Elsie Morgan Rogers Wins Alumni Award
Biographical sketch of Elsie Morgan Rogers. This and other articles may be found in the University Archives.
Citation for this article is: Greene, Mary H. "Elise Morgan Rogers Wins Alumni Award," Alumni Bulletin of East Carolina Teachers College, Volume II, No. 3, May, 1948.
Mrs. Elsie Morgan Rogers, business woman of Wilson, North Carolina, will be the recipient of the award for outstanding achievement made annually by the Alumni Assocaition of East Carolina Teachers College.
For the ninth consecutive year the association will honor a graduate of the college during commencement exercises in June by giving public recognition for unusual services and outstanding accomplishment. Mrs. Rogers will be the sixth woman to receive the award. Announcement that she was chosen for the honor this year has just been made by Dr. A.D. Frank, chairman of the Faculty Advisory Committee of the Alumni Assocation.
Owner and operator of the W.M. Rogers and Company, Brokers and Distributors of Quality Food Products, Mrs. Rogers is one of the leading business women of Eastern Carolina and a recognized leader in civic affairs in Wilson.
She began her career as a teacher. After attending the public schools in her native town, Benson, N.C., she entered Atlantic Christian College in Wilson and then attended East Carolina Teachers College, where in 1918 she was graduated in the two-year normal course. Later she was a student during summer sessions at Greensboro College for Women.
Her teaching activities began in Benson. Later she taught in Kinston, and in 1919 accepted a position in Wilson. For nine years she taughtthere in the primary and the grammar grades and did special work in writing through the grades.
Mrs. Rogers gave up teaching in 1927.At that time her husband, the late W.M. Rogers, established in Wilson a brokerage business to serve wholesale grocers in Eastern North Carolina. Mrs. Rogers worked with her husband in carrying on the enterprise. The firm became successful and built a reputation for fair, efficient, and friendly service. When Mr. Rogers died in 1945, Mrs. Rogers reorganized the business and has conducted it successfully since that time.
"The average layman, without experience in the business world today, can hardly concieve of the judgment, forethought, diplomacy, abd hard work that it takes to operate a business such as she is engaged in today," says a business associate of Mrs. Rogers. She is "definently the outstanding business woman of Eastern Carolina," says another.
Mrs. Rogers is a homemaker as well as a business woman. Soft-voiced, courteous, and unassuming in manner, she is practical and efficient. Her home in Wilson is described by a friend "as a model of the best traditions of the Old South." Living there with Mrs. Rogers are her parents, Mr. and Mrs. John M. Morgan, formerly of Benson, and her two children, a son and a daughter.
Varied interests make Mrs. Rogers' life a busy one. Many civic organizations in Wilson have claimed her attention; and she has been a member of the Chamber of Commerce, the Business and Professional Women's Club, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the Order of the Eastern Star, the Parent-Teacher Association, and the Woman's Club. She has also taken part in church activities and has been a leader in religious work. A member of the First Baptist Church of Wilson, she has served as a Sunday School teacher and as a superintendent of the Cradle Roll Department. She is, in addition a member of the North Carolina Food Dealers Association and of the National Food Brokers Association.
Mrs. Rogers is a charter life member of the East Carolina Alumni Association. Her successful career has been a credit to the college. Because of her energy, sound judgment, and integrity as a business woman; her outstanding service as a citizen; and her success in the roles of wife, mother, and homemaker, the college through the Alumni Association honors her as one of those outsanding graduates who express in their daily lives the East Carolina motto "To Serve."
