By Patricia Adams
Roger spent a great deal of time in the Beaverkill with his parents as a child. In 1967, living in New York City with his wife Ginny and two children, Tom and Liz he learned of a cottage here for sale. He and Ginny bought it from Lucy Ackerly. It was in the field behind our house overlooking the Beaverkill River. Like many of us at that time, the Lawrences came up from New York City on weekends and Ginny spent summers here with their children.
Beaverkill was a wonderful community with young families moving here—all with ‘handyman specials’ to fix up and use. The Lawrence’s cabin was a special challenge in the winter. It was a primitive little cottage—water supply was through a hose from the river, minimum electricity, wood stoves for heat and no insulation. They would drive up from the city Friday night, in their black Checker, which Roger had bought to give plenty of room for the family traveling. The first stop was at Lucy’s house. While Ginny sat inside visiting with Lucy, and Liz and Tom also inside where it was warm, Roger pulled the toboggan with supplies through the snow up the hill to their cabin and built fires in the wood stoves.
This weekly pattern was changed in 1981 when the United Nations, where he had been working for several years in NYC, transferred him and his family to the UN in Geneva, Switzerland as member and then head of the UN Conference on Trade and Development. He stayed with this job for 25 years and was then a foreign consultant in Cambodia, Moldova and Ukraine.
Roger was a wonderful conversationist, widely traveled, and gave depth and perception to historical happenings. David Barnes remembers:
As a fellow (but much less deep) language lover I enjoyed discussing arcane points of syntactical differences or similarities – of course, his phenomenal memory meant that he was almost always in command, and I would follow meekly along. I still envy his incredibly wide international experience and will always remember him sitting on our porch pointing out details of plants and birds that I had not noticed.
His ability and interest in discussing world events was paired with his intense interest in the natural world around him.
For instance, in an email to me, responding to my concern about Ukraine, he wrote.
The world has gone berserk, and has done so just when I believed we were making good progress toward a peaceful international order.
Facing all of this, I fall back on the message Voltaire gave us in Candide. Faced with the disasters—natural and man-made—that Candide encountered, Voltaire’s advice was “…make your garden grow,” i.e. focus on the things in your immediate environment over which you have some agency, do what you can to make that environment civilized, peaceful, and supportive of all who are in it, and forget the rest. What I am most thankful for, this Thanksgiving, is that I have the good fortune to live, in Beaverkill and in Del Mar, with others who share this objective.
In Beaverkill, he was a keen observer on the land around him.
He wrote in an email;
For several days I have been aware that some birds up my way were flashing blue when they flew off, but was unsure what to make of it. Yesterday, and again today, they conveniently posed for me on my red lawn chairs. There was no doubt. They are Eastern Bluebirds. This is the first time I have seen them in the Beaverkill.
Keep an eye out. They will be down your way.
His son Tom Wrote;
Beaverkill was my dad’s home. Of all the places he traveled to and lived, Beaverkill was where he wanted to be. He would have lived there full time if it had been practical. That was his community.
Roger had a brilliant mind and was also a good friend to many of us here in the Beaverkill. He will be fondly remembered and missed.
