Joseph Rogers dead, Navy veteran teacher and church member was 94

Joseph Rogers, a Navy veteran who taught industrial arts at Far Rockaway and Maspeth schools and was one of the first members of Christ the King Parish in Commack, died Wednesday of congestive heart failure at the Long Island State Veterans Home in Stony Brook. He was 94.

The Manhattan-born Rogers went into teaching after serving in the Navy from 1943 to 1946. He trained as a salvage diver aboard the USS Alcor, which serviced destroyers during World War II.

"When a ship was damaged in battle, he went under water to make repairs on the ship before it continued on to port," said his daughter, Mary Nummelin of Huntington.

After the Navy, Rogers worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard as a machinist supervisor in the ordinance shop until 1965, a year before the ship yard closed.

Rogers took a test available for veterans to train as teachers and went back to school to earn enough credits to obtain a teaching certificate, taking courses at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, New York University, the former Long Island University's C.W. Post Campus and the former Farmingdale State University of New York.

He taught industrial arts at Far Rockaway High School and William Cowper Junior High School 73 in Maspeth, Queens.

"He was thinking all the time and loved to read," Nummelin said. "When I would do something good, he would give me a book, so I love to read."

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Rogers was also known for making people laugh, Nummelin said. "When I think of my dad, I think about his sense of humor."

Viewing will be Sunday from 2 to 4 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. at the M.A. Connell Funeral Home in Huntington Station. A funeral Mass will be celebrated Monday at 10 a.m. at Christ the King Parish. Burial will be in Calverton National Cemetery.

Rogers is also survived by another daughter, Ann Walsh of Babylon, and sons John of South Salem, Westchester County, and James of Boise, Idaho; and five grandchildren. His wife, Bernida, died in 1996.