Wally Rogers passed away on Dec. 13th and Wally’s wife, Delight, sent me his eulogy and this is part of it for those interested. They lived in New Zealand. He lead an interesting life. I have not updated the "Classmates Profiles" link yet for those wanting to contact Delight Gartlein.

Delight's eulogy for Wally Rogers, 20 December 2009
Tena koutu, tena koutu, tena koutu katoa (Greetings to everyone)
Thank you for coming this afternoon to share your memories of Wally and celebrate his gifts to us and the world.
I have only known Wally for 24 of his 70 years. He did a lot of living before I knew him, but I tried to coax from him some of the stories of the first 46 years.
Where did this guy come from who preferred:

• Work to play
• Small gatherings to large parties
• Simplicity to luxury
• Silence to small talk?

He grew up in the heartland of America, the state of Iowa, almost in the center of the country, corn-growing country, a place of old-fashioned values, work hard, study hard, take care of your neighbors. Wally grew up in the small town of Fort Dodge, home of band leader Karl King, the National Gypsum Co., the Kautzky Lazy Ike fishing lure, a veterinary supplies company, and many stores to serve the surrounding farming community.
His father owned an insurance agency "Carter & Rogers, Insurance in all its branches". His mother, Pearl, had an eye for antiques – china, glass, furniture – which she collected and sometimes sold. She was often bed-ridden, having had rheumatic fever as a child. Wally helped with the housework by, among other things, ironing the sheets on the mangle in the basement. He had an older sister, Sandy. His parents were loving, but strict. No elbows on the table, ro ball caps in the house, no alcohol. They had STANDARDS. Mow the lawn twice, the second time at right angles to the first, to get it right. I think TIME stopped the first time they heard Wally use a swear word.
Wally and his best friend, Bill Sergeant, hung out together all the time. On a hot summer's day they might have been in the cool basement sorting through the bag of pennies they had bought for $25 to add to their collections. Bill and Wally were Boy Scouts together for 12 years and more, from Cub Scouts through Eagle Scouts. The Scout Law says: A scout is: Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent. Does this sound like anyone you know????

Did you know Wally was an entrepreneur? Long before he was selling stamps and kayaks on Trade Me, Wally had a nightcrawler business. Nightcrawlers are large worms that come out of the soil on rainy nights. They are prized by fishermen for bait. Wally collected these by flash light as a kid and sold them for 25 cents a dozen. He also delivered business parcels in Fort Dodge for his father. His parents thought this was a good idea because it would socialize him. There were lots of deliveries at Christmas, promotional items for the insurance business. Wally was paid what the postage would have cost. What did he do with his earnings? He saved them to buy a table saw.

Now, I would like to introduce my friend Donna Tartaglia, who will read some memories of Wally from his sister, Sandy Rogers May.

I want to tell you about growing up with Wally. . . .Our, family was very close. There were just 2 of us kids. l am the elder by 2 years and 3 months. Wally was named after our father, Wallace A Rogers. The A is his middle name; it is not an initial. Wallace was what we called him all through childhood. He became Wally in college.
As far back as I can remember Wally collected everything—rocks, stamps, coins, Indian arrowheads, and model trains. He and Daddy built a huge platform of plywood to run the trains on through the tunnels and villages and mountains that they also built. Wally collected squirrels, moles, rabbits and such from traps he set in our back yard Mother and Wally worked together dissecting these animals and preserving them in.formaldehyde. He was curious about everything and our parents encouraged this. They were extremely loving, but [as Delight has said] they were strict.
When he wasn't collecting things, you could find Wally behind a book or encyclopedia, reading. But he was also a fisherman. We spent our summers at a cabin our parents built on TwinLakes. I have wonderful memories of the lake. Wally fished 48 hours a day! He provided us with endless fish dinners. Daddy taught Wally how to build, and Wally learned fast. He could build almost anything as a young boy. He built us a tree house in one of the old cottonwoods by the lake. We had a rope to the ground so our mother could tie a basket on with our lunch in it. Once Wally fell out of the tree house and broke his collarbone!
 About this time, Wally started being an entrepreneur. [as Delight has told you] Wally would catch big, fat night crawlers and sell them to. fishermen.for 25 cents a dozen. I sometimes went along on the catching expeditions—I got to hold the lantern. Wally made LOTS of money on this business, and I think he saved it all!
Our parents tried to keep us busy. Daddy got Wally interested in Boy Scouts. [Wally told me that his parents thought he needed more of a social life, so they encouraged scouting...] He became a very good scout, all the way up to the level of Eagle Scout. In high school Wally was at the top of his class, and he continued to be outstanding academically ever after. He was a foreign exchange student to Zurich, Switzerland You all know he has traveled ever since.
Wally has always been there to help me, and he has always helped others tirelessly. I can remember that Wally and I were encouraged by our parents to give back to others. Wally's "great reverence .for life in the world" began in childhood and never ended. As all of you know, Wally was probably the most humble and kind person you have met. He has touched the lives of everyone who has known him.

Now Delight is speaking again . . . .

Wally went on to Iowa State University, where both his father and his favorite Uncle Dwight had gone. In the summer he went back to Lake Okoboji to study parasites at the ISU Summer Science Camp. After finishing his Bachelor's degree in three years, he earned a Master's degree in Parasitology, also at ISU. Then on to the University of Minnesota Medical School. And here, Wally started putting together travel + study + parasites. He won a fellowship to study parasites in Central America, travelling to Costa Rica and Guatemala for 7 weeks.

After Minnesota he went to West Virginia to do his medical residency in the Morgantown hospital where he met a lively, brilliant medical student, Irene Tregoning. Sometime during their engagement, Irene went on a motorcycle ride with a friend, there was a terrible accident, no crash helmet on, and she suffered severe brain damage. Wally stuck with her — he told me once he taught her everything she knew. They were married in 1966 and moved to Atlanta, Georgia where Wally worked for the Communicable Disease Center under his contract with the Public Health Service, an alternative to being drafted to go to Vietnam. While at the CDC he went to India and Nepal on a team working to eradicate malaria.
After his two years in Atlanta, Wally went to the University of Vermont to do his Pathology Residency. His son Bradley was born in Vermont. Sadly when Brad was two years old they found out he had cystic fibrosis, an incurable disease caused by a faulty gene. Like his parents, Brad was a very bright kid. He grew up to be an electrical engineer and computer wizard, a Dungeons and Dragons buff. He had a lovely dry wit. From him I started to learn the hard lesson of living in the present moment. Brad beat all the odds for people with his disease and lived to be 35.
Back to Wally -- after completing his residency in Vermont he joined the staff of the University of Missouri Medical School in Columbia, Missouri as Assistant/Associate Professor of Pathology. His CV lists some 15 research papers completed over the years. With another pathologist he joined the 'back to the land' movement and together they bought a farm where they raised Angus cattle, as his Uncle Dwight did. He was in Missouri until 1985 when he reached some sort of turning point, left the farm, separated from Irene, and moved to Vermont to join the pathology practice in Rutland of his friend Don Stanley from residency days at he University of Vermont. Subsequently Irene and Brad joined him in Vermont, but the marriage was finished. Wally never burned bridges, however, and remained friends with Irene until she died four years ago.

One sunny, cold Saturday afternoon, February 15, 1986 Wally came to visit the small natural history museum where I worked. No one else was around when he came in and he struck up a conversation with me about the identity of a yellow and black bird he had seen foraging in the gravel along the edge of the road. I was sure it was an Evening Grosbeak, a common winter visitor, and took him to see a mounted specimen in the case. Right! But Wally didn't leave, he sat down at my desk and said "Tell me about yourself." I was charmed. I was flattered. No, I was hooked! Wally became a Friend of the museum, came on my field trips. And it wasn't long before it was a lot more intimate. We were married in 1991
.
I went on to work at Fort Ticonderoga, a large historic site from the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War. Wally was a dependable and cheerful volunteer on all the various projects and events during the intense summer season of tourism in New York State. I remember Wally parking cars wearing his Scoutmaster Hat (Smoky the Bear); no one gave him any trouble. When a group of us decided to rescue the historic garden – an after hours volunteer project –Wally came over after his hospital work was done, to have a picnic and pull weeds until it was dark, and then we would drive 45 miles home to Castleton.
When he wasn't busy on my projects, he was doing bi-weekly water quality assessments in Lake Champlain, from his canoe. He was a member of the Green Mountain Club. He worked with the Nature Conservancy on their Buckner Preserve on our end of Lake Champlain, where Wally owned about 200 acres of meadows and forest and spectacular cliffs. He built fences, picked up trash, put up bluebird houses he had built.
He was President of the Historical Society in Castleton, and a member of the Regional Planning Commission. He did all sorts of custodial work at our Rutland Unitarian Church.

But, there is a whole other side of Wally – Wally the craftsman/artist, although he refused to call himself an artist. He built dry stone walls, restored furniture, caned seats for antique chairs, made stained glass panels for our house, carved wood, made ash splint baskets, and here in New Zealand, participated in our Navajo rug weaving class. He spent a year at Te Puia learning to weave flax tutored by Edna Pahewa, Teresa Murray, and Hectorina Mulligan. Just last May he took up rug hooking in the style of the Grenfell Mission in Newfoundland where he had worked. Some of his pieces are here for you to see.

The Wally you knew was a doctor. He cleverly managed to use his skills and his limitless curiosity and zest for adventure to get himself to many different places in the world. While he was on the faculty of the University of Missouri he spent 6 moths in Haiti at L'Hospital Albert Schweitzer, taking his family with him. Later, he made three trips to Newfoundland to relieve a pathologist at St. Anthony Hospital. These month long trips were his vacation. You see, time spent without purpose was anathema to Wally. Later he volunteered with Pathologists Overseas for a month in Nairobi, Kenya. In 1996 he volunteered to go to Madagascar for two months to set up a histopathology laboratory for SALFA, the Lutheran Health Service for the whole country. For two years he worked in St. Lucia and, after that, two years at the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre in Moshi, Tanzania. For his work in Tanzania he received the first Humanitarian Service Grant that the College of American Pathologists awarded. It was used to purchase equipment for teaching anatomic pathology at KCMC.

You are probably wondering how we got to New Zealand. It was the Bruns fault! Do you know Dr. Barry and Nurse Esther Bruns? We met them in St. Lucia and shared a house with them. They kept talking about how fabulous New Zealand was, and how we must come and stay with them, and we must add New Zealand to our 'collection of islands' that we had visited. Wally later accepted a one-year contract in Rotorua. The Bruns took us under their wings. We went to a party and met Anne Moore, and the van Dorssers, and they in turn, included us in their circle of friends and the walking group. We tried to see everything in one year, from Cape Reinga to Stewart Island. We went on a New Year's cruise to the Bay of Islands on the square-sail Soren Larsen, and we went to the Chathams. I volunteered on the mosaic floor project for RAVE (Rotorua Arts Village Experience), and met Marjorie Fox who brought me along to the Spinners and Weavers. We went to concerts and plays, the museum, the library. It was full on.
Then it was time to go home to Vermont, but there was no long-term job available for Wally. He was doing locums in various places in the state, leaving me to keep a huge veggie garden, lawn, and house in order. That got a bit old! When Rotorua offered Wally a permanent job, we came back, stopping to volunteer for two months in Nepal on the way.

The rest of the story you know.
In conclusion, I want to honour Wally's unusual sense of purpose and humility, his focus, his endless curiosity, his adventurous spirit. Someone who truly lived by the Scout Law "On my honour I will do my best . to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight". He was my friend, my lover, my husband, my mentor, my companion in all sorts of adventures, and always my champion.
Thank you Wally for 24 splendid years!