Flowers for Jeron

In the last three months, several young citizens have met tragic deaths on our roads and otherwise. One of them, 20-year-old Jeron Richard Rogers died instantly on December 23, 2003, at 1 am, when the car in which he was a front-seat passenger struck a lamp-post on Saddle Road, Maraval, a few hundred yards from the apartment in which he lived with his mother, Carol Salim Rogers and older sister Mikalla. One month later, up to mid-January, fresh flowers were still being placed on the spot, and just after what would have been his 21st birthday on January 10, a crucifix and rosary were added to three bouquets of fresh flowers.  His parents, Mike and Carol could not say who placed the flowers, but knew that it showed a great deal of appreciation for their young son.
 
“One minute more and Jeron would have been home,” says a still very grieved Carol, who never learned of her son’s death until the following morning as she had been hospitalised for some tests.  Arriving at the scene of the accident, Mikalla, who had been asleep at home, felt for a pulse, and finding none, knew that her only sibling was dead. In a final gesture of love, she covered him with her brown jacket to ensure that the firemen would not damage his face in cutting him out of the car. At the time of this interview, a fortnight ago, the Rogers were still taking it one day at a time. “There are bad days especially when people who did not hear before come with eyes all filled; added to that some people just did not know, like Christmas Eve night a guy came asking for Jeron and when he was told, said  ‘but I just passed by him two days ago,’ and just started to perspire from shock, he sat in his car, dazed, a full few minutes before he could move off. “After Christmas, a girl called to speak to Jeron, she started to scream.  Added to this, we have to pass the spot every day. But,” says Carol, “it’s in God’s hand.” 

Full of his usual humour, Jeron had only the day before rushed to his mother’s side at the nursing home where she was having some tests done for pains in her head, and asked, “Mom what you doing here, you pregnant?”  He was all excited and bubbly, sitting on his sister’s lap and she put her arms around him, making fun. “That was Monday afternoon, by early Tuesday he was gone. So near to home, yet so far.” Later that morning, Mike’s parents, former Point Fortin Member of Parliament/Deputy Speaker of the House, Cyril Rogers and his wife Mathilda, came to the nursing home to visit Carol, who wondered why they had come all the way up here: “I am not spending Christmas in here although I still had the headache. Mickey’s lips were trembling, and her eyes filled with tears. I immediately asked ‘what happen to Jeron, tell me, tell me.’ She just shook her head and said he died in a car crash.  I could only feel my head faintly because of the headache, but could feel no other part of my body.” “It continues to be hard being at home in the small apartment,” says Carol. “He is everywhere in the apartment.  His music, his books, his room is just how it was because I cannot touch it yet to remove anything.  My Christmas gift to him remains unwrapped. He was supposed to come back to the nursing home but picked up his tools and left to fix Jason’s (Mangray) stereo, Mick came back but he went to finish the car with Jason, he had been doing a little bit at a time.”

Although just 20, Jeron, who graduated from St Mary’s College, had already completed two years of a first degree in business management at Hampton University in Virginia on a sailing scholarship, his first day of College had been on his 17th birthday, January 10, 2000. By July 2002, he decided this was not really his field, and returned to do a fisheries course, a pre-requisite to be a Marine Pilot.  He also needed  to complete sea-time before starting theoretical in London and was waiting placement on a ship to be able to complete the sea time. Jeron’s foray into business studies, which his mother knew was not really his field, came about when by chance he learned to wire cars and so decided to study business to start his own electronic business. In two short years, says his mother, “He decided  to be a marine pilot. He had been into sailing all his life so came back and went straight back to the Sailing Association as a coach.”

Jeron seemed to have fitted so much into his short time on earth, as in 2002 he spent time in Guyana with his mother who was on a two-year transfer to the Caricom Secretariat from her job with the Government’s Central Statistical Office.  His sister, Mikalla, a Fulbright Scholar, obtained a Master’s Degree in City Planning specialising in Environmental Planning from Georgia Tech in Atlanta, her first degree in Environmental Science was completed on an OAS scholarship at Florida Tech. Now 26, she is employed with the Ministry of Public Utilities and Environment. Two nights before this interview, Carol dreamt that Jeron had reached home and was running outside to open the door when she became fully awake: “I am not accustomed to the idea he is dead and that’s it.” Mike, an industrial sales rep at Benjamin Moore,  says “there are some good days and some bad days” but draws on his memories of the several sailing races with his late son. “He started sailing with me and racing from age five, I use to let him tie knots to keep him quiet.  He loved boats and as a little boy made papier mache boats out of flour and water.”
 
At ten he was already representing his club at sailing versus Martinique, and, says Carol, “I was worried that he was going to stay at strangers, it did not bother him as he was very, very, very friendly and ended up teaching his hostess English while she taught him French.  Jeron was full of fun.  He was tall and thin and always telling you to feel his muscles.” Just as Jeron’s son Joshua, who turned one year on February 15, remains close to his grandparents who see him every Saturday morning, so too was Jeron the apple of his late maternal grandmother’s eyes and his paternal grandparents, Cyril and Mathilda.