Frances Louise Rogers

Frances was born on July 17, 1947, in Whittier, California, to Etha Clay Quinn and Douglas James Burton. During her early childhood, she enjoyed acting, dancing, and horseback riding. In the summers, she would take the train from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City, Utah, to visit family and make trouble with her cousins, especially Lynda. She developed a lifelong love for animals of all kinds and for the mountains. As she got older, she fell in love with surfing and knew all the best beaches and board makers along the Southern California coastline. She even made special boardshorts for herself and her friends by hand.

She married Donald Paul Bolton in 1964 and gave birth to Eric in 1965 in Newport Beach, California. Frances found that pregnancy improved her bodysurfing abilities. In 1968, after a divorce and a waitressing stint at the International House of Pancakes in North Hollywood, she married Steven Ward Rogers. Steven brought his beautiful daughter Suzanne into the family, and Frances embraced her as her own. In 1969, Pamela was born, growing the family to five. During those years in Los Angeles, Frances developed a deep and lasting friendship with Nancy, the wife of one of Steve’s fellow officers in the Los Angeles Police Department.

Feeling an increasing yearning for the mountains, Frances moved her family to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in 1971. She registered a brand that overlayed the half-circle of a 5 with the top of the R, representing the “Five Rogers.” Before long, she owned a spunky little filly called Jenny, named after Jenny Lake in Grand Teton National Park. Red, a super sweet German-shorthaired pointer, and Snowball, a little white mutt with the attitude of a grizzly bear, joined the family too. Living in a little pink house in a trailer court on Cache Creek put her close to the canyon and long horseback rides with her friend Ilene. She worked at the Jackson State Bank and made a lifelong friend in Mary Kay.

Looking for new opportunities after her divorce from Steve, she moved with Pamela and Eric to Kalispell, Montana, where she worked for Valley Bank and built a home west of town on several acres of land. Over the coming years, her interests took her to Hendersonville, Tennessee, where she explored the world of the mountain men and worked in the law school at Vanderbilt University; and back to Jackson, Wyoming, where she played an outlaw in the summer shoot-outs in the town square and worked as a paralegal for the famous Gerry Spence Law Firm. She later cooked for working cattle ranches, cleaned rocks at Warfield Fossils, tended bar at the Pines, and mowed greens at Star Valley Ranch Golf Course.

After retiring, she moved closer to family and bought a home in Nephi, Utah, where her father’s family had lived since emigrating from England in the mid-nineteenth century. She loved tending her garden, watching movies, and playing video games with her grandchildren. She would later move to Herriman, Utah, and then finally to Hamilton, Montana, where she lived since 2009. She passed away at home on Monday, October 25, 2021, with her dog Gypsy by her side.

Frances is survived by her brother Stephen Douglas Burton (Massachusetts); her children, Pamela Lyn Rogers (California), Suzanne Maree Rogers Olmeda (California), and Eric Paul Rogers (Utah); her grandchildren Rain Alexandra Cortez Beidler (Colorado), Kyra Layli Stewart Cash (California), Steven Stewart (California), Emily Kenney Truscott (Arizona), Thomas R. Kenney (California), Katie Lyn Rogers Morfin (Texas), Lelsy Rogers Lewis (Utah), Elijah Paul Rogers (Utah), Jacob Derwin Rogers (Utah), and Kinsey Marie Rogers (Utah); and her great-grandchildren, Aiden James Platte, Liam Alexander Cash, Alexander James Cash, Dominic Theodore Lee Cash, Joshua Michael Truscott, Amelia Maree Truscott, Troah Miguel Rodriguez, Aria Marie Rodriguez, Ella Grace Lewis, Faye Ann Lewis, Nora Marie Lewis, and Theodore Derwin Rogers.

Frances’s remains will be interred at Larkin Sunset Gardens in Sandy, Utah. A celebration of life will be held in Utah in the spring of 2022.