Patricia Rogers, Long Beach-raised teacher who spent decades in classrooms, dies at 87

Patricia Kay Brinkerhoff Rogers, a teacher who grew up in North Long Beach and spent her career educating children, died peacefully at 1:49 a.m. on October 26, 2022. Known as Patti, she was surrounded by her husband of 58 years, Michael Joseph Rogers, and their four children: Michelle Marie Rogers Cisik, Suzanne Catherine Rogers Walburger, Michael Cameron Rogers and Stephen Christopher Rogers.

Rogers was born in 1935 in Highland Park, a Los Angeles suburb, the second of three children of Verd Cameron Brinkerhoff and Mabel Knight Brinkerhoff. The family moved to North Long Beach in 1944, and she enrolled at Grant Elementary School.

A lifelong friend, Dale Fairbanks, who also attended Grant Elementary, recalled her school years fondly. "Patti was one of the prettiest and most popular girls at Grant, Lindbergh Jr. High, and David Starr Jordan High School," Fairbanks said, describing her as "the epitome of a high school song leader in the '50s." Fairbanks added that her intelligence, leadership skills, energy and friendliness endeared her to classmates in every grade.

After high school she attended Long Beach City College and Long Beach State College, graduating in 1957 with a bachelor's degree in education. She completed her student teaching in the Long Beach school system and was hired to teach fifth grade at Garfield Elementary School, where she developed into a Master Teacher.

In 1959 she joined the teaching staff of the Long Beach City Outdoor Education Program at Camp High Hill, in the Angeles National Forest near Mount Wilson. There she met her future husband, who worked for the US Forest Service.

In 1962 she took an overseas post with the US Department of Education, teaching the children of US Air Force personnel at Johnson Air Force Base outside Tokyo. Her older brother, a US Air Force captain stationed at a nearby base, helped her settle into life abroad. She toured Japan and took sewing, cooking and flower-arranging classes, skills that later earned her many Blue Ribbon awards at county fairs.

While she was in Japan, Michael, the forester, proposed. She flew home for the summer break and left open the possibility of returning in the fall, but she knew when she saw him again that she would not go back. The couple married in March 1964 in Corvallis, Oregon, where he was studying at Oregon State University's School of Forestry.

Michael Rogers's 42-year forestry career took the family across California and included a four-year assignment at the US Forest Service's national headquarters in Washington, D.C. When their youngest child started school, Patricia Rogers returned to teaching in Catholic schools and continued until she retired.

She is survived by her older brother, her husband, their four children and seven grandchildren. An avid gardener, teacher and catechist, she "touched the lives of many and will be greatly missed," according to her obituary.

A Memorial Mass was scheduled for November 16 at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church in San Diego, followed by interment at Saint Andrews Abbey in Valyermo. The family asked that, in lieu of flowers, donations in her name go to either the church or the abbey.