The Way We Were: A Spirit of Adventure: Arnold and Pat Rogers

Doing nothing is not something Arnold Rogers does well.

“If he didn’t have an office, I’d probably kill him, because he has so much energy that he has to be doing something,” joked Pat, his wife of 31 years.

Despite what Pat says, she likes to stay busy too – it’s how she and Arnold have lived their entire lives.

Arnold grew up on Yacht Club Road, while Pat lived two blocks away at Ortega Boulevard and Settie Avenue. They both went to Ortega Elementary Schools. Arnold was a Boy Scout at St. Marks Episcopal Church, while Pat was a Girl Scout there. Arnold and Pat’s siblings were friends and asked each other to dances. And yet, the two somehow never got to know each other.

“It’s a good thing she didn’t know me then, because she was cool and I was a nerd,” Arnold said.

Arnold went on to St. Johns Country Day School and the University of Virginia before completing Navy Officer Candidate School and being stationed on a nuclear-powered missile cruiser at a shipyard just north of San Francisco. To beat the boredom of a dry docked ship, Arnold and his friends entertained themselves by racing sailboats in the bay, skiing at Lake Tahoe, and whitewater rafting in Napa.

“There wasn’t much to do and the commanding officer wanted us to pretend to be busy, but I don’t pretend well, so I was a bit of a rebel,” Arnold said.

After the Navy, Arnold worked for The Charter Co., based in Jacksonville. There, he organized Downtown’s first building implosion, demolishing the Hotel Mayflower to make way for the EverBank Building. He later spent more than 20 years as owner and president of various companies and partnerships in retail convenience, wholesale fuel and trucking, and hotel and real estate development.

Meanwhile, Pat attended Lee High School and the University of Florida, where she met and briefly dated an Alpha Tau Omega brother named Steve. When she asked Steve why all he ever talked about was football, her date – future Heisman Trophy winner Steve Spurrier – responded, “Don’t you know who I am?”

A few years later, Pat was working the VIP lounge as a ground hostess for Eastern Airlines when the New York Jets touched down in Miami for Super Bowl III. Joe Namath strolled off the plane, offered to make Pat a drink, and invited her to come back to New York City with him. She politely declined both offers.

An English major, Pat became a reporter with the Jacksonville Journal and later an editor with the Florida Municipal Record. She was offered the women’s beat, but, at 22 years old, she was more interested in covering news than cooking and babies, which is how she became the city’s first female news reporter. Eventually, her career path wound back to Ortega: She opened a gift shop near Cortez Park and later worked for St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, spearheading a $2.5 million fundraising effort for renovations in the early ‘90s.

Around this time, St. Mark’s Rev. Barnum McCarty suggested to the recently divorced Arnold that he ought to ask out “that cute Pat girl who works for me,” also divorced at this point. When Arnold made numerous phone calls to her office, Pat told her secretary to “find out what he wants and get rid of him.” Arnold was persuasive however, and Pat eventually agreed to go out to dinner.

“I fell head over heels in love,” Pat said.

The pair were married three and a half years later, with Pat every bit as up for a life of adventure as Arnold was. With their three children – Arnold’s two daughters and Pat’s son – the family visited six continents and experienced everything from skydiving in Australia to descending thousands of feet into a mine in South Africa.

One of Arnold and Pat’s most cherished adventures is the two months they’d spend every year cruising the Bahamas on their boat. Not content to see the same islands over and over, they made a point to explore less-visited cays and waterways.

“We like the adventure, we like to explore,” Arnold explained. “Kind of like ‘Star Trek’ – go places where no one’s been before.”

These days, Arnold and Pat enjoy sharing the gift of travel with their grandkids and are looking forward to taking them to the Galapagos Islands this July. They also both continue to work part-time. Arnold does some business consulting and Pat still visits Jacksonville International Airport once a week as a partner in The Paradies Shops.

In their daily lives, Arnold enjoys working out and walking their golden retriever while listening to podcasts and college courses on tape, while Pat participates in her book club and travel club. They both love cooking and entertaining their many friends at their home.