The Stories of My Life: Victor Wilfred Rogers 1926 to 2015

By Victor Wilfred Rogers

Inspired by a writing class and many people who told him Oh, you have led such an interesting life with so many stories to tell, he decided to write down some of those stories, beginning with a brief synopsis on how his mother and father got to the point in their lives where his began.

While he was born in the United States, he spent much of his childhood and young adult life in Canada and England. He considered himself very fortunate to have traveled to so many places around the world. This book is a collection of random stories from his life and an expression of how he marveled at the many technological changes that happened during his lifetime.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 13, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984536754

Victor Wilfred Rogers

Victor was born to Ethel and Ronald Rogers who were from England. His fathers sense of adventure brought him and Ethel to Canada and to the United States where he was born. As a child, he lived in Canada and England. He also had a strong sense of adventure and a long life full of fascinating travels and experiences. Vic served in the US Army in Europe, after which he was able to return to the US where he earned his BA in industrial engineering administration from Oregon State College in 1952. He worked for Westinghouse and IBM in San Jose CA. In all, Vic traveled to 40 different countries and 30 of the 50 United States. Vic was a kind, compassionate man and he was a talented artist using his skills to create beautiful paintings, photographs, stained glass and miniature structures.

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Copyright © 2018 by Victor Wilfred Rogers.

Library of Congress Control Number:        2018907393

ISBN:                          Hardcover               978-1-9845-3677-8

                                    Softcover                978-1-9845-3676-1

                                    eBook                     978-1-9845-3675-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Pictures by Victor Rogers

Book design by Victor Rogers

Rev. date: 07/11/2018

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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Contents

Foreword

The Stories of My Life

In the Beginning 1926

The Trip to Canada 1930

Crossing the Icy River

The Dust Storm

Done Roamin’

Returning to the Old Country 1935

Folks Moved to Coventry 1937

World War II Starts in September 1939

WWII Ends, VE day was May 8th 1945

Camp Kilmer New Jersey, July 1947

Started College, spring 1948

Westinghouse, January 1952

Married Carla 1956

International Business Machines (IBM), June 1967

Met Arlene in 1975

IBM opened the Santa Teresa Lab 1977

Travelling with Arlene 1979 to 2014

Technological Changes

Appendix A

Appendix B

Foreword

On January 15 2015, Dad sent an e-mail out to his three children (Michael, Nanette and I) as well as his wife Arlene’s (Lori, Julie and Risa) informing us of a health issue. He had begun to have some pain in his side and was going to get it checked out. It was a few days after that he realized that he might not be able to finish the memoir that he was working on and asked me to finish it for him.

My father was such an important influence on my life. He was a very involved father, including taking over complete care of his three children when our mother left for graduate school when I was ten years of age. My father encouraged me to be a strong independent woman. He was very artistic and enjoyed creating so many things including jewelry, furniture, solar hot water heaters, a hot tub out of a wine barrel, and special tools designed to get a particular job done. Later in life, his love was creating stained glass and miniatures.

This book is a collection of many stories of events and times in Dad’s life from being a child in Coventry, England during WWII, to zip lining in Costa Rica when he was 88 years old. He lived through many challenging experiences that helped to shape him into the kind, gentle and loving man that he was.

Sally Ann Rogers

December 1, 2016

The Stories of My Life

By Victor Wilfred Rogers

We had been living in the wonderful community of Mountain Meadows in Ashland, Oregon for three years when I noticed that one of the interest groups was ‘Writing your Life.’ I decided that maybe I should try that myself. Many people have told me, Oh you have led such an interesting life with so many stories to tell.

I began writing this in October 2006. It is now January 2015, I am 88 + years old and as such, my memory of past events has faded badly in spots. Hopefully as I recount the years, the writing in itself will cause me to be able to fill in some of the gaps that may occur. However, before I actually get on with my life, I want to give a brief synopsis on how my Mother and Father got to the point in their lives where mine began.

At age eighteen, my Dad, Ronald Charles Rogers planned on being a pharmacist and actually started at Kings College in Cambridge, England. However, he was told that because of his failing hearing he would not be permitted to work as a pharmacist due to the potential danger of not being able to accurately hear a customer’s requests, thereby giving them the wrong medication.

Not long after he found this out, he met a man from Canada who offered him a free passage to the Island of Victoria, British Columbia in Canada. He agreed to work for this chicken farmer for two years to pay off his passage. He would then be free to go his own way. So at the early age of eighteen, my Dad started on his big adventure in Canada. After two years he left the chicken ranch and got hired on as a lumberjack in British Columbia on the mainland. He worked at that for a couple of years before deciding to go back to England to visit family and friends. In England he met my mother. In a fairly short time, they were married and headed back to the United States where Dad got work at one of the automotive plants in Detroit, Michigan. They put money down on a small piece of property in Wyandotte, a small town outside of Detroit, and Dad started building their first house. In order to be able to afford to do this, they bought a large tent, pitched it on the lot and proceeded to live in that throughout the hard Michigan winter. Dad worked a full time job in Detroit in one of the automobile plants while Mom and Dad built their first house. When they moved into the house, Mother became pregnant. In due course, I was born in Wyandotte, Michigan, USA, on February 2, 1926.

In the Beginning 1926

We lived in that house a little over four years. My first and only memory of that time was riding up and down the sidewalk in my little pedal car. Meanwhile, Dad was working on the punch press line at the factory. In those days there was no OSHA, no safety rules to protect the workers and no ear muffs to protect their hearing from the dozens of extremely noisy punch presses. With the noisy environment and seeing other men carried out almost daily because they lost a finger or a limb in the machines, my Dad contacted his doctor about his failing hearing and his nervousness. The doctor recommended he go work on a farm somewhere where it was quieter and less hectic. So Dad bought a small truck garden farm in Azalia, Michigan, sold their house in town and started farming. In about one year, the people who sold them the farm foreclosed on them because Dad, being so young and inexperienced, had not read the fine print and took his farm away from him. I will add more on that later.

It was during this time on the Truck Garden Farm that I have my second childhood memory. On the day or evening preceding a trip into Detroit to the Farmers Market, Mom and Dad would load up the various produce we had for sale in an old model T Ford truck so that it would be ready to go bright and early the next day as early as two or three in the morning. This is where I earned my keep. Dad would boost me up onto the floor of the chicken coop. I would walk in, gently grab two chickens by the legs, and hand them out to Mom or Dad who would put them into traveling coops. This would be repeated for however many chickens they wanted to take to market that day. The chickens were quite docile because they had been sleeping and it was still very dark out so they really didn’t know what was going on. Then off to Market we would go. I usually slept during the trip.

Anyway, back to the point where Dad lost the farm. When it became evident that my parents could do nothing to save their investment in the Azalia farm, they made preparations to move to Canada where they had found that they could lease a quarter section of land (160 acres) for $5 a year, and farm it as they wished.

So the day came when we loaded everything we thought we needed or had space to carry into the old Model T truck and the new 1929 Durant four door sedan and headed northwest. The route, of course, was not as simple as it