DATE: Thursday, June 12, 1997               TAG: 9706100155

SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS         PAGE: 03   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: THUMBS UP! 

SOURCE: BY KATHRYN DARLING, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  109 lines

COUPLE'S COMMUNITY INGENUITY WINS PRESIDENTIAL RECOGNITION

John and Virginia Roger's seven years of innovative, committed community service have won them accolades from city, civic and community leaders in Norfolk. Now, their achievements have won them national recognition.

This spring, the Bayview residents were named Citationists in the President's Service Award program, managed by the Points of Light Foundation and the Corporation for National Service on behalf of the White House.

More than 3,500 names of volunteers were submitted this year, and the Rogers were among the 44 considered for the award. Sixteen President's Service Awards were given and 28 were named Citationists.

Being named a Citationist is an achievement, said Robert K. Goodwin, Points of Light Foundation president and chief executive officer. ``With thousands of individuals and groups nominated, reaching this level is an outstanding honor.''

Nominees are considered for their service in environment, education, public safety and meeting human needs. They are judged on achievement, meeting community needs, innovation and mobilizing others.

Councilman Randy Wright said he nominated the Rogers for the award because of ``their tenacity and perseverance (in their civic work), but above all, their commitment to the community.''

The Rogers work ``toward making the community a better place to live and improving the quality of life in Bayview,'' he said.

John and Virginia Rogers have conceived and developed an ongoing neighborhood code inspection program, arranging for their civic league members to be trained by the city on code violations. For the last four years, the Bayview civic league has had teams assigned to look for piles of trash, abandoned buildings needing boarding, dilapidated buildings needing repair and street, sign and sidewalk problems.

The city doesn't always have the manpower to search out code violations, so the Bayview civic team helps them out, said Virginia Roger.

``We act as the eyes of the agency and report the stuff,'' she said.

As president of the civic league, John Roger also sends a letter to the owners of the property asking them to bring their area into compliance with the city's requirements.

The Rogers have been married 23 years. Both were married before and, between them, have five children and 10 grandchildren. The two met at work when they were both management and systems analysts in civil service for the Navy. When John retired, Virginia quit her job and the two went to work for a consulting company. After seven years there, they retired and spent a year puttering in the garden and working on projects around the house.

They found they missed the activity, the challenge, the go, go, go they'd had at work. So they started volunteering in the community and joined the Neighborhood Block Watch.

``When you get involved with one thing, it leads to something else. People see you are a worker bee - and they ask you to help them,'' he said.

Lots of organizations are out there that we didn't even know existed, he said.

The two work on some projects and committees independently, but for the most part they're a team effort, using their complementary skills.

``When you get one of them, you get both of them,'' said Betty Wade Coyle, chair of the citizen's Advisory Council of Norfolk Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court. While John Roger was appointed to the board, Coyle said Virginia Roger often comes with him and is an important element in the work.

Virginia Roger is the self-proclaimed doer. She said she sees what needs to be done and does it. She's good at meeting deadlines and will work from dawn till dawn to finish something urgent.

John is a planner, an organizer, she said. A details man, he likes working with data and analysis, and he knows what resources are needed for a project, he said.

The two work together to produce the civic league newsletter, Bayview Bylines.

Virginia Roger, the editor, assigns and writes stories. She makes sure the newsletter with a circulation of 1,100 is published every two weeks.

One of John Roger's contributions is the Bayview Crime summary, listing names and reasons for arrests in the Bayview area.

For six years, John Roger reviewed public records of arrests and manually compiled a list to publish in the newsletter. It began as a tool for Neighborhood Block Watch, to inform community members of crime trends and problems to look out for in their neighborhood.

Wright said the effort Roger took to manually get that information and have it published had helped reduce crime in the area. He had Roger present the idea to City Council. A year ago, the city automated its crime statistics, and neighborhood crime information became available to every civic league.

Roger worked at ``changing the system so the system could inform the community,'' said Wright.

John and Virginia Roger's community involvement includes working with the Restorative Justice Program, putting non-violent youth offenders to work in their home community or the area where they committed the crime. The Bayview Civic League, under John Roger's guidance, has put more than 80 youths to work in community service.

The Rogers have also organized a six-week course for troubled youths modeled after one of the city's court-mandated programs. The Rogers' program, Back on Track, is volunteer. Parents can enroll their at-risk children, and the Bayview Recreation Center can refer youths who are causing trouble and not following rules.

The Rogers are actively involved with PACE and serve on the citywide PACE Support Services Committee. Earlier this month, they went to Longmont, Colo., with Norfolk PACE representatives to explain community policing and present the city's experience with it.

They serve on numerous boards, including the Bayview Recreation Center Advisory Board. He is Neighborhood Block Watch chairman and she chairs the Criminal Justice Board.

Norfolk City Clerk Breck Daughtrey has worked with both John and Virginia Roger on city projects.

``They are role models of community service for everyone to emulate.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by TAMARA VOLINSKI

John and Virginia Roger have been named Citationists for helping to

make Bayview a better place to live.

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