John
John James "Jack" Rogers
d. May 26, 2010
Bolton, MA
Jack ROGERS, Founder of Bow House, Yankee Renaissance Man
"Jack" John J. Rogers, 81, died Wednesday at Rocky Dundee Farm, his home in Bolton with three generations of his family nearby and a box of Nicaraguan cigars at the ready.
Born in Newport, Rhode Island in 1929 to Winifred MacNeil and John J. Rogers, Jack left Boston College with a sociology degree ('52). He served in the U.S. Navy until late 1955 primarily aboard the destroyer escort U.S.S. Carpellotti on NATO tours of the Mediterranean accompanying the 6th Fleet. The ports of call: Naples, Genoa, Barcelona and Gibraltar established his passion for Italian opera, Spanish zarzuela's and the European jazz scene.
A peripatetic few years found him in Boston driving taxis, tending bar at the Eliot Hotel and working as a carpenter on the Cape where he first saw the Thomas Gardner House in Hingham with its gently bowed or "rainbow" roof.
At Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (3M) one of the most innovative post war companies he sold for the teams that invented everything from Scotch tape and water-proof sandpaper to laminates. By including him as one of their own they gave him both an outlet and support for his creativity. An ardent member of Alcoholics Anonymous, Jack taught underprivileged youths in East Boston, toured New England counseling schoolchildren, college students and families. His worn AA coin was always at the ready for someone in need of counsel. At Deck House, a manufacturer of "kit" homes he learned advanced construction technique and used his natural affability to become the firm's top sales man.
After moving to Bolton in 1966, he combined his love of engineering with his love of architecture and further developed the modern day process of creating bowed roof rafters using laminated wood. He founded Bow House in 1971. The bowed roof gave the classic pitched roof cape home more useable upper floor space, extraordinary strength and a pleasing natural form. The 18th C cape and dairy barns became workshops for creating modern day versions of all of the best of New England architecture: hand turned newel posts, window shutters, cedar shingles, bulls eye glass, copper lighting and hand made brick. Jack delivered the parts to sites around the country himself. Predominant in New England there are now 438 Bow Houses around America. Jack and his wife Wendy expanded the business to include gazebos, garden structures and bridges often utilizing the bowed roof theme. Along the way he was rarely seen without something that wasn't bandaged, cut or bruised.
Never much interested in money, Jack pursued new ways of accomplishing tasks - from pneumatic drills and presses in his workshops, to vacuum systems and drainage. He became a Yankee renaissance man - determined to outfit the world with beautiful original products created in a modern way with respect for a minimal budget. He brandished copies of Viktor Frankel's "Mans Search for Meaning," Christopher Alexander's "The Timeless Way of Building," or Xerox copies of articles of interest from the Wall Street Journal, Architectural Record, the New Yorker or Scientific American, always coffee stained and carefully notated. Friends and family got used to his type written letters examining a particular line from Johnson, Plato or Cicero - always about finding the right balance between happiness, work and success. "The secret of happiness is not in having much, but in wanting little." Luxury was confined to technology, innovation or education. He was always the first to have video (or beta) tape, CD's, early Saabs and diesel Volvos, the newest camera lenses and embraced Italian computers for his work and home.
He built a swimming pool as much to create outdoor living space for his growing family as he did to make a laboratory for his ideas, technological, social and linguistic. He perfected decking, water pumps and a solar outdoor shower. He made a floating gazebo on the Kubota dug pond so he could play the flute and guitar whilst drifting in the landscape and a fountain system which enabled him to discuss the word susurrus (in either its Greek or Latin derivations).
The Rogers style came to be defined by a day in the shop, cigar in the mouth followed by Montserrat Caballe and Joan Sutherland singing Norma or brass bands down by the pool, blasted on Bolton's first outdoor stereo system, much to the consternation of generations of local teenagers. Friday night poker games in the Silo are the stuff of legend and few people in the area's construction and building business didn't at some stage pass through Jack's workshop, be asked to perform a task or get to know his family. As long as they could work hard, stay sober and were prepared to discuss the Times crossword puzzle they were welcome at the farm. He traveled to Carpolletti reunions, trips to the Maine and Canadian coasts and most frequently to watch Sarah Caldwell conduct.
"This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man
Farewell, my blessing season this in thee! "
Jack leaves his wife, Gwendolen nee Jackson, children Christopher, Ann, Jennifer, Molly, Peter and grandchildren, Grace, Zoe, Eliza, Jackson, Chilton and Alexandra.
A memorial will be held later in the summer.
Funeral arrangements are under the direction of: Tighe-Hamilton Funeral Home, Inc. 50 Central Street, Hudson, MA 01749.
Jack ROGERS, Founder of Bow House, Yankee Renaissance Man
"Jack" John J. Rogers, 81, died Wednesday at Rocky Dundee Farm, his home in Bolton with three generations of his family nearby and a box of Nicaraguan cigars at the ready.
Born in Newport, Rhode Island in 1929 to Winifred MacNeil and John J. Rogers, Jack left Boston College with a sociology degree ('52). He served in the U.S. Navy until late 1955 primarily aboard the destroyer escort U.S.S. Carpellotti on NATO tours of the Mediterranean accompanying the 6th Fleet. The ports of call: Naples, Genoa, Barcelona and Gibraltar established his passion for Italian opera, Spanish zarzuela's and the European jazz scene.
A peripatetic few years found him in Boston driving taxis, tending bar at the Eliot Hotel and working as a carpenter on the Cape where he first saw the Thomas Gardner House in Hingham with its gently bowed or "rainbow" roof.
At Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (3M) one of the most innovative post war companies he sold for the teams that invented everything from Scotch tape and water-proof sandpaper to laminates. By including him as one of their own they gave him both an outlet and support for his creativity. An ardent member of Alcoholics Anonymous, Jack taught underprivileged youths in East Boston, toured New England counseling schoolchildren, college students and families. His worn AA coin was always at the ready for someone in need of counsel. At Deck House, a manufacturer of "kit" homes he learned advanced construction technique and used his natural affability to become the firm's top sales man.
After moving to Bolton in 1966, he combined his love of engineering with his love of architecture and further developed the modern day process of creating bowed roof rafters using laminated wood. He founded Bow House in 1971. The bowed roof gave the classic pitched roof cape home more useable upper floor space, extraordinary strength and a pleasing natural form. The 18th C cape and dairy barns became workshops for creating modern day versions of all of the best of New England architecture: hand turned newel posts, window shutters, cedar shingles, bulls eye glass, copper lighting and hand made brick. Jack delivered the parts to sites around the country himself. Predominant in New England there are now 438 Bow Houses around America. Jack and his wife Wendy expanded the business to include gazebos, garden structures and bridges often utilizing the bowed roof theme. Along the way he was rarely seen without something that wasn't bandaged, cut or bruised.
Never much interested in money, Jack pursued new ways of accomplishing tasks - from pneumatic drills and presses in his workshops, to vacuum systems and drainage. He became a Yankee renaissance man - determined to outfit the world with beautiful original products created in a modern way with respect for a minimal budget. He brandished copies of Viktor Frankel's "Mans Search for Meaning," Christopher Alexander's "The Timeless Way of Building," or Xerox copies of articles of interest from the Wall Street Journal, Architectural Record, the New Yorker or Scientific American, always coffee stained and carefully notated. Friends and family got used to his type written letters examining a particular line from Johnson, Plato or Cicero - always about finding the right balance between happiness, work and success. "The secret of happiness is not in having much, but in wanting little." Luxury was confined to technology, innovation or education. He was always the first to have video (or beta) tape, CD's, early Saabs and diesel Volvos, the newest camera lenses and embraced Italian computers for his work and home.
He built a swimming pool as much to create outdoor living space for his growing family as he did to make a laboratory for his ideas, technological, social and linguistic. He perfected decking, water pumps and a solar outdoor shower. He made a floating gazebo on the Kubota dug pond so he could play the flute and guitar whilst drifting in the landscape and a fountain system which enabled him to discuss the word susurrus (in either its Greek or Latin derivations).
The Rogers style came to be defined by a day in the shop, cigar in the mouth followed by Montserrat Caballe and Joan Sutherland singing Norma or brass bands down by the pool, blasted on Bolton's first outdoor stereo system, much to the consternation of generations of local teenagers. Friday night poker games in the Silo are the stuff of legend and few people in the area's construction and building business didn't at some stage pass through Jack's workshop, be asked to perform a task or get to know his family. As long as they could work hard, stay sober and were prepared to discuss the Times crossword puzzle they were welcome at the farm. He traveled to Carpolletti reunions, trips to the Maine and Canadian coasts and most frequently to watch Sarah Caldwell conduct.
"This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man
Farewell, my blessing season this in thee! "
Jack leaves his wife, Gwendolen nee Jackson, children Christopher, Ann, Jennifer, Molly, Peter and grandchildren, Grace, Zoe, Eliza, Jackson, Chilton and Alexandra.
A memorial will be held later in the summer.
Funeral arrangements are under the direction of: Tighe-Hamilton Funeral Home, Inc. 50 Central Street, Hudson, MA 01749.
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