Roger Briggs

Last night,(Saturday) Roger Briggs passed away in San Diego with several of his family by his side.

Roger Briggs was a member of the Friends for almost 20 years, serving as a director for several of them. If you enjoy looking at OB running again, you can thank Roger for being the team leader of the crew that took a pile of rotted wood and rebuilding it to a functional piece of machinery that tells the story of how the railroads did things in the old days. It was Roger that set up the Colorado Springs restoration site so that work could be done on equipment all year long. Roger was the manager of the Friends wood shop in Chama for many years, and there is hardly a work session volunteer that didn't benefit from Roger's help and expertise.

I might add on a personal note that Roger's woodworking skills saved my tail on more than one project over many years. Whenever we needed to work late at night on a project to have it ready for the next day, Roger was always willing to go the extra mile to help us out, answer questions about how to do something, or find a part.

Roger was a quiet man, but if you were lucky enough to get him talking, hearing about all he did in an engineering battalion in WW2 would make you wonder why he was still here. He used to joke that "building things is a whole lot easier when people aren't shooting at you".

Roger, we're going to miss you. I am glad I got the privilege to work with you as long as I did. Green signals my friend.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 01/18/2010 10:26AM by John Cole.