Roger — good vibrations through and through, brother, husband, father, grandfather, musician, baseball statistician, and walking music encyclopedia. Evader of cameras.

Roger’s first great passion was baseball. As a boy, he played Little League with his soon-to-be lifelong friend, Randy Stark. His favorite game of all time was Game 7 of the 1960 World Series, when Bill Mazeroski hit his ninth-inning walk-off home run to beat his beloved Yankees.

Music came next.

His father, Luther, always had a guitar lying around the house—a tradition Roger would carry forward to the next generation—and eventually curiosity got the best of him. After seeing James Brown live at the Civic Center in 1962 and the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, something clicked. Roger and Randy knew they wanted to make music.

Much of Roger’s worldview was shaped in his late teens and early twenties. Fresh off the heels of segregation, he went to work at a grocery store in Oklahoma City’s historically Black Deep Deuce neighborhood. There, he encountered a mixture of people, cultures, and ideas unlike anything he had experienced before.

Later, at Central State College, where he would earn his business degree, Roger discovered an even broader world of personalities and experiences. He also figured out that playing music was a much cooler way to pay for an education than having a “real” job.

By the late 1960s, he and Randy had formed an official group, Soul Authority.

Music would remain a constant throughout his life. Roger played bass on stages ranging from smoky rural watering holes and high school proms, to outdoor amphitheaters and arenas, performing with groups including; The Continentals, Phoenix, Terraplane, and Harvest. Among the highlights were the 1969 OKC Pop-Art Festival and, in July 1995, his final public performance at the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial concert at the Oklahoma State Fairgrounds Arena.

Roger had a particular talent for resisting convention. He spent three decades at R.K. Black, where he wore a clip-on tie, short-sleeve button-up shirts, and a beard he refused to shave after discovering a loophole in a new company policy that otherwise banned them.

More importantly, it was at R.K. Black that he met his wife and life partner, Christy. After only three months of dating, they married in May 1977.

Roger spent a few more years gigging regularly before slowing the tempo and becoming a father. He passed his musical talents on to both of his children and spent countless nights and weekends as an assistant coach for his son’s Little League teams. As his children grew older, he seemed to instinctively know how to parent with just the right balance—enough freedom to let them become themselves, and enough guidance to keep them out of too much trouble.

In 2003, Roger settled into an early retirement, trading his office attire for sweatpants, T-shirts, and a recliner. Fortunately, he also had the best record collection and hi-fi sound system of anyone we knew, and he was not afraid to indulge. He always liked it loud. Somehow, he never lost his hearing.

But he knew how to listen.

His later years were filled with music, bedroom recording sessions, hot tub hangouts, OU football, Thunder basketball, and time with the friends and family he loved. Through all of it, Roger seemed to understand something that many of us spend a lifetime learning: how to find balance amid the incredible ups and downs that life throws at us. He was the equator.

On the threshold of a dream, his ask of us was this…

Protect the people you love. Treat other people well. And always try to do the right thing.

Roger passed peacefully in his own bed, listening to the Beatles, sleeping beside his wife and his dog, Eddie.

He’s now riding his recliner, fan blasting, to his great gig in the sky, never letting the music die.

Just what you want to be, you will be in the end. And we love you.

You were meant to soar.