Douglass Marcel Rogers

Douglass Marcel Rogers was born in 1925 in Albany, WI. He spent most of his childhood in Oberlin, OH, where his father taught for many years at Oberlin College. In high-school, he played in an award-winning clarinet quartet. He also played amateur jazz piano, saxophone and Spanish guitar. After high-school, in 1943, he was drafted into the Navy. He served as a sonar-man on convoy duty in the North Atlantic until his discharge in 1946. Back home, he enrolled in Oberlin College on the G I Bill. He graduated in 1951 from Oberlin with a major in Spanish and a minor in French. He got his Master's degree in Spanish from the University of Wisconsin in 1954, and his Ph.D. in 1964. He accepted a position in Romance Languages at the University of Texas at Austin in 1958. That year he also married fellow Wisconsin graduate student and teacher, Shirley Anne Vogt.

At U.T. Dr. Rogers taught a wide variety of courses in Spanish literature, and composition. He was active in departmental organizations, serving as course coordinator and graduate advisor in the Spanish section. His publications in both Spain and the U.S. focused largely on two very different fields: the 19th century novelist Benito Perez Galdos, and the “new poets” of the post Spanish Civil-War period after 1939. His edition of critical essays, published in Spain, formed part of a total reevaluation of Spain's greatest modern novelist (Galdos), while his dissertation on the emerging Spanish poets of the 1940s and 50s contributed to a belated awareness of a very new brand of poetry in the younger generation.

Douglass retired from full-time work in Jan. 1991 at age 65, partly because of health problems, though he continued working in his field and with students for several years. He taught one course in Austin's Lifetime Learning program on Cervantes' “Don Quixote”, and one on Early American Jazz.

He is survived by his wife Shirley, son Mark and his wife Alma and stepmother, Gerhild Rogers.

Memorial services will be held at 5:00PM, Tuesday August 16th, at Cook Walden Funeral Home, 6100 N Lamar Blvd, Austin, TX 78752, 512-454-5611.

To share condolence with the family, please visit www.cookwaldenfuneralhome.com.