William Emmett and Martha Quillin Rodgers
I met the Rodgers family when I came to town to work on the Arsenal in 1956. William Emmett Rodgers, known to most every one as “W.E.” and Martha Quillin Rodgers raised five daughters on East Clinton Avenue in Huntsville. They became part of my family when one of their daughters became my wife. The town was growing fast because of the work on missiles and rockets but it seemed that almost all of the old-time Huntsville residents knew Mr. Rodgers. In later years, we often met folks who remembered him as the Insurance Man of their parents or grandparents.
W.E. was selling Life Insurance when the population of Huntsville was less than 30,000. The premiums on many of those policies were just a few cents and were collected on a weekly or monthly basis. At that time, Huntsville was so small that he could make many of his calls by walking about the town. When the weather was hot, he would return home at noon where Martha would have a fresh starched white shirt waiting for him.
W.E. was born in 1902 in Huntsville, Alabama to Sidney Augustus Rodgers and Dama Lou Terry Rodgers. In his younger days, he spent several years working at the T. T. Terry Department Store before starting his career as a salesman for the National Life and Accident Insurance Company. In 1967, at age 65, he retired with a pension from National Life and began drawing his Social Security, However, he was not one to remain idle. He had a plethora of elderly relatives, friends, and former clients that he visited on a regular basis. He also found some paying jobs to keep him busy in retirement.
My father was a distributor of fishing tackle, specializing in Cane Fishing Poles. When he passed away in November of 1967, he left my mother with a warehouse containing about 20 thousand fishing poles. I was trying to help her to sell the business or at least convert the inventory to cash. We found a buyer for the tackle inventory and Dad’s delivery truck but no potential buyer was interested in the poles. In a conversation with my father-in-law, I mentioned our difficulty in finding a buyer for the poles. He immediately declared that if I could get the poles from Tuscaloosa to Huntsville, he could SELL them.
Over the next 2 years, I used my boat trailer to haul bundles of poles to Huntsville. W.E. would put the bundles on a car-top rack and head out to sell them to bait shops and filling stations across the Tennessee Valley. Thus, we emptied the warehouse, provided cash for my Mother and income for the Rodgers. He really enjoyed his time as a FISHING POLE SALESMAN. He wanted me to contact the supplier and order a regular supply of poles. I wish I could have done so, but I declined because my job with NASA was becoming more demanding.
Later he took a menial job at GOODWILL INDUSTRIES, helping with stocking the clothes racks and doing cleanup work. He must have been doing a good job there for he was offered a job at The HUNTSVILLE NEWS. The job at the NEWS was basically janitorial, although he was also responsible for cleaning up some of the equipment used in laying out the pages for printing. That job was demanding enough that he recruited our 15 year old son to assist him.
Martha was born at Nettleton, MS in 1913 to Hiram T. Quillin, Sr. and Maude Catherine Sisk Quillin. After high school, Martha worked in the office of Blake Brothers Plumbing. After she married W.E. in 1935, she helped him keep his Account Books. By 1944 they had 5 young girls in the house. You can imagine how busy she was raising 5 girls in a two bedroom, one bath house.
One of her passions was sewing and quilting. She made many dresses and blouses for her daughters. As the grandchildren arrived, she made each a quilt containing pieces from her collection of scraps left over from her previous creations. It was always a treat to watch the daughters as they found a piece from a favorite dress or blouse in one of her quilts.
The family were regular attendees at First Methodist Church and Martha volunteered in supporting the children and youth ministries. All the girls received musical instruction and participated in the school bands so she took an active part in the band parents organizations.
One after the other, the girls grew up, went off to college, found husbands, and began families of their own. The Rodgers remained at their Clinton Avenue home and looked forward to occasional visits with their children and grandchildren.
As W.E. moved into his eighties and Martha entered her seventies, it became apparent that W.E. should not be driving. In a family conference with Martha and the daughters, it was decided that their girls, the son-in-laws, and the driving age grandchildren would make sure they got anywhere they needed or wanted to go. Like the polite gentleman he was, W.E. acquiesced with little complaint. He did, however, mention once or twice that he wished he still had a car so he did not have to bother others to get about.
On December 9, 1985, Martha, age 72, passed away after a heart attack and a stroke. W.E. went to live with a daughter. Fourteen months later, on February 10, 1987, William Emmett Rodgers, age 84, passed away after a stroke.
