A Soldier's Legacy

By Patrick Appel

Ben McGrath reports on the life of gay solider Alan Rogers.

After Rogers’s death, it emerged that there were a number of people who considered him to be their closest friend, and who felt that they were in a position to discern how he would have wished to be remembered. Their differing notions may have said more about the richness of Rogers’s friendships than about his beliefs. Nearly everyone, in recalling Rogers, talked about his great strength as a listenerhis habit of drawing people out and making them feel as though their best selves had been understood. Only in retrospect did they realize that he never revealed much of himself.

Andrew wrote about Rogers here and here.