I am still coming to terms with Roger’s sad and untimely passing. I can only imagine the world of hurt that his family must be in. My thoughts are with them.

Roger was my best friend during our school days and he was one of the most loyal, funny and all around good person that I have ever known. Generous to a fault. Coincidently when he lived in Arundel he lived next door to my late stepfathers parents. I don’t ever recall crossing paths with him back then but you never know.
It was secondary school that I met up with him and we struck up a friendship in shared classes and the like. He was in River house, I was in School house. A story from our early days, probably around 1973 or 1974 concerned his fashion sense. At this time you were either a skinhead or a mod. Roger didn’t have the short hair but did fancy the fashion of stay press trousers, Ben Sherman shirts and Crombie coats. Janet (his really lovely mum) got him the coat but the one he got was tailored and had silk inlays in the lapels. It was a seriously nice coat and he looked really dapper. Some of our friends thought he looked too good as he picked up the nickname of “Dinner & Dance”. As with all things Roger took this very well, he played the role of being a joker so well. Indeed my nickname for him was Roger the Dodger after the comic book character. As our music tastes changed so did our fashion choices. It was not long before we were wearing our hair long, with loon pants and tie dye grandad tee shirts. We had such great times.

Our biggest connection was table tennis. Andy Foster has described his talents so eloquently that there is little that I can add other to say that I do not believe that Roger ever appreciated just how good he was. On a good night there was nobody local (including me) who could live with him. We had many great nights and he was part of the reason why Arundel TTC achieved the success it did. A story from those times involves his change to wearing glasses. I don’t know whether he was short or long sighted but during one match we discussing what was going on (not well for him) and I observed that left handed players always presented particular problems. A quizzical look came over his face. I don’t know if could not see as far as the other end of the table or had not noticed that his opponent was not right handed! Given his all-out attack style I suspect it was the latter. From that time on we always had to remind him of this, it became part of our team banter. He always gave as good as he got!

Sadly we drifted apart as work/life/love took us in different directions. I very much regret not have reconnected with him.

So goodbye old friend, I guess you are now either playing air guitar to Freebird or singing along to Stairway to Heaven – both now seem so apt.

Keith Evers