Shelter Island Reporter obituary: Theresa Rogers

Theresa Rogers, a professor of sociology and a summer and weekend resident of Shelter Island for nearly 50 years, died Aug. 16 of natural causes in an assisted-living facility in Wilkes-Barre Township, Penn. She was 96.

After renting on the Island for two summers in the mid-1970s at the suggestion of friends and neighbors in Manhattan, Theresa and her husband, David purchased an old gingerbread home on Wesley Avenue in the Heights.

They enjoyed several summers there with their sons, Ed, Alex and Paul, before selling the house and building a home in Hilo Shores. 

The new property came with enough land for the boys to toss a baseball or hit plastic golf balls on the front lawn and for Terry, as she was widely known, to grow a thriving garden.

She, like so many gardeners on the Island, went to great lengths attempting to keep the deer and rabbits away from her fragrant rows of basil, zucchini, and tomatoes — all of which she loved to cook with along with local fish and corn.

Terry’s upbringing, by contrast, was urban, in a first-floor apartment on the North Side of Chicago, near Wrigley Field. Born on May 19, 1929, five months before the stock market crash that helped bring on the Great Depression, Terry was the elder of two daughters of Emanuel and Louise (Hoffman) Falaguerra. Her father, an immigrant from southern Italy, was an arranger of music for the Percy Faith Orchestra. Her mother, a native of Wisconsin, worked as a nurse. 

The summer before Terry’s senior year of high school, pursuing a job opportunity for her father, the family moved to Kew Gardens, Queens. Years later, she would fully embrace the city, going to concerts and plays with her husband and whisking her children and grandchildren (who affectionately called her Nonna) around town to visit a new museum exhibition or public art display, have an Italian hero in Hell’s Kitchen, or ride the new Second Avenue Subway. “Andiamo!” she would say.

Terry attended Hood College, at the time an all-women’s school, in Frederick, Md., graduating in 1951. She was the first on either side of her family to go to college. After holding a series of jobs in New York, Terry took the trailblazing step for a woman at the time of pursuing a career in academia. She earned a master’s degree in sociology from Columbia University in 1959. While supporting her husband’s career as a professor and author and raising their two older sons in New York City, she pushed on with her graduate studies at Columbia, earning a Ph.D. in 1969.

It was at Columbia in the fall of 1959 where Terry met David, a newly arrived junior professor of sociology from Boston. They began dating that winter and were married in the Faculty House on Sept. 2, 1960.

Terry would spend her entire career as a researcher and adjunct professor at Columbia and Barnard, the affiliated women’s college. She taught courses in, among other topics, the sociology of medicine, perceptions of illness in society, and methods of sociological research.

Underlying all her work was a commitment to exploring the dimensions of human dignity and social mobility. On her own and with colleagues, she undertook many research studies over the years, including examinations of a program developed by the New York Blood Center in the 1980s to provide health education and psychosocial support for blood donors found to be HIV-positive and the challenges of kidney dialysis patients as they re-entered the work force.

Terry co-authored the book “Printers Face Automation” (1980). Begun as a research project for the U.S. Department of Labor, the work examined the psychological as well as professional effects of rapid computerized advances in typesetting on composing room workers at New York’s three major daily newspapers, the New York Post, the Daily News, and The New York Times.

She continued working into her 80s, conducting a study for Barnard on the social and academic experiences of students at women’s colleges. As part of her research, she traveled to do interviews at Spellman in Atlanta and at Smith and Mount Holyoke in Massachusetts, among other schools.

Terry’s weekend and summer stretches on Shelter Island provided welcome respites from her busy work life. She relished the chance to catch up with the many friends and neighbors she and David had on the Island and to spend extended time with family.

She took her grandchildren to farmstands to buy fresh produce she would use to make treasured family dinners and to see the armies of sand crabs on Wades Beach. On late summer afternoons, she swam and socialized with dear friends at Hay Beach.

Terry is predeceased by her husband. She is survived by her sons; her daughters-in-law, Melissa Long and Pam Rogers; and seven grandchildren. 

A grave-side ceremony was held in Boston. A celebration of her life will be scheduled at a later time. Donations can be made in her honor to the Shelter Island Public Library, P.O. Box 2016, Shelter Island, NY 11964.