Senior Living & Townehouse News

Ventura Townehouse resident Betty Rogers

Welcome Betty Rogers!

Decorative green leaf

“I moved to California from North Carolina in 2017 at the request of Norman Gray, who had been my sweetheart in high school. We had lived in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, where our fathers worked for the Arabian American Oil company. We attended high school at the American Community School in Beirut, Lebanon. Norm graduated in 1956 and attended the University of Miami. I graduated in 1957 and attended Texas Tech in Lubbock, Texas, where I majored in microbiology. I trained as a medical technologist at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, got married, moved to Houston and went to work at the University of Texas Cancer Center Anderson Hospital doing basic research in immunology. My husband went to medical school at the University of Texas at Houston, and we moved to Duram, NC, where he trained in internal medicine and cardiology at Duke University. I worked there in the division of rheumatology instructing post-doctoral fellows in basic research technique.

“We returned to Texas in 1978 and spent 11 years in Waco where I went back to school at Baylor University and earned a BA in business. Along the way we had a son Sean and a daughter Stephanie. We returned to NC in 1989 to join a medical group in Greenville. I went to work as office manager for an alarm company and became general manager of the Greenville Choral Society. My marriage ended in 1998, but I stayed in Greenville as my daughter was still in school. She finished college and moved to LA.

“In 2016 I was invited to my high school reunion. I reconnected with a number of friends including my high school sweetheart Norman Gray, Norman convinced me to move to California. It didn’t really require a great deal of convincing because sometimes your first instincts are the right ones. Norman passed away in October, 2024. My daughter lives in Woodland Hills and Norm’s son lives in Ventura. I moved to the Ventura Townehouse in March. I enjoy reading, sewing, knitting, word games and music, particularly choral music. I’m still occupied with sorting through things I don’t need, a process I’m sure everyone goes through.

“My personal motto: ‘I am the grammarian about whom your mother warned you.'”