Chapter 33
Faith continued to grow each day. Joe and Mary spent as much time with her, holding her as much as possible and loving her with all of their hearts and souls. Five weeks later, they took Faith home with them. She went home to the same house that Joe had first entered as a small child, several years earlier.
With all of the love in that house, Faith continued to thrive and grow. Two years later, Joe and Mary had a second daughter whom they named Hope, and a year later, a third and final daughter whom they named Charity.
Mary and Joe taught Faith, Hope and Charity to be compassionate, kind and caring. They taught them to love, honor and cherish God, family, friends and life itself. Joe and Mary knew that their daughters would bring faith, hope and charity to the world.
THE END
Epilogue
Over the years, the Rogers family and the Williams family continued to grow larger, and they left their mark on the world.
The entire family gathered at the house where Joe had lived all of his life, on Betty’s 90th birthday. Betty had finally retired from Nursing at the age of seventy. She now devotes all of her time spoiling her grandchildren and great grandchildren.
Jim remarried Betty three years after he came to San Francisco. Matt gave Betty away at her wedding and the marriage had all of her children’s blessings.
Jim has spent the past thirty-five years trying to make up for his mistakes in the past. He stood by Betty and helped her through her most trying ordeal, when she got breast cancer at age sixty-three. Jim never gambled again and he has not had a drop of alcohol in over forty years.
Jim and Betty recently celebrated their 38th anniversary of their second marriage. They now have twenty-one grandchildren and thirty-eight great grandchildren.
Joe is now sixty-nine and Mary is sixty-five. With Joe’s gift for investing stocks, he could have become a billionaire by now, but as fast as their money came in, they would put it into their foundation to help children. They recently sold SaraCom and now spend all of their time with family, and of course, helping others in need.
They are still very active in the Rogers-Williams Foundation. They donated quite a lot of money to hospitals and the arts over the years, but donating to children’s charities was always their top priority.
Kids Caring for Kids, did become a nationwide charity, and variations of it spread to countries on every continent. The Rogers and Williams families are still very involved with it to this day.
After Faith, Hope and Charity set out on their own, Joe and Mary missed having children around, so they opened their home to foster children, mostly troubled teenagers.
To date, they have taken in over seventy foster children. They put all of them through college. They keep in touch with all of them and consider them part of their family.
Joe and Mary have also set up ten nursing scholarships throughout the state of California, known as the Elizabeth Rogers Nursing Scholarships.
Hope is now thirty-eight and recently took over as director of the Williams-Rogers Foundation, now that Joe and Mary have retired. She is married and has two daughters.
Faith is forty, is married, and has one son and one daughter. After graduating from Medical School, she went into medical research and has spent the past several years looking for a cure for Aids.
She and her fellow researchers may have come up with the cure, which is currently being tested. If it works, she will help to save millions of lives.
Charity attended the seminary and is now a pastor at a Lutheran church with the biggest congregation in San Francisco. She is married with two sons.
Mark is now sixty. He graduated from UCLA with one degree in History and another in Physical Education. He led the UCLA baseball team to national championships his junior and senior years.
After college, he was signed by the San Francisco Giants and played baseball with them for eleven years, until a shoulder injury forced him to retire, but not before helping the Giants win two World Series.
He had offers from several universities to coach their baseball teams, but he wanted to give back to the community where he grew up, so he started teaching History and coaching baseball at his old high school, where he has been for the last twenty-seven years.
He has also been working on a book about the history of San Francisco, which will be published soon.
He is married and has two sons, two daughters and five grandchildren.
Luke is fifty-eight. He finished Chef School and spent a year in Paris working under some of the world’s famous chefs.
He then spent a few more years in school to earn a business degree. For a graduation present, Joe gave him half ownership of “Francisco’s which under Luke’s management has become one of the best restaurants in the city, and has been given a five star rating by several restaurant critics from around the world. He is now the head chef and sole owner.
He specializes in gourmet meals, which are also healthy. He has written three cookbooks, including one specifically designed for dyslexics, all of which have been on the bestseller lists.
He is married with two daughters and three grandchildren.
John is fifty-six. He attended Stanford University and then Harvard Law School, where he met his wife. One month after they graduated from law school, they became parents of a son.
John was overwhelmed and fell in love with him immediately. He could not bear the thought of putting him in day care, so he decided to do legal contracts out of his home and became a Stay-at-Home Dad.
His wife became a partner in a successful law practice in San Francisco. They loved children so much, that they had five more children, all boys. John was very involved in his sons’ lives, from coaching Little League and soccer, to chaperoning field trips, to being scoutmaster.
He was a member of the PTA for several years, including two terms as president. He served six years on the local school board and after his children were older, he was elected to the California State Senate, where he has pushed through major legislation to help fix problems in the school system. Besides their six sons, they also have eleven grandchildren.
Paul, now fifty-four, graduated from UCLA with a degree in Elementary Education and has taught first grade for the past twenty-three years. He is married and has one son and two grandchildren.
After attending Stanford University for four years, Sarah, now fifty-one, was accepted to Johns Hopkins Medical School, where she graduated top of her class.
While in medical school, she was leaning towards a career in Cardiology, but when her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, she switched to Oncology and has dedicated her life to fighting breast cancer.
She is still single, but is a terrific aunt to her many nephews and nieces.
Becca, or Rebecca Rogers Johnson, as she is now known, also fifty-one, was torn between a career in nursing, like her mother, or music.
Betty made her realize that music was her true calling and that it was truly a gift from God. She went on to attend Julliard School of Music.
She is now a concert pianist and teaches piano, part-time to gifted students at Stanford. She has composed and recorded music which is played in hospitals, to help patients recover in a more peaceful and serene environment. She is married and has one daughter and four grandchildren.
Matt Rogers worked his way up from cub reporter to editor of the Los Angeles Times. Though he is now sixty-three, he plans to stay with the Times for several more years. He won a Pulitzer Prize at age forty. He lectures at colleges around the country.
Matt has written several novels, and recently, he published a novel titled “To Love, Honor and Cherish” a story that is based on the life of his own family. He dedicated it to his mother in honor of the wonderful job as mother and grandmother. The book was published in time for her ninetieth birthday. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife of thirty-nine ye
ars, Hannah. They have four daughters and seven granddaughters.
As the family gathered, the love in the house was very powerful. They continue to live by the one rule that Joe’s parents taught him so many years ago; ‘to love, honor and cherish; God, family, friends and life.
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