Henry Edwin (Hank) Rogers
1940- 2010
Professor Emeritus Hank Rogers, a member of the Department of Linguistics at University of Toronto since 1967, died this week after a ten-month struggle with cancer. He was 70.
He joined the department from Yale University, soon after completing his Ph.D. dissertation on Sherbro, a language of Sierra Leone. He loved languages and in Toronto he mounted a research project on Scots Gaelic that took him to the Outer Hebrides. In his last decade, he contributed pioneering research on the phonetics of gay and lesbian speech.
Prof. Rogers was first jointly appointed in Anthropology and Linguistics. In 1982, after attaining an M. Ed. in Applied Psychology, he gave up his Anthropology appointment in order to pursue an avocation in counseling. He had an even-handed and unwavering sense of fair play, and his temperament led him naturally to serving the communities he participated in. He was a founding member of Out and Out Toronto and Gay Fathers. In the University, he served the Faculty Club in many roles including president. He worked tirelessly on settling issues for colleagues first as a member of the Faculty Association's Grievance Committee, eventually rising to Vice-President, and later as a long-time member of the University's Grievance Review Panel.
Through all his service activities, he remained a dedicated and thoroughly engaged teacher. His website includes a section on teaching linguistics that provides suggestions on classroom management and use of computers . He was a gifted font designer, and he designed several, including IPAPhon that is used by phoneticians around the world. In teaching as well as research, his special expertise was phonetics, and from his courses he developed two distinguished textbooks, Theoretical and Practical Phonetics (1991) and The Sounds of Language (2000). His love of fonts and font-making led him to investigate writing systems used in languages around the world. In the 1990s, he began teaching courses on it. His book, Writing Systems: A Linguistic Approach (2003), is a masterly treatment of the subject that is unique in both its comprehensiveness and its insight.
For all his scholarly and service work, he will be missed most for his lively humour and his judicious presence. He leaves Dennis Helm, his partner for 27 years (married in 2004), his beloved sons David and Iain, and their mother Dorothy Rogers of Ottawa. Tributes in Hank's memory may be made to the Henry Rogers Undergraduate Scholarship in Linguistics at https://donate.utoronto.ca/linguistics.
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The family invites their relatives and friends to celebrate the life of Hank during visitation at McDougall & Brown Funeral Home (Scarborough Chapel), 2900 Kingston Rd., on Thursday, February 4th from 7-9 p.m. and Friday, February 5th from 2-4 & 7-9 p.m. see map.
Funeral Service will be held at the Church of the Holy Trinity (Guildwood), 85 Livingston Rd., Scarborough on Saturday, February 6th at 11 a.m. with a reception to follow. see map. Interment will take place at the Necropolis Cemetery, 200 Winchester Street, Toronto after the reception. see map.
Online donations may be made at https://donate.utoronto.ca/linguistics, or alternatively, cheques may be
made to the University of Toronto, in support of The Henry Rogers
Undergraduate Scholarship in Linguistics (056-9802), and sent to:
Donations Management
University of Toronto
21 King's College Circle
Toronto, ON M5S 3J3
All donations will be matched by two donors, so every $1 contributed will result in $3 to the fund.
February 4, 2010