Leaving a Legacy

By Michelle Goff

As Martha R. “Brownie” Plaster, of Shelby, N.C., discusses the philanthropic legacy of her parents, Lon and Mary Evelyn Rogers, she apologizes for a background noise. “That’s my nine o’clock bird,” she says, explaining that a cardinal announces the top of the hour on a bird clock her mother gave her 25 years ago. “Mother hoped it would educate me on birds. Mother was always trying to educate us.”

According to Brownie, Lon Rogers shared his wife’s belief in the power of education as well as her belief in the biblical directive to bloom where you’re planted. Brownie and her siblings, Marylon R. “Meegie” Glass, of Memphis, Tenn., and Fon Rogers II, of Lexington, agree that supporting Pikeville College served as an obvious means for the couple to combine these two beliefs.

“They were dedicated to the college because of its mission to provide an education to people with a Christian emphasis,” recalls Fon. “Dad had a fondness in his heart for the college because he and his sisters attended the Pikeville Collegiate Institute.”

A Pikeville native, Lon Rogers moved to Lexington, Ky., with his family when he was a teenager. After high school, he earned his undergraduate and law degrees at the University of Kentucky. After practicing law for a few years, he relocated to Greenville, Ky., to work in the coal mining industry. That’s where he met Mary Evelyn Walton. The couple married in 1938 and moved to Pikeville, settling first on Auxier Avenue and later on Fifth Street and starting a family.

After his return to Pikeville, Lon Rogers assumed responsibility for his family’s interests in mineral properties and served on the boards of Pikeville National Bank and Corporation (Community Trust Bancorp, Inc.), East Kentucky Beverage Company and Pikeville Methodist Hospital (Pikeville Medical Center). He was also instrumental in the formation of the Pike County Chamber of Commerce, Kiwanis Club and Appalachian Regional Healthcare.

Mary Evelyn Rogers, who had taught biology and physical education prior to her marriage, quickly became a champion of her adopted home. Active in the Mental Health Association, she won the Kentucky Medical Auxiliary’s Woman of the Year honors for her service.

Together, the couple taught Sunday school at the First Presbyterian Church, served on the Wilderness Road Girl Scouts Council and helped start the Pikeville Concert Association.

Their children attribute this service to their parents’ desire to enrich the lives of their fellow Eastern Kentuckians.

“I remember accompanying my dad to meetings in Washington, D.C.,” Fon says. “He would talk to senators and congressmen to campaign for better things for Pike County and Eastern Kentucky.”

As Meegie explains, “They were big on making things better.”

Laughing, she continues, “Brownie and I shared a room. One night, we were in bed and we heard them come in. Mother said, ‘We did it again. You’re going to be president and I’m going to be vice president.’ If [the area] didn’t have it, they would start it, but then they would have to lead it.”

The couple had a special interest in improving access to education and what Brownie refers to as “a shining light” – Pikeville College.

“Dad served on the Presbyterian Church’s Board of National Missions,” Fon says. “He would take a train from Williamson [W.Va.] to New York City. He did this for 12 years and got a lot of people in New York City interested in Pikeville College.”

“Serving on the education committee helped him understand how important the college was to the town and the region,” Brownie says. “Due to the Depression, Mother had to drop out of college and teach. She was able to finish her degree during summers, but she knew how hard it was to get an education, so she helped others.”

Both Lon and Mary Evelyn Rogers served on the college’s board of trustees and were awarded honorary degrees, and Mary Evelyn Rogers helped form the college’s personal enrichment program.

“Mother always told us that when we left Pike County, we were a representative of our home. We should let our behavior reflect our upbringing,” Brownie says. “The basketball team was going abroad and the coach asked her if she would teach them how to shake hands, which fork to use, how to conduct themselves. After the trip, they sent letters thanking her, and college administrators made personal enrichment an elective course, which Mother and Florane Baird taught.”

Their devotion to the college extended to fundraising.

“As June 30 neared every year, she would worry that the college was in the red,” Brownie says of her mother. “She’d say, ‘We need to be in the black,’ and she and Daddy would call donors. One year after they had moved to Lexington, she called a man they knew and he told her to be on a certain street and he’d drive by and hand her a check. She waited on the street for the check. When we asked her about it, about why she did that, she said she would have hated for him to drive by with a check and her not to be there to get it.”

“She was fearless. She said that if you believed in something, it was easy to ask for money for it,” Brownie adds, “and my parents believed in the college’s mission to educate the people of Appalachia.”

In 1981, friends of the Rogers’ created a scholarship in Mary Evelyn Rogers’ honor to help students at Pikeville College earn an education. Following Lon Rogers’ death in 2001, the Lon Brown and Mary Evelyn Walton Rogers Scholarship Fund was established to benefit students from Pike County, Buchanan County, Va., and McDowell County, W.Va., in the hopes that those students would go on to lives of service for the betterment of their communities and their region. Family members and others continue to contribute to the scholarship fund today as a way to honor the Rogers’ legacy.

To date, more than 30 individuals have benefited from the fund including Pikeville native Darianna Friend, ’15.

“I lived with my grandparents and they worked and provided for me,” Darianna recalls. “They adopted me when I was 12. They instilled in me that I needed to do better. I would not be the person I am today without them. I could have taken a different path if not for them.”

Darianna started working at Food City and Loweʼs when she was a teenager. She also devoted herself to her school work to earn good grades and, she hoped, a scholarship. The first member of her family to graduate from college, she is now an intensive care unit nurse at Pikeville Medical Center and is working toward becoming a nurse practitioner in acute care.

“You see so many outcomes in the ICU,” she says. “Mostly negative, but sometimes positive. When that happens, you say, ‘I helped make a difference in somebody’s life.’”

She has not forgotten the Rogers family for helping fund her dream to work in the medical field, noting, “I’m very grateful for the scholarship provided for me.”

The Rogers siblings have not forgotten the philanthropic lessons imparted to them by their parents. In separate conversations, each sibling shares one of their father’s favorite quotes – service is the rent we pay for the space we occupy.

service is the rent we pay for the space we occupy.