By RUSS WISE

Wayne Rogers is a healer, a big, quiet, lumbering teddy bear of a man, with gentle hands and a gentle heart. About six weeks or so ago, that heart was broken.

His son, Jim, was killed. Not in an auto accident; not by a disease or a fire or by a drunk driver. According to police, Jim Rogers was killed by his friends. But this isn’t about them; it’s about Jim and his father, the healer.

As word spread, people came from all over the place. Sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, they all came. From Georgia and Tennessee and Texas, they all came. Plans were made; decisions arrived at. And then it was time for the service.

The small Methodist church just off New Highway 51 was full that day. The memorial service, led by the Rev. Ken Graham, was beautiful. Songs were sung; several people spoke, sharing their memories about Jim. A poem composed by family members was read. Throughout the hymns and the prayers and the rest, Wayne Rogers sat and watched, and waited. And, at the end, he got up.

“Be patient with me,” he said. “I’m from the old school, which says that men aren’t supposed to cry. So, please bear with me, in case I flounder.”

In the midst of his sorrow, he said, “I tried to think of what Jim would want me to do or say in his memory.” Then he began. It was a brief speech, composed with the help and approval of the extended Rogers family.

It was evident, he said, that his family’s sadness had spread across the entire community as well. But he warned against letting that sadness go sour. “Hatred was not a part of Jim’s personality,” he said. “He wouldn’t want the community to show hatred towards the kids involved or their families. Jim was about love, and not about hate.”

Could I have done that? Said those words? I don’t know. But to Wayne Rogers, life is about love. “If these children would have had more love in their lives, like Jim had in his life,” he told the crowd, “maybe we would not all be here today.”

Parents have a “deep responsibility” to their children, he said. Children must be “a higher priority than ourselves. We must nurture and guide them and become deeply involved in their lives.”

Then he returned to the original message, the message he thought his son would want people to hear. “(Jim’s) message is to embrace love, not hate,” Dr. Wayne Rogers, the veterinarian, the healer, my next-door neighbor, went on. “For hate leaves complete emptiness, and love helps heal us all.”

RUSS WISE is a St. John the Baptist Parish School Board member, representing District Eight.