Judeliveda wonderfullife

IT is perhaps testament to the wonderful life Jude led that while his family grieved at his passing, they also appreciated it was a life lived well, loved well and ultimately lost well.

There was nothing left unsaid, no painful memories or regrets in the end – simply a profound gratitude that he had both shaped and shared our lives for so long.

Jude was a native of Carrickmacross before moving to Dundalk in the 1940s. In his youth he was a keen sportsman, playing snooker, handball, rugby, badminton and Gaelic football amongst others.

He was a natural sportsman, being very adept in whatever arena he chose to play. And wherever he may have lacked the skill he more than made up for it with a dogged enthusiasm and quiet self-confidence.

Probably his proudest sporting achievement was winning a Louth Senior Gaelic Championship medal with the Gaels in 1952. He also played a few times with the Louth senior team during their 1950s heyday. Although he didn’t play in the 1957 All-Ireland winning side, he remembered vividly sitting transfixed in Croke Park after the match, in a state of disbelief that Louth had actually won the Sam Maguire.

Jude worked during the 1950s in his mother’s grocery shop in Park Street, but told her one day that he wanted to leave to train as an airline pilot. She told him she’d never speak to him again unless himself and his brother Michael set up a garage, like their father before them.

Thus began Rogers’ Garage, near 50 years in existence, first with the Triumph agency, then Fiat in the mid-1960s and ultimately Nissan in 1986.

Jude was a very astute businessman. He always had a good head for figures combined with an uncommon sense of fairness towards his employees and customers alike. He treated everybody equally, be they rich or poor. ‘Nobody is better than you or worse than you,’ he often said. ‘Fairness is the best yardstick,” was another of his favourite mottoes. Humane principles such as these stood him in good stead and ensured Rogers’ Garage thrived for nearly half a century.

Running a successful business generally involves making a series of shrewd decisions, and Jude was blessed with an unerring common sense. But his best decision, as he often admitted himself, was undoubtedly marrying his wife Emer.

‘I knew she was the girl for me from our very first date,’ he said – and so it proved. Three children followed their marriage in 1963: two sons, Kieran and Paul and a daughter, Michelle.

It was an idyllic childhood for all of us, we never wanted for anything and were secure in the knowledge that we were nurtured and loved equally by both our parents.

In the early 1970s Jude decided to resume his sporting career by taking up golf. He always felt it was important to have a good work/life balance and he certainly succeeded in maintaining it out in Blackrock Golf Club. He also developed many life-long friendships there.

Films were also an important influence on Jude’s life. He fondly recalled from his boyhood that his weekly ambition was to earn the tuppence entry to his local cinema in Carrickmacross.

And for everybody in that era the cinema was their sole window on the outside world. He particularly loved Westerns and actors like John Wayne, Gary Cooper, James Stewart amongst others. I think he recognised on the silver screen a certain nobility and decency in the characters that they portrayed, which he sought to emulate himself.

When I was a kid I believed in two gods – one was Jesus Christ in Heaven and the other was Jude Rogers here on Earth. It took me a long time to learn that my father was not a god. And yet I still feel that we have lost someone less than a god but somehow more than a man.

Perhaps we have lost a piece of old Ireland itself and those old-fashioned principles that were prideful of good name and respectful of society. Jude was an ordinary, decent, god-fearing gentleman. One of the last of the old school. A kind that perhaps they just don’t make any more.

For my Mum particularly and the wonderful mother she is and wife she was to Jude I can only say this… if love alone could sustain a man, Jude Rogers would have been immortal.