Saying goodbye to a favorite cousin
Roger was a wild man and fun, but a lot of other things, too
MY WIFE’S COUSIN ROGER DIED about a week ago. It was sudden. He had developed a serious, pretty much-untreatable, incurable cancer. He didn’t suffer long, a blessing. He was such an active, go-go-go-go-go guy even the thought of him having to be laid up in a sick-bed situation was unthinkable.
My wife Sylvia flew in a few days before the service in upstate NY with plans for me to fly in the night before, be there for the funeral and zoom out the next morning back to Oregon. At the last minute, I cancelled. A recent surgery, resultant fatigue and pain from healing teamed up to remind me I am no longer 30-years-old (or 40, or 50 or even 60). The spring-back energy I once had has sprung.
SO WHILE HUNDREDS OF FOLKS GATHERED in a small church in Hector, NY, I sat in my favorite chair in Oregon, looking at the river flowing by, telling my dog Biscuit tales about Roger. Some was about his solo adventures. But Roger and I did some crazy stuff, too, most of it well under the family radar. Biscuit agreed to secrecy.
I wrote my Finger Lakes Times column about him this week, published a day ahead of the funeral. It said pretty much everything I might have at the service or reception afterwards, except relating my last conversation with him almost a year ago. He was a faithful reader of my newspaper column, usually agreeing with my positions and opinions. (Except on gun control.) In our last passing of words, he kidded me about what I published at the end of each column.
“Fitzgerald has worked at six newspapers as a writer and editor as well as a correspondent for two news services. He splits his time between Valois, NY and the Pacific Northwest. You can email him at Michael.Fitzgeraldfltcolumnist@gmail.com and visit his websites at michaeljfitzgerald.blogspot.com and michaeljfitzgerald.substack.com.”
It was the splits his time between Valois, NY and the Pacific Northwest that made him chuckle. I had arrived barely a week before and was already making plans to leave and start the long drive from Valois back to Oregon, dragging my travel trailer called The Red Writer. “Split your time?” he said, laughing hard. “Jeez, you’ve barely got here and you’re turning around.” He had me. Several summers previous I spent months at Seneca Lake, with the trailer parked in the driveway at the family cottage or at a friend’s in Watkins Glen. But the summer of 2023 was hot-as-hell. The trip across country to NY - with Biscuit aboard - had been near disastrous.
ROGER AND I HAD A GOOD TALK THAT EVENING ABOUT the lake, the family cottage and adventures past. We were sitting at Rasta Ranch Vineyards with maybe 100 people, all listening to Roger’s son Brett playing music as he did every Monday. Roger’s wife Nancy was there, too. It was an absolutely magical evening with lots of other Beardslee relatives at the event, too. And kids. Lots of young kids.
The lesson is to enjoy those magical evenings and times. And to cherish them as they are happening. I hope I will have more times listening to Brett Beardslee playing his music at Rasta Ranch and elsewhere, get to visit with his mom Nancy and see the other relatives at Seneca Lake, as I “split my time” between my Oregon home and New York.
But they will be without Roger.
Below is the column from this week’s Finger Lakes Times in Geneva, NY
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A Hector legend has passed away
By Michael J. Fitzgerald
I CANNOT IMAGINE HECTOR WITHOUT ROGER BEARDSLEE.
Roger was a young 82 when he died last week. We all believed he was likely to outlive Keith Richards and would keep zooming around Hector and Seneca Lake forever, shouting his trademark "Arriba!" to friends in boats or on their docks.
Roger was one of those Finger Lakes folks known everyplace he went, is liked, welcomed and the life of the party. He was always the first person and the last on the dance floor.
ROGER WAS MY WIFE’S COUSIN and over the decades I sometimes tagged along when Roger Ramjet fired up his fun-seeking-rocket personality. If he was sitting on his deck at his Seneca Lake shoreside home and saw a friend tear by in a boat, he would race down to his dock to give chase in one of his vessels to see what fun his amigo was up to. If the answer was none, fun got cooked up anyway.
I doubt there's been a public gathering at the south end of Seneca Lake this week at which his passing hasn't been discussed. Tall tales have likely been twirling as fast as the spinning wheel in the Rumpelstiltskin story. But these were tall tales only to people who didn't know Roger.
HE ONCE VISITED US in San Francisco Bay at our 40-foot sailboat moored near the Golden Gate Bridge. The pounding Pacific Ocean just beyond was as tempting to Roger as a singing Siren from Greek mythology. And it was contagious.
Despite dicey weather and adverse currents, he convinced me to head out in a powerful outgoing tide with which we were quickly sucked out like a vacuum, several miles into the Pacific. Our engine and sails couldn’t even hold us in place when we tried to turn back. Instead, we drifted, heading farther out into the deep blue Pacific Ocean.
I was concerned. But Roger was as gleeful as a child as we were pulled further and further offshore. When the tide finally reversed and began pulling us back to port, Roger stood on the bow, letting loose with throaty shouts of "Arriba" as we passed below the Golden Gate Bridge.
BUT THIS FUN-LOVING, WILD-MAN REPUTATION OFTEN obscured the real Roger Beardslee I knew, too. He was a responsible, attention-to-detail, meticulous community-minded person and a dedicated family man. He could routinely be found prepping food for the Hector Fireman’s monthly breakfasts and for decades working in the clam tent at the annual Hector Fair. In recent years, he and Nancy, his wife of 57 years, rarely missed a performance by their son, musician Brett Beardslee.
If you were lucky enough to call Roger a friend, he would come to your aid anytime for most anything. He certainly saved my bacon at the family's Valois cottage numerous times. Ditto for my mother-in-law, Louise, for decades before that.
That's all what makes his death so difficult to assimilate. He was a fixture at so many events, so involved in the Hector community, and a friend to so many that his absence leaves a huge hole in the fabric of life in Hector, Schuyler County and environs.
WHEN MY WIFE RAN FOR COUNTY PUBLIC OFFICE years ago, her name was unknown to many folks as she went door-to-door campaigning. But when she started introducing herself as the cousin of Hector's Roger Beardslee, she was heartily welcomed into the homes of every door she knocked on.
I’m hoping that at his funeral Saturday in Hector, in place of the traditional "Amen" at the end of the church service, the entire assembly will conclude the solemn event with a hearty, shouted "Arrrrrrriba." Maybe a chorus or two or three.
It would be a fitting sendoff that Roger would really love and appreciate.
Fitzgerald has worked at six newspapers as a writer and editor as well as a correspondent for two news services. He splits his time between Valois, NY and the Pacific Northwest. You can email him atMichael.Fitzgeraldfltcolumnist@gmail.com and visit his websites at michaeljfitzgerald.blogspot.com and michaeljfitzgerald.substack.com.
¡Arriba Roger! lovely tribute by a friend who could see him.