Cliff Rogers’ children were the most important part of his life. Chris Kinney, food service director in Portland, would ask Rogers, “What’d you do this weekend?” and Rogers would say that he and the kids had done something fun, or maybe one of the kids had been sick.
“The happiest I saw Cliff was on Fridays,” said his aunt Rosemary Johnson, catering administrator. “He would have the kids every other weekend and that is when he was the happiest.”
Rogers died suddenly from a brain aneurysm on the afternoon of Sept. 10. He was 43. He is survived by a teenage son and two daughters, two brothers, and several aunts and uncles.
When he began working for Aramark at USM, Rogers was a teenager himself, only a year older than his son is now. He started in the dish room, then became a cook, then a chef. When Portland Hall opened, Rogers was promoted to Portland Hall Manager. For every meal, he brought the food cooked in Gorham to the dining area at Portland Hall. As years passed, Rogers continued to be promoted and has been the Vending Manager for the past six years.
Rogers lived and worked in Gorham his entire life. Johnson remembers Rogers as a child visiting her at her home in New Hampshire. Each time he would visit for a weekend he would promise to not be homesick. After one day, he would, without fail, be homesick and request to be taken home.
“He never gave up,” she said. “Every time he would say, ‘This time I won’t get homesick!'”
Rogers was a quiet, private man who liked to tell jokes. Even when he got message after message on his pager, he rarely got overwhelmed or upset.
“He’d sit here and get a page and say, ‘Oh boy!’ for a dollar stuck in a machine then a minute later, ‘Oh boy!’ and it would be going off again for another dollar stuck in a machine. He was very positive. He never ever got upset,” Kinney said.
After twenty-six years with Aramark, Rogers had many friends in his coworkers. Aramark was also very supportive when Rogers’ father died in late August. They helped with many of the funeral arrangements.
Aramark employees were also the ones to find Rogers in his home on the morning of Sept. 10. Johnson and Rogers’ co-worker Ron Libby had gone to his home that morning after he had not responded to his beeper.
Rogers’ presence is missed by employees and University staff members. It took several days for Aramark employees to pick up where this one-man-show had left off the Friday before. “I knew Cliff was busy, but now that we are doing it I see how good he was at it,” said Kinney.
Aramark is working to fill Rogers’ position. Final candidates have been selected, and the company is working to move on after the untimely death.
“I was in his office, doing inventory,” Kinney said the week after Rogers’ death. “I felt like Cliff was there. I felt like an invader being in his storeroom. It is like he is still there.”