Rogers Family Gives $1 Million to Honor Veterans, Support Military-Connected Students at Gonzaga
More than three decades after Col. John Rogers retired from a 26-year career in the U.S. Air Force, his family’s commitment to military service is creating a lasting legacy for veterans and military-connected students at Gonzaga University.
The Rogers family has committed $1 million to strengthen Gonzaga’s support for those who serve and have served, funding improvements to spaces used by student veterans and military-connected students and supporting the creation of a new Gonzaga University Veterans Memorial.
This gift empowers Gonzaga to care for members of the University’s military community today and ensure that the service and sacrifice of generations before them are remembered.
For John and June Rogers, both are deeply personal. John’s military career began almost by accident while he was an undergraduate at Willamette University. He joined the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps at a time when two years of military training were required and soon discovered that military life suited him.
“I got involved with the drill team,” Rogers recalled in a 2022 interview with Gonzaga. “I’ve always enjoyed being a regimented kind of a guy. I like to be on time, and I enjoyed marching.”
When he was invited to continue with ROTC, he did. Then came another discovery.
“I took a test and learned I was pilot-qualified,” he said. “Considering that I’ve always been interested in airplanes, it was a natural fit.”
Rogers completed flight training and earned his pilot’s license before graduating from college. After receiving his bachelor’s degree and his U.S. Air Force commission, he served a 26-year Air Force career that took John, June and their children from base to base across the country.
While John flew, June built a home for the family in each new community, raised their children and supported other military families navigating the same constant cycle of arrivals, departures and deployments.
“He’d be flying as we’d arrive in a new place, and I would set things up,” June recalled. “I remember taking the kids with me or to the base nurseries while I got acquainted with the area and began my own service to the community as a sort-of mother hen to the other squadron wives.”
John retired as a colonel in 1989, having received the Distinguished Flying Cross, Meritorious Service Medal and Air Force Commendation Medal. That experience shaped the Rogers family’s understanding not only of military service, but of what service asks of individuals and families.
It also shaped what they hope to make possible at Gonzaga. Of the family’s $1 million commitment, $500,000 will support Gonzaga’s Military and Veteran Resource, Advocacy and Community House, including renovations and creation of a smart conference room and a $400,000 endowment for ongoing improvements and future military and veteran community spaces. The improvements are intended to create more functional places for student veterans to connect, receive advising, collaborate and participate in hybrid programming, while the endowment will help Gonzaga continue adapting those spaces to the needs of future students. The remaining $500,000 will support the Gonzaga University Veterans Memorial, a permanent place of remembrance on Bulldog Alley. Plans call for the memorial to feature a central statue of St. Michael the Archangel, a soldier in uniform and the American flag, creating a visible place on campus for reflection on military service and sacrifice.
John has long believed that the lessons of military service extend far beyond a person’s years in uniform.
“I think everybody ought to spend some time in any military service role because it provides the discipline and maturity it takes to be a leader,” he said. “Any young person who gets involved with ROTC will experience benefits in more ways than one.”
For the Rogers family, those lessons have translated into a broader life of service. The family’s relationship with Gonzaga stretches back decades through the Mary Stuart Rogers Foundation, established by John’s mother. Since 1999, the foundation has provided scholarships at Gonzaga for students who demonstrate a commitment to serving others and their communities. John and June later personally endowed the scholarship fund at Gonzaga to ensure its impact in perpetuity.
The new gift extends that legacy in an especially personal direction, connecting the family’s philanthropy with an experience that shaped John and June’s lives together.
And for a family whose military years were spent repeatedly building community wherever duty took them, the investment in a permanent place of belonging for Gonzaga’s military-connected students carries particular resonance. Their service took the Rogers family from place to place. Their gift will help ensure that those who serve can find a home at Gonzaga.