Thank you, Mr. Rogers

A great family legacy continues.
By Rachel Hahn

He is a household name that is synonymous with business titan, a man of vision, a dreamer and a doer. It’s hard to resist the allure of his underdog story: A five-year-old boy loses his father and the family business, leaving him with almost nothing but a burning desire to reclaim the prestige and success once attached to his name.

That is the Ted Rogers the public knows, infamous for his work ethic. However, for those who were a part of Ted’s family and Ted’s community he was much more than all that. He loved to give and he loved to joke. “People want to make him into something else, but in the end he was just a guy who thought he was a little dorky,” says Ted’s youngest, Martha. He was a man who would leave a mess in the kitchen after making a late night snack (usually his favourite—a peanut butter and banana sandwich). He would spend hours playing with the kids in the family pool. He loved Hallowe’en, family, travel and business, and his love of these things came easily and naturally.

Ted was an innate entrepreneur. While boarding at UCC, he strung a wire from an antenna on the roof down into his dorm room and attached it to a small TV, which he charged his schoolmates to watch. Compassion was also in Ted’s nature. When his father-in-law passed away in the 1990s he wanted to comfort his beloved wife, Loretta, and decided that wearing some of his father-in-law’s clothes would do the trick. He donned an outdated powder-blue suit and bold shirt, both with extreme 70s lapels, and gladly wore them to work and around the house. Despite his children’s cries about the fashion crisis being committed, he insisted it made Loretta feel better.

Loretta was his match in many ways. Married in 1963, the two were supposed to spend three weeks on a honeymoon in Kenya. Predictably, Ted had to cut the trip short for business reasons and promised he’d take Loretta away for a full month in the following year to make up for it.

“Which month?” Loretta had asked her new husband.

“February,” he replied.

“That’ll now cost you six weeks for choosing the shortest month,” she quipped.

Her next move was to pick their destinations and she selected them with the question in mind, “Where can’t he live on the telephone?”

They went to Fiji, Australia, New Zealand and Tahiti, all about a 12-hour time difference from Toronto, so Ted couldn’t talk to the office all the time. Ironically, it was this trip that got Ted started in cable.

The entrepreneurial Ted and the compassionate Ted were not two different manifestations of one man. They were not even two sides of a coin. They were traits that truly existed, all rolled into one with no discernable separation. Family, philanthropy, community and career were all part of one full life. “He wanted to be in the thick of things. What he would hate is if he was in the study with the doors closed,” explains Martha. “It wasn’t work to him. He loved it and that concept is strange to a lot of people. A lot of people divide [work and home] but it wasn’t divided with him. He would find that a peculiar statement.”

Education was one of Ted’s passions and he gave of his time and money to many educational institutions including Ryerson University, University of Toronto, UCC and, of course, BSS, where all four of his children (Lisa, Melinda, Martha and even Edward) attended, as well as his sister, Ann, and currently his grandchild, Chloe.

Loretta served on the BSS Board of Trustees for 27 years and headed many capital campaigns to improve the School. “I was there forever,” laughs Loretta, about her time with the Board of Trustees. She wanted to be involved in giving her children a quality education. “When you have four kids, you do want the best education you can get, and BSS was always very highly rated,” she says.

Among the many projects the pair was involved in at BSS, was the new Junior School built in 2003, and the Rogers wing, which officially opened in 1988. The wing houses a 250-seat theatre, two libraries, science labs and classrooms. The BSS fitness room named for the Rogers children is another project of Loretta and Ted’s. The family also established the Edward S. Rogers Family Scholarships that are awarded annually to one Grade 9 student and retained (if specific criteria are met) until that student leaves BSS.

“He just really believed that everyone has a right to education—it shouldn’t be if you can afford it or not and he hated that concept,” says Martha. “Education should be a right for all people and he really did believe that you can reach your full potential if you have it. So the idea that only certain people got an education; he hated that. It didn’t make any sense.”

Ted’s business sense and passion for BSS combined with the idea of a beneficial partnership. He believed strongly that BSS and UCC should collaborate and he found an eager ear with Kim Gordon. Early in her tenure as Head, Kim met with Ted to discuss the business side of the School. “He challenged me to look for opportunities to work smarter and said there were untapped opportunities and cost savings in a potential back-room partnership with UCC,” writes Ms Gordon in an email. That initial conversation put in motion a partnering that will continue to blossom. “Four years later we share a strategic vision with UCC around sustainability and several goals to tap opportunities for shared services. Mr. Rogers’ advice will continue to impact the future of our two schools,” says Ms Gordon.

Creating opportunities for people was an important part of life in Ted’s eyes and is part of the reason he gave so willingly to education and also to the health care system. “For people to do well in life you need an education,” explains Loretta. “It opens up a lot of opportunities for careers and whatever else, and if you’re going to do anything you need your health.”

Ted’s life was shrouded in health problems, whether they were his own or his family’s. His father’s sudden death due to a ruptured aneurysm shook Ted to the core. His mother was very ill for the last years of her life and eventually died of cancer. Ted, himself, was almost completely blind in one eye since a very young age, and suffered from several ailments throughout his life, requiring dozens of surgeries. It was this close contact with sickness that instilled in Ted the belief that everyone deserves healthcare whether they can afford it or not. “It would physically pain him to hear of people who had medical problems and couldn’t see a doctor or couldn’t afford it,” says Martha. She tells the story of a cleaning staff member at Rogers whose wife had cancer and they couldn’t afford the operation for her. Ted paid for it and was applauded by his peers, to which he replied, “Why are you applauding me? If my wife was dying and someone could have helped her I would have done anything.”

It’s that attitude that Martha is most proud of. “A lot of people help someone if they know them…but that’s where it ends. His definition of people wasn’t exclusive to those who worked at Rogers or if you were a family member or if you were a friend of his daughter. It was literally anybody and I loved that about him. There was no ‘us and them’ perception. It was ‘we’re all one,’” she says.

Ted left this earth on December 2, 2008, at home with family at his side. He kept his winning spirit through it all, recalls his sister, Ann. Their last conversation, which was about whom he’d see in heaven, brought him a smile and a laugh. “All you have to do, Ted, is look at mother and say, ‘Is it all right, mom, or do you think there’s anything else I should have done?’” Ann said. “As for your father, you’ll be thrilled to see him and to meet him and to get to know him because you’ve built a company bigger than he did.” Re-telling the story of the last laugh shared between her and her brother brings a smile to Ann’s face and a soft glaze of tears to her eyes.

That December night Ann said good-bye to her brother and walked home in the sleet. By the time she had sat down, the phone rang. It was Melinda and all she could say was, “he’s gone.”

Ted’s funeral was attended by hundreds of people from all walks of life: businessmen and women, family members, politicians and friends. Loretta asked that in lieu of flowers people give to the Loretta Anne Rogers Critical Care Centre at Toronto Western Hospital. It stands as a testament to the amount of respect Ted earned as a businessman and an individual that about $2.5 million has been donated in his name so far with large amounts given by competitors, such as Shaw Communications and Bell.

BSS has changed a lot over the past few decades, both in programming and in capital. Ted, along with his family, deserves a lot of credit for those positive changes. Unlike many businessmen, Ted defined value not by monetary amounts but by how much something is used and by how many people. By improving the facilities and fiduciary capacity at BSS, he and Loretta were able to make it more accessible for more girls and that legacy outlives Ted Rogers.

1963 Engagement
Ted Rogers, his stepfather and Ron Turnpenny
Ted and family at the Rogers Centre, May 2008, his 75th birthday party hosted for and by the Rogers employees: Melinda '89, Lisa '86, Ted, Loretta, Martha '90, Edward and son in law, Eric Hixon
Ted and Loretta Rogers at BSS Heritage Dinner, 2006
Ann GRAHAM '62 with Rogers Scholarship recipients at Prize Day


Posted May 02, 2009 at 05:00pm






LEAVE A COMMENT






send this page to a friend   print this page