U.S. Department of Defense
Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs)
News Release
IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 0074-08
January 29, 2008
DoD Identifies Army Casualty
The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Major Alan G. Rogers, 40, of Hampton, Florid, died January 27, 2008, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated while he was conducting a dismounted patrol in Baghdad, Iraq. He was assigned to the Military Transition Team, 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, Fort Riley, Kansas.
A former Hampton resident who died in Baghdad on Sunday is being remembered as a kind son, a reliable worker, a pastor and a Gator.
Major Alan G. Rogers, 40, died in Baghdad on January 27, 2008, after an improvised explosive device detonated near him while he was on foot patrol. Rogers had identified Hampton as his hometown when he enlisted in the Army in June 1990.
U.S. Army Major Alan G. Rogers, 40, died of wounds he suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near him while he was on a foot patrol. He was serving his second tour of duty overseas. Rogers was a military intelligence officer working with a military transition team when he died.
Rogers moved to Bradford County from New York City in 1977, according to Margaret Wadsworth, a longtime teacher’s aide at Hampton Elementary School.
“He was an only child and his parents moved here to help his grandmother who lived in Hampton,” Wadsworth said. “He attended fourth and fifth grade here before going to the middle school and high school in Starke.”
Brenda Thornton said Rogers graduated with her and the rest of the Bradford County High School Class of 1985. He enlisted in the Army and served in the first Persian Gulf war before returning to the area to enroll at the University of Florida using his GI benefits. Rogers joined the ROTC program at UF and worked as an administrative assistant at Trend Realty, according to former Trend owner Donna Pitts.
“We got close to him when he worked for us and he asked us to attend the ceremony at Kanapaha (park) when he received his commission as an officer,” Pitts said. “We realized that he was an only child of older parents and had led a very sheltered life.”
As an example of the sheltering, Pitts said that once she asked Rogers to drive some other employees to and from a social event on the Atlantic Coast and discovered Rogers had never been to the ocean.
Following his graduation from UF in 1995, Rogers returned to active duty with the Army and began ascending to the rank of major. Those close to Rogers said he was divorced and had no children but is survived by cousins who still live in Florida. They could not be reached on Wednesday.
Family friend Thelma Green said Rogers was well-grounded in Christianity. Green recalled attending Ebenezer Missionary Baptist church in Lincoln City with Rogers and his mother. Green said Rogers joined the church as a youngster and served on the young adult usher board for several years.
“In his later years the Lord called him to preach and he was ordained under the leadership of the Rev. O.E. Harris,” Green said. “He always came back to visit us on leave.”
Former neighbor Joyce Mitchell said Rogers was called home frequently as his parents aged, usually because of medical emergencies involving his mother, whose kidneys were failing.
“A mother couldn’t have asked for a better son. Anytime they called, he would get here if he could and he became like a parent to his father and mother,” Mitchell said. She also said that after many trips home to care for his mother, Rogers’ father died suddenly. His mother died within a few months.
U.S. Army Major Alan G. Rogers should have been making plans to fly home later this month to serve as best man at his best friend’s wedding. Instead, Rogers’ body was flown home in a flag-draped casket Wednesday morning, another casualty of the Iraq war.
Rogers, 40, died of wounds he suffered January 27, 2008, when an improvised explosive device detonated near him while he was on a foot patrol in Baghdad.
Rogers was serving his second tour of duty overseas. He was a military intelligence officer working with a military transition team when he died.
His body arrived at the Gainesville Regional Airport just before noon Wednesday. Waiting on the tarmac was his cousin, Cathy Long of Ocala, with her husband, Reginald Long. Also on hand was Rogers’ best friend since college, Shay Hill of Jacksonville, and another close friend of both men, Army Sergeant Kelly O’Connor, who also had been asked to participate in Hill’s March 1 wedding. Rogers was an only child, was divorced and had no children of his own. O’Connor said the Army was his life.
Despite his grief over Rogers’ death, Hill could still smile about how the two met while in college. Shay was helping to pay his way through Santa Fe Community College by selling peanuts alongside U. S. 301. He would wave to passing motorists, hoping his friendliness would encourage them to stop and buy some peanuts.
“One day he (Rogers) stopped and introduced himself and asked why I was waving at him every time he went by,” Hill said. “He didn’t realize that I was waving at everybody.”
Rogers and Hill became roommates for a portion of their college careers. Rogers joined the ROTC program at the University of Florida and then accepted a commission in the U.S. Army in 1990.
“I’ll remember him as a true American hero, a very generous spirit,” Hill said.
Cathy Long said her fondest memory of her younger cousin will be “his knack for bringing people together.”
Long said that Rogers was adopted by his parents, George and Genny Rogers, when they were older. He was their only child and about the same age as Long’s oldest son. The Rogers family moved to Florida from New York in 1977 and Alan attended Hampton Elementary School before enrolling in middle and high school in Starke.
“We didn’t really get close until his parents became ill,” Long said. George died of a heart attack in 2000 and Genny of kidney-related problems two years later.
“He preached at his mother’s funeral,” Long said.
Rogers had joined Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church in Lincoln City as a youngster and was ordained as a pastor there when he was a young man. Ebenezer is where a funeral service will be held for Rogers at 11 a.m. Friday. Daniel Blackman, who coordinates Florida’s Military Funeral Honors Program, said Rogers will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery later this month.
Those on hand to escort Rogers’ casket from the airport to Starke included representatives of several agencies, including two former high school classmates. Starke Police Chief Gordon Smith and Lieutenant Barry Warren graduated from Bradford County High School with Rogers in 1985.
“When I was a senior, he was the commander of the Junior ROTC program,” Warren said. “He was very knowledgeable about the concept and an excellent leader.”
After graduation, Warren saw Rogers one more time, at the Oaks Mall in Gainesville.
“He told me he was doing that he loved, that he was in the Army and living his dream,” Warren said. Others in the class of 1985 have phoned and e-mailed The Sun to express similar comments. Several recalled that Rogers was elected the most intellectual class member.
Sgt. O’Connor said Rogers’ intellectual abilities were also recognized by the Army. According to O’Connor, Rogers earned his first master’s degree through the online Phoenix University, then was accepted into an elite program.
“He was one of only 25 Army officers accepted into the public policy master’s degree program at Georgetown University,” O’Connor said. “That is how he got his internship at the Pentagon for the Deputy Secretary of Defense.”
To honor Rogers’ memory, Long, Hill and O’Connor said a Web site has been established to accept scholarship donations as a memorial in lieu of flowers. The address is www.thealangrogersfund.org
In addition to a military honor guard at Roger’s funeral, the Patriot Guard Riders will be in attendance. The volunteer organization attends military funerals nationwide, according to John “Daze” Vincent, the guard’s Florida ride captain. Vincent said the group’s only mission is to make certain that respect is shown for those who die while serving the country and sometimes that means shielding mourners form protesters.
“We had a funeral for a soldier last week in Orlando and there were protesters there,” Vincent said. “We don’t think that’s something the families should have to deal with.”
Major Rogers will be laid to rest with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery on 14 March 2008.
6 February 2008:
Army Major Alan G. Rogers should have been making plans to fly home later this month to serve as best man at his best friend’s wedding. Instead, Rogers’ body was flown home in a flag-draped casket Wednesday morning.
Rogers will be buried later this month at Arlington National Cemetery. To honor his memory, a Web site has been established to accept scholarship donations as a memorial in lieu of flowers.
Governor Charlie Crist has ordered the Florida and U.S. flags be flown at half-staff at the Bradford County Courthouse, Hampton City Hall and the Capitol on Friday to honor Rogers.
Rogers, 40, died of wounds he suffered January 27, 2008, in Iraq when an improvised explosive device detonated near him while he was on a foot patrol in Baghdad.
Rogers was serving his second tour of duty overseas. He was a military intelligence officer working with a military transition team when he died.
His body arrived at Gainesville Regional Airport just before noon Wednesday. Waiting on the tarmac were his cousin, Cathy Long, and her husband, Reginald Long, both of Ocala.
Also on hand were Rogers’ best friend since college, Shay Hill of Jacksonville, and another close friend of both men, Army Sgt. Kelly O’Connor, who also had been asked to participate in Hill’s March 1 wedding. Rogers was an only child, was divorced and had no children of his own. O’Connor said the Army was his life.
Despite his grief over Rogers’ death, Hill could still smile about how the two met while in college. Hill was helping to pay his way through Santa Fe Community College by selling peanuts alongside U.S. 301. He would wave to passing motorists, hoping his friendliness would encourage them to stop and buy some peanuts.
“One day he (Rogers) stopped and introduced himself and asked why I was waving at him every time he went by,” Hill said. “He didn’t realize that I was waving at everybody.”
Rogers and Hill became roommates for a portion of their college careers. Rogers joined the ROTC program at the University of Florida and then accepted a commission in the U.S. Army in 1990.
“I’ll remember him as a true American hero, a very generous spirit,” Hill said.
Cathy Long said her fondest memory of her younger cousin will be “his knack for bringing people together.”
Long said that Rogers was adopted by his parents, George and Genny Rogers, when they were older. He was their only child and about the same age as Long’s oldest son. The Rogers family moved to Florida from New York in 1977 to Hampton, northeast of Gainesville, where Alan attended Hampton Elementary School. He went on to attend middle and high school in Starke.
“We didn’t really get close until his parents became ill,” Long said. George died of a heart attack in 2000 and Genny of kidney-related problems two years later.
“He preached at his mother’s funeral,” Long said.
Rogers had joined Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church in Lincoln City as a youngster and was ordained as a pastor there when he was a young man. Ebenezer is where a funeral service will be held for Rogers at 11 a.m. Friday. Daniel Blackman, who coordinates Florida’s Military Funeral Honors Program, said Rogers will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery later this month.
Those on hand to escort Rogers’ casket from the airport to Starke included representatives of several agencies, including two former high school classmates: Starke Police Chief Gordon Smith and Lt. Barry Warren graduated from Bradford County High School with Rogers in 1985.
“When I was a senior, he was the commander of the Junior ROTC program,” Warren said. “He was very knowledgeable about the concept and an excellent leader.”
After graduation, Warren saw Rogers one more time – at The Oaks Mall in Gainesville.
“He told me he was doing what he loved, that he was in the Army and living his dream,” Warren said. Others in the class of 1985 have phoned and e-mailed The Sun to express similar comments. Several recalled that Rogers was elected the most intellectual class member.
Sgt. O’Connor said Rogers’ intellectual abilities were also recognized by the Army. According to O’Connor, Rogers earned his first master’s degree through the online Phoenix University, then was accepted into an elite program.
“He was one of only 25 Army officers accepted into the public policy master’s degree program at Georgetown University,” O’Connor said. “That is how he got his internship at the Pentagon for the deputy secretary of defense.”
To honor Rogers’ memory, Long, Hill and O’Connor said a Web site has been established to accept scholarship donations as a memorial in lieu of flowers.
In addition to a military honor guard at Roger’s funeral, the Patriot Guard Riders will be in attendance. The volunteer organization attends military funerals nationwide, according to John “Daze” Vincent, the guard’s Florida ride captain. Vincent said the group’s only mission is to make certain that respect is shown for those who die while serving the country and sometimes that means shielding mourners from protesters.
“We had a funeral for a soldier last week in Orlando and there were protesters there,” Vincent said. “We don’t think that’s something the families should have to deal with.”
Army Officer Remembered as Hero
Friends, Fellow Soldiers Mourn Loss of ‘Exceptional’ Man
By Donna St. George
Courtesy of the Washington Post
Saturday, March 22, 2008
He was a soldier first, and that was clear when Army Major Alan G. Rogers was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors. Rifles were fired. A bugler played taps. An Army chaplain said the decorated officer would be remembered as “one of the heroes of history.”
Rogers, 40, was killed by a makeshift explosive device in Baghdad on January 27, 2008, while in a Humvee. “As God would have it,” his commanding officer wrote to his family in a letter, “he shielded two men who probably would have been killed if Alan had not been there.”
Rogers was a military intelligence officer who had worked at the Pentagon, served in the Persian Gulf War and was on his second tour in Iraq. When he was killed, he was attached to the 4th Infantry Division as part of a team that was embedded with and trained Iraqi soldiers.
“What an exceptional, brilliant person — just well-spoken and instantly could relate to anybody,” Col. Thomas Fernandez, his commanding officer in Iraq, said in an interview. “He had a gift. He was unlike anybody I’ve met before.”
The Army officer was awarded a Purple Heart posthumously and his second Bronze Star, then laid to rest March 14, 2008, at a morning service set against the bare trees of March and attended by more than 150 mourners. Friends and fellow soldiers came from as far away as Iraq and South Korea.
Rogers was described as an upbeat, intelligent and humble man who was attentive and accepting in a way that left many people feeling they must be his closest friend. He considered the Washington area, where he had lived in recent years, his adopted home.
“He found a way to connect with people for who they truly are,” said Shay Hill, a close friend and one-time college roommate.
Rogers died a few weeks before a trip home, during which he had planned to serve as the best man in Hill’s wedding. After his death, Rogers’s team in Iraq pitched in to buy the fine Persian rug that Rogers had intended to give Hill and his wife as a wedding gift.
Former Pentagon colleagues said Rogers was a leader who came to work early, left late and was more interested in getting things done than claiming the spotlight.
“He was a man of conviction, and he was a man of faith, and he was an example for all of us to emulate,” said Wally O’Connor, a colleague who was part of a biometrics team that Rogers helped lead from 2006 to 2007.
Mike Stango, another colleague from that time, said of Rogers: “It was a very politically charged environment, and he was the calming personality over everything.”
Rogers had up-from-the-bootstraps beginnings, growing up mostly in Hampton, Florida, as an only child in “very meager” circumstances, cousin Cathy Long said. Long recalled him as “the type of son who was always so good to his parents” and went through a hard time when both died in a two-week period in 2000.
It was Long who accepted the folded flag at Rogers’s grave site.
After high school, Rogers attended Santa Fe Community College, then enlisted in the Army as a chaplain’s assistant. Four years later, he went to the University of Florida. He graduated with a theology degree in 1995 and accepted an Army commission.
He became an ordained minister through his Florida church, his family said.
In 2005, Rogers earned a master’s degree in policy management at Georgetown University as part of a selective program meant to fast-track the next generation of Army leaders.
Mark Nadel, a visiting Georgetown professor who was his thesis adviser, recalled Rogers as an officer with leadership qualities that made him think, “This is a guy I’m going to hear from in 10 years, and he’s going to be a general.”
Tami Sadowski, a close friend in Washington, said Rogers had asked her to shop for a house he could buy after his Iraq tour ended in November. Instead, Sadowski organized events in his memory, including a gathering in the District the night after his burial. Friends came with their recollections.
It was the same place they had gathered for his send-off party before he left for war.
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Michael Robert Patterson was born in Arlington and is the son of a former officer of the US Army. So it was no wonder that sooner or later his interests drew him to American history and especially to American military history. Many of his articles can be found on renowned portals like the New York Times, Washingtonpost or Wikipedia.
Reviewed by: Michael Howard