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Post Script: Itty bitty woman was one of Cowboys' biggest fans
http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=131511&ran=29992
Ruth Rogers
By FRED KIRSCH, The Virginian-Pilot
© August 31, 2007
NORFOLK
Ruth Rogers stood only 4-foot-8 and weighed barely 100 pounds, but she didn't take guff from anyone. Especially Commanders fans.
Inch for inch, pound for pound, Rogers, who died Aug. 20 at age 81, may have been the fiercest Dallas Cowboys fan of them all.
When the Cowboys were on TV, Rogers would settle into her favorite chair, wearing a cowboy hat, cowboy boots and one of her 15 Dallas Cowboys sweat shirts, next to her Emmitt Smith bobblehead dolls.
"You could watch the game with her as long as you didn't talk," said her daughter, Christine Leinbach. "Then you had to leave the room. I became a Commander fan to get her goat. "
Rogers grew up in North Carolina, one of six children. Her formal education ended around the eighth grade. In 1941, she met a young Marine. The two stole off to South Carolina to marry. James Rogers was 18.
She was 15. The couple remained married until James died in the early 1980s. They adopted Christine, their only child, when she was 3 weeks old.
For a time, Ruth Rogers worked for a hosiery company that made parachutes during the war. She was also a mail carrier at Norfolk Naval Shipyard. In her later years, she was a caregiver for those with Alzheimer's, a condition she would suffer.
Her personality matched her red hair, and she never gave a second thought to her short stature. Her favorite song lyrics were "It's all right to be little bitty, little hometown or a big old city." Rogers drove a Mustang until her late 70s when "they took away her license because she had such a heavy foot," said her daughter.
She delighted in playing practical jokes, such as gluing her daughter's rocking chair to the floor and serving the family rubber eggs.
She also loved baking cakes from scratch. Especially pineapple upside-down cake and coconut cake. "She never bought a cake mix. She'd get a coconut, beat it with a hammer and then use a screwdriver to get the milk out," Leinbach said.
Of all the Cowboys, there was no one quite like Emmitt Smith, the NFL's all-time rushing leader. "There was just something special about him," Leinbach said.
Rogers was 75 when she finally got to see her Cowboys in person, against the Commanders. In the closing minutes, Smith crashed across the goal line for the winning touchdown.
"Right in front of her," her daughter said.
Fred Kirsch, (757) 446-2484, postscripts@pilotonline.com
http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=131511&ran=29992
Ruth Rogers
© August 31, 2007
NORFOLK
Ruth Rogers stood only 4-foot-8 and weighed barely 100 pounds, but she didn't take guff from anyone. Especially Commanders fans.
Inch for inch, pound for pound, Rogers, who died Aug. 20 at age 81, may have been the fiercest Dallas Cowboys fan of them all.
When the Cowboys were on TV, Rogers would settle into her favorite chair, wearing a cowboy hat, cowboy boots and one of her 15 Dallas Cowboys sweat shirts, next to her Emmitt Smith bobblehead dolls.
"You could watch the game with her as long as you didn't talk," said her daughter, Christine Leinbach. "Then you had to leave the room. I became a Commander fan to get her goat. "
Rogers grew up in North Carolina, one of six children. Her formal education ended around the eighth grade. In 1941, she met a young Marine. The two stole off to South Carolina to marry. James Rogers was 18.
She was 15. The couple remained married until James died in the early 1980s. They adopted Christine, their only child, when she was 3 weeks old.
For a time, Ruth Rogers worked for a hosiery company that made parachutes during the war. She was also a mail carrier at Norfolk Naval Shipyard. In her later years, she was a caregiver for those with Alzheimer's, a condition she would suffer.
Her personality matched her red hair, and she never gave a second thought to her short stature. Her favorite song lyrics were "It's all right to be little bitty, little hometown or a big old city." Rogers drove a Mustang until her late 70s when "they took away her license because she had such a heavy foot," said her daughter.
She delighted in playing practical jokes, such as gluing her daughter's rocking chair to the floor and serving the family rubber eggs.
She also loved baking cakes from scratch. Especially pineapple upside-down cake and coconut cake. "She never bought a cake mix. She'd get a coconut, beat it with a hammer and then use a screwdriver to get the milk out," Leinbach said.
Of all the Cowboys, there was no one quite like Emmitt Smith, the NFL's all-time rushing leader. "There was just something special about him," Leinbach said.
Rogers was 75 when she finally got to see her Cowboys in person, against the Commanders. In the closing minutes, Smith crashed across the goal line for the winning touchdown.
"Right in front of her," her daughter said.
Fred Kirsch, (757) 446-2484, postscripts@pilotonline.com
