Tisbury's John G. Rogers Is Dead at 76; Was Best Friend to
Vineyard's Animals

By PHYLLIS MERAS

John G. Rogers of Vineyard Haven, audio engineer, former Tisbury
animal control officer and longtime Steamship Authority employee, died
unexpectedly on Sunday at the Martha's Vineyard Hospital. He was
76.

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Although he was animal control officer for only eight years -
from 1976 to 1984 -  his influence on Island animal welfare
was profound. Not only his successors in Vineyard Haven, but the animal
control officers of other towns regularly turned to him for his wise
counsel. When Barbara Prada in 1982 became Edgartown's animal
control officer, "John was always there for me. He was surely our
Vineyard animals' best friend."

He was renowned for the trust that animals put in him, for his
knowledge of their habits; for his patience and ability at finding lost,
beloved pets.

Soon after she had arrived on the Vineyard and was living near
Duarte's Pond in Vineyard Haven, veterinarian Michelle
Gerhard-Jasny remembers being out one evening feeding pond ducks when
she heard footsteps crunching in the woods behind her. "And there
was John out looking for a lost dog, and he had been walking for
miles."

"He was Martha's Vineyard's St. Francis,"
one Vineyard animal lover commented.

For decades, long after he had ceased to be in charge of Tisbury
animal welfare, Mr. Rogers continued, morning and night, winter and
summer, to feed the lost or abandoned cats at the town landfill. To
assure that the cats got all they needed, he also fed the raccoons and
birds and skunks at the landfill, scraps from his family's table
so they would leave the cat food alone. And sometimes, he would stop in
at the pound to visit with the dogs and cats and to talk with the
town's present animal officer, Sharon Rzemien.

"For John, just sitting talking about animals provided the
same pleasure a glass of wine provides for some people," she
recalls. He was also known for his unprepossessing ways and for his
sense of humor. He was a devoted supporter of the Pet Adoption and
Welfare Agency (P.A.W.S.), working to find homes for abandoned pets. He
was tireless and fearless in his animal work, and in the icy cold the
night before his death was, as usual, out with his bag of kibble for
Gray Boy and Rebok, two of his favorite landfill cats, and their
companions.

Tisbury firemen remember the day, too, when, well ahead of them, he
had crawled out onto the Lagoon ice to rescue a dog that had fallen
through into the pond. At the time of his retirement from town service,
the board of selectmen wrote to him:

"Your efforts to help injured pets and other animals at any
time of day or night were always energetic and sympathetic. This
required understanding not only of dogs and cats and even birds, but
also a capacity to calm distraught animal owners and animal
lovers." To be a successful animal control officer, he told a
Gazette reporter in 1981, "you've got to have a good rapport
with the people. . . . Most of the time it isn't the animal that
gives you the trouble, it's the people." But Mr. Rogers did
always have good rapport with the people, soothing owners in the same
gentle, softspoken way that he calmed their pets.

"There was something uncanny about his relationship with
animals," Vineyard Haven resident Mike Zoll said. "He could
get into their thinking. We had a pound dog, Bashful, who would run away
a lot -  sometimes as far away as West Tisbury. John always
seemed to know just where to go to find him. And he'd give you an
update on how his search was going, too, so you didn't worry. He
was a real animal tracker."

Amy Zoll recalls the day two loud, large dogs found their way into a
car parked at the Woodland Market while the car's owner was
shopping. When the owner returned, there was, clearly, no way he could
safely displace the dogs that had taken over his car. But John Rogers
was called and quietly, gently, urged the pair out.

"He just had a calming way about him," said Gus Ben
David, director of the Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary. "You always
looked forward to seeing John."

John Rogers was born in Vineyard Haven Dec. 10, 1927, a son of the
late Frank and Maria (Canha) Rogers. He attended the Tisbury School and
then -  too young for the Navy - joined the Merchant
Marine in World War II. The ship on which he served carried supplies to
South America and to Europe. Later, he enlisted in the Navy where some
of his duties included work with short wave radios.

The war over, he returned to the Vineyard where he cut ice for a
time with the late Walter Chaffee at Lambert's Cove. Then, in
1952, he joined the Steamship Authority. During his 20 years with the
authority, he served first as an able-bodied seaman, then as a
bos'n and finally as a quartermaster. From his Navy days on,
electronics fascinated him and when his daughter Nancy began taking
piano lessons, he recorded her playing "so she would hear her
mistakes and her good points," he said. But, in reality, his
family knew, it was so he could indulge in his own love of electronics.

Before long, in his spare time, he was doing amplification for town
meetings and grange meetings and meetings of the League of Women Voters.
He was particularly notable for the sound amplification he provided for
the Fourth of July parade float designed by A'Bell Washburn of
Edgartown and New York to raise money for the building of a new MSPCA
shelter in 1980 and for his sound work at the agricultural fair. He
recorded weddings and memorial services, Martha's Vineyard Chamber
Music Society and Island Community Chorus concerts. He recorded James
Taylor in the 1960s performing at the Mooncusser Coffee House in Oak
Bluffs; Carly and Lucy Simon and movie actor and Saturday Night Live
comedian Dan Ayckroyd. He amplified the sound for school plays. When his
customers were in a position to pay, he accepted payment from them, but
if he was doing work for a charitable organization, like as not, he
would forget to send a bill. He recorded the events honoring the 95th
anniversary of the West Tisbury Grange, but never billed the grange. It
seemed enough for him that he had, for the first time, heard David
McCullough speak at the meeting. Not only did he amplify and record, but
he fine-tuned his recordings. He carried with him in his van every bit
of electronic equipment he might need. "He was a real genius as a
sound technician," one of his admirers said.

Mr. Rogers also offered his electronics expertise
-  almost always free of charge -  to members of the
older generation who had acquired videos and stereos and TVs, but really
didn't understand how to make them work. When he did agree to
accept payment, it was almost always in the form of a bag of cat food or
a contribution toward cat food purchase.

He was married for 54 years to Patricia (Gibson) Rogers, who
survives him, along with their daughter, Nancy, her husband, Eric Bates,
and their daughter, Phebe, of West Tisbury; a son, James, his wife,
Kathy, and their sons, Adam and Jeremie, of Vineyard Haven; a brother,
George, of Vineyard Haven, and four sisters, Eleanor Luce of West
Tisbury, Olga Panagakos of Acushnet, Gloria Cory and Lydia Silva of
North Dartmouth, and several nieces and nephews. He was predeceased by
two sisters, Mary Pombo and Alice Duncan, and three brothers, Frank,
Manuel and William Rogers.

A funeral mass was held at St. Augustine's Church in Vineyard
Haven on Wednesday, followed by interment with full military honors at
Oak Grove Cemetery in Vineyard Haven.

In lieu of flowers, contributions in his memory may be made to
P.A.W.S. Inc., Box 1636, Edgartown, 02539, or to Felix Neck Wildlife
Sanctuary, Box 434, Vineyard Haven, MA 02568.