pride.
Rogers loved his community. Rogers loved his country. Rogers loved his family. These were characteristics about which there just couldn’t be any serious doubt.
We talked to Raymond Nelson. Nelson told us he had run around with Bobby since the mid-60’s.
“Bobby was an avid boater and water sports guy in those early years and Bobby’s father, Bobby, and I would eat dinner out most nights, if not almost every night,” Nelson told KPGFootball. “We took breakfast together, on the regular here lately, eating at both ‘Roundies’ and ‘Foodies.'”
Nelson went on to relate, when Beverly became afflicted with Alzheimer’s late in her life, “No one took better care of his wife than Bobby Rogers. No one.”
No one took better care of his wife than Bobby Rogers. No one.
Raymond Nelson, Hopkinsville
“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.” — Leo Buscaglia. Buscaglia, who was talking about Rogers unwittingly, was also known as “Dr. Love,” was an American author, motivational speaker, and professor at the University of Southern California.
Throughout Beverly Rogers’s convalescence, until her ultimate passing, Bobby Rogers was the smile, the kind word, the listening ear, the honest compliment, the considerable act of caring which, in deed, turned around Beverly’s life to a similar extent to which Beverly’s love, and lifelong companionship, had turned around his.
As a life-long, tangential member of the Rogers clan, allow me to assure the reader they know a little something about love in the Rogers family. They know a little something about commitment, seeking and obtaining excellence, being steadfast, experiencing hardship, and making sacrifices. One might say the Rogers family has earned advanced degrees in all the aforementioned.
For this author’s part, I have never had a better friend, nor more ardent supporter, nor more loving brother, than James Stanton Rogers. That is why his commentary adorns my different books. Rogers’s commentary appears on the back cover of my most recent work.
I want to leave this piece with a Bobby Rogers anecdote. Over the next few days, as we will come together to remember our fallen brother, father, friend, uncle, etc. I am sure we will be graced with many other stories about the man we all knew and who we all miss.
I am eating at “Roundies” one morning treating my youngest son, James Nicholas Whaley Long, to one of his (and my) favorite breakfasts. Bobby was there eating at the “liar’s table” which, if you are familiar with small communities, requires no explanation.
I went up to pay for our breakfast only to learn the check had already been paid by Bobby Rogers. Well, those of you who knew Bobby realize what a momentous occasion this must have been. Bobby’s strong inclination was to hang on to money.
Anyway, I went up to Bobby to thank him for buying our breakfasts. He had tears swimming around in his eyes as he said, “You have been a wonderful friend, and taken great care, of my son, Jim.”
This touched me. I looked at my friend, Bobby, and said, “You know, you may have that backwards.”
That is the kind of man we have lost here in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. That is the type of friend, supporter, resident, and citizen.
Bobby Rogers loved his hometown and Hopkinsville loved him, just as fervently, in return. You know that might be among the only things on which Hopkinsville and I have been in ready agreement all the years I have lived here. Both of us agree Bobby Rogers was truly exceptional, honestly extraordinary.
On top of all that, we were both right! Right on the money…
This is Friday Night Fletch, reporting for KPGFootball, reminding you to PLAY THROUGH THE WHISTLE!
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