Margaret Brugler Rogers
Franklin County (1922 – 2005 )
2007 Women's Hall of Fame Inductee -- Community Activist

Columbus resident, missionary, leader, organizer, persuader, and educator, Ms. Rogers spent her life helping others.

Nominated by Charles Meng

Margaret Brugler Rogers spent her life helping others and making the world a better place to live. Lives of people world wide have improved as a result of Ms. Rogers’ efforts.

She attended Antioch and the Ohio State University and then enrolled in the Women’s Army Corps during World War II. After being trained as a medical technician, she requested a position where she could help paraplegics paralyzed from the waist down at Mayo General Hospital in Galesburg, Illinois. About her work at the Mayo Hospital she wrote, “For this truly was an opportunity for doing something for those who had already been willing to give their lives that we might retain our freedom.”

Shortly after her 1946 discharge, Ms. Rogers went to Haiti. Realizing the extent of poverty in Haiti, she came home and began conducting bazaars in order to send money and food to Haitians.

While working in the Logan County Farm Bureau, Ms. Rogers was offered a job by the new director of the Christian Rural Overseas Program (CROP). From 1948 to 1976, she went from secretary through the ranks to Regional Director, the only woman to hold that position in the United States. Ms. Rogers led two trips around the world to visit places that were recipients of CROP assistance.

Ms. Rogers was instrumental in the development of the Grace Children’s Hospital in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She organized and devoted her time to Treasure Mart which funded beds for the Children’s Hospital in Haiti. At the age of 74, she founded OWLS (Older Wiser Lifelong Scholars), a college-level program for elders in the Westminster-Thurber community where she lived and all of Central Ohio. She selected top-notch presenters and persuaded them to lecture for much less than their usual fee.

After dedicating her entire life to helping people, Ms. Rogers donated her body to the Ohio State University Medical School upon her death in 2005.