Richard Dean Rogers

View Memorial Slideshow Richard D. Rogers, 94, of Topeka, Kansas and formerly of Wamego and Manhattan, Kansas, passed away November 25, 2016. He was born December 29, 1921 , at Oberlin, Kansas, and moved with his family to Wamego when he was in the first grade. He started working as soon as he was old enough. At 8 years old, he became a curb service boy for a Wamego drug store, running customers’ prescriptions from the curb into the drugstore to be filled. He graduated from Wamego High School in 1939, and was an outstanding athlete in football and basketball, being named to the State 2nd team 1939 football squad and an all Jayhawk League Basketball guard in 1938 and 1939. In 2009, he was inducted into the Wamego High School Sports Hall of Fame. In 1943, Richard graduated from Kansas State University. He then joined the Army Air Corps and completed Officers Candidate School. He flew 33 combat missions as a bombardier in a B-24 heavy Bomber over Europe in WWII, receiving the Distinguished Flying Cross. Following his military service, he graduated from the University of Kansas School of Law in 1947 and entered the private practice of law. Richard subsequently served as Riley County attorney, a Manhattan Commissioner and two-term mayor of Manhattan. He taught business law at K-State and spent four years in the Kansas House of Representatives and eight years in the Kansas Senate, where he served as its president in 1975. On August 7, 1975, then-President Gerald Ford appointed him to a U.S. District Court judgeship in Topeka. He was named a senior U.S. District judge in 1989. He took inactive status, while continuing to serve the court as a consultant, in August, 2015. Richard was known as a “lawyer’s judge”, having his sense of humor, a wide breadth of knowledge and his love of people. He always gave everyone a fair hearing. In 1946, at Wamego, Kansas, Richard married Beth Stewart, whom he had known since his early childhood years. They had been high-school sweethearts, and Beth also attended K-State earning a music degree. Beth served as a Republican National Committeewoman until she had to leave that position when her husband became a federal judge. She died in 1983. Richard and Beth had two daughters and an adopted son, all of whom survive: Letitia Appignani (Peter) of Harpers Ferry, VA, Cappi Nelson (Doug) of Topeka, Kurt Rogers (Jennifer) of Taft, CA. In 1987, Richard married Cynthia Conklin. She survives, along with her children, Katherine Burenheide and Kenneth Conklin. Private services with military honors are planned. In lieu of flowers, memorials are suggested to First Presbyterian Church of Topeka, the Kansas State Historical Society Foundation, or the Washburn University Law School Foundation, and may be left in care of Stewart Funeral Home of Wamego, PO Box 48, 66547.