Even though she deserves a long retirement, she’s not going to get one. The Farewell Party the chamber gave her Nov. 12 wasn’t just about her leaving the agency. It was about her leaving this life. She has terminal cancer, and unless something miraculous happens she will only be around for a few more months.

But this isn’t about her death. That will not define her. Her legacy is about being a fighter. She has led many changes in this community, but her greatest achievement is how she helped bring together the Tulalip and Marysville communities. She fought racism. She fought stereotypes. She fought history. And she helped break down barriers so both business communities could work together and thrive.

Rogers has led an impressive life. Her father was “Mr. Cuba” during the Cuban Missile Crisis, she got to work with special forces in a military career of “high-level security,” and she’s played politics with the likes of the late Henry “Scoop” Jackson. She’s also had her share of grief, having lost two husbands and a fiancé by age 32.

As a leader, Rogers has been approached to run for office, but declined. “You can effect change far better outside than in,” she said.

Anyone who walks into the chamber office has to be impressed. There is a wall full of awards for innovative programs instigated by Rogers. The Visitor’s Center is one of the most popular ones in the state. She’s also been an effective lobbyist as a member of many local and state boards.

Growing up in the military

Rogers was born into a military family in Berlin, Germany, in 1954. Her father later worked for the Pentagon, and she got to play with President Kennedy’s children. “They were younger and annoying,” Rogers recalled. Her dad became a critic of JFK during the Cuban Missile Crisis because “he pulled the plug and left so many to die.” Because Cuba had bombs pointed at Washington, D.C., the family moved to Connecticut.

Later, her dad moved out of the house, and a few years after that her mom kicked Rogers out into the streets at age 13. By this time they were in Everett, and she moved in with a friend in the projects near Paine Field. Rogers went on to become what is now called a “couch surfer” staying with different friends, never for more than six months because she didn’t want to become a burden. She would babysit and save up money to get by.

At Cascade High School, she took a job as a live-in babysitter with the Millers. She made $45 a week, got straight A’s and won a myriad of scholarships, graduating in 1972.

About this time Rogers tried out to be Miss Everett. That was a big step for her because she had always considered herself to be a wallflower, compared with her twin sister Wendy. But to her surprise she not only won that title but placed second for in the pageant for Miss Washington.

“I learned to accept myself, and never be jealous again of Wendy’s body,” Rogers said.

After graduating in communications from the University of Washington she joined the military and worked with special forces on various assignments.

“I’m blessed with a high I.Q.,” she said, adding she speaks English, Russian, Spanish and German.  “I can pick up anything.”

After the military she worked at a drop-out center, lobbying former longtime U.S. Sen. Jackson from Everett.  That was the first of many social causes she fought for, trying to improve on the 25 percent dropout rate. She helped start alternative education programs that put kids back in school, forgiving the credits they had lost to give them a chance at success.

At age 32, her little brother and mother both died.

“Mom’s was the worst of all,” she said, adding she would never get another chance to earn her love. She said she hit rock bottom and sought out a grief counselor.

Rogers said she again found her “wisdom of childhood,” where there was no hate or bias.

“I went from a chicken to an eagle,” she said. “I vowed to live a kind, loving, forgiving life.”

She also said, “Using humor to build consensus is a valuable piece of leadership.”

Everett and Marysville chambers

Soon after, Rogers became executive vice president of the Everett chamber.

“I learned the power of a single voice,” she said, but it wasn’t hers. One person said the town would not be safe for women and girls if a Navy base were there. It wasn’t easy, but she helped bring a Naval Homeport to Everett anyway.

Roger liked working for the Everett chamber, when it had 1,400 members and a large staff. They paid for her to get her master’s degree.

“It broke my heart that they eventually went bankrupt,” she said. “That was their glory days.”

Rogers moved here from Washington, D.C., and thought she “walked into hill country. What happens in the East is years before it happens in the West,” she said. When she went to a dinner here, and no one knew what sorbet was, she knew the area had to become “less rural.”

Rogers, who has always looked young, being carded until she was 40, said few leaders were women in the Everett area so she helped groom some of them.

“But I wasn’t a woman’s libber,” she said. “I like the door opened for me and meals paid for.”

Rogers said she was so “squeaky clean” she didn’t even learn to swear until she was 40.

Did it help? “Oh my god it was mandate,” she said with a laugh. “It helps release the tension. But it loses its power if you use it all the time.”

Rogers loved Everett’s chamber so her move to Marysville was a shock.

“Marysville was the laughingstock of the chamber industry,” she said, adding it was in debt and in scandal.

But in their ad for a new director they only wanted someone 20 hours a week, with low pay. They wanted someone to turn it around in six months.

“I sent them some advice,” Rogers said, basically saying there was no way that could be done. She gave them a progressive five-year business plan.

Rogers said back then Marysville had a chamber of the “Three P’s: Pancakes, Pageants and Parades.” She told them their outdated view of chamber members just paying dues wouldn’t get them out of debt.

Rogers went to talk to them; they thought it was a job interview, but she didn’t, she said. They did some fund-raising and hired her. There were no benefits, but she decided to help set them on track and then go back home to Everett. She never did.

Rogers was able to pay off the debt in 13 months. She did laborious research and published a book called “Marysville Beckons.”  She already was turning the “Three P’s” chamber into one that mirrored the corporate world, with returns on investments.

While city boards were slow to change from the good old boy attitude because they were elected, change was easier for Rogers and the chamber. Because her members were appointed, it turned over within three years, and she was able to train them to be more progressive.

As to why she stayed in Marysville so long, she said she was offered positions in Lynnwood and Everett, but “by now I wasn’t sure I wanted to do another rebuild.”

Raising “The Bear” in the Little Red House

Rogers was so busy with her job she said her son, Nathan Hansen, was always the first guy at day care and the last guy to be picked up. But on weekends, his friends always stayed at The Little Red House. When they got older, there was an effort by the city to ban skateboarding. They wanted skateboarders to go to Bellevue to use that park. Rogers used that opportunity as a teaching moment for her son and his friends.

They made fliers and put them up around town to gain support and get people to go to the council meeting. They rallied at Comeford Park and skateboarded to council. The boys signed in and talked at the microphone.

“I was not there to say a word,” Rogers said.

The council called Nathan to the podium. He was asked how the group could say Bellevue was too far to go to skateboarding when he was able to go there with 11 friends for his birthday.

“She saved for six months so she could do that for me,” he said of his mom.

Not only did the council not ban skateboarding, it did a complete 180 and decided to build a skatepark here. The kids went on to help other communities get skateparks, too.

Now that she had the boys interested in local politics, she then made sure they all registered to vote when they were 18. They would talk of the pros and cons of candidates and issues over a barbecue.

Many of his friends were wealthier, coming from two-income families. But Nate didn’t seem to mind. When one new friend came over the first time, Nate gave him a tour of The Little Red House. “Where’s the rest of the house?” the friend asked. “That’s it,” Nate responded with a smile.

Hansen, now 31, works for Key Bank. “I’m the best schmoozer because of you,” he has told her. Hansen has moved back in to the Little Red House where he grew up to help his mom during her final months.

Fighting to break barriers

Growing up in the 1950s, Rogers was ahead of her time being color blind. One of her best friends was a black “mammy” who worked for her parents. Rogers used to snuggle mammy when she was upset with her own family. Once, mammy took young Rogers into a black outhouse because there was a long line at the white one. When they came out, mammy was stoned by the crowd. Rogers tried to protect her friend, who was bleeding from her head. Rogers remembers crying because she didn’t understand what was going on.

But when she first came to Marysville she saw “racism like the times going back to the ‘50s. I wanted to partner with them and create a bridge across I-5,” she said of the Tulalip Tribes.

She started a program called Project Self Sufficient. She educated, enabled and empowered the welfare mothers.

“They were amazing, the most courageous people,” Rogers said. “They were the most dedicated, loyal and can-do people.”

She said they would get their kids off to school, go to school themselves, pick their kids up from school, go to work, study until 1-2 a.m., sleep 3-4 hours a day, and then go again.

Another fight Rogers has been involved in is getting sales tax money for the tribes. Even though tribal members don’t pay taxes, others do when  paying for items on tribal land. The Tulalips just want that money back from the state, the same as municipalities do. Rogers has been criticized by some for supporting that cause.

“Nothing could have prepared me for the good old boys. The depth of history and hate” for the Tulalips amazed her, she said.

Another battle involving the tribes involved their effort to build a Wal Mart on the reservation. The labor union wanted to kill that idea. Rogers was able to help stop that threat pretty quickly by asking the union when Lynnwood built its Wal Mart the previous year, did you fight it?

No was the answer.

“So why fight it on the reservation?” she asked, ending that debate.

Rogers said one bad move the city made recently was annexing tribal land without talking with the tribes. She said that hurt relations that took her more than 20 years to build.

“Now there’s a new wave of racism starting,” she said.

She loves and respects the tribal members. “I adore their loyalty, ethics and vision,” she said.

Her biggest accomplishment is working with the tribes, Rogers said.

“It was the patriotic thing to do,” she said. “They are much more than Premium Outlets. They developed 116th and 172nd. They went from being needy to being a leading power. The tribes opened doors for new economic development in the area.”

Fighting for businesses

Rogers hasn’t just fought for the tribes but for other businesses in her chamber, too.

One fight happened when there was an effort by the city to raise water rates.

“The new rate structure would have killed everybody,” she said, adding businesses such as Pacific Coast Feathers settled on Marysville thanks in part to low water rates.  Some rates would have doubled or even tripled. She helped fill the council chamber for weeks to protest. Finally, a new rate structure was configured that got the city the money it needed, and the cost was equally shared, Rogers said.

Rogers’ relationship with chamber merchants has not always been great. When the city asked for her help with revitalization a downtown merchant almost hit her. Items were thrown at her when she went to the microphone at a meeting.

“We don’t want another shoe store in town” was their attitude, Rogers said. “We don’t want roundabouts and trees” because they take away parking spots.  Rogers said she understood their old-fashioned “knee-jerk reaction.”

“Change is terrifying” for a lot of people, she said. “But I’m an agent for change for the better. We have a right, no a responsibility, to speak up.”

At one point, there was an effort to kill local chambers and only have one big one at the county level. Rogers fought it to keep a local voice. She said the county chamber had an elitist attitude, wanting to focus mostly on Boeing. But Marysville had mostly small businesses of five workers or less. While some local chambers joined in with the county idea it quickly failed, losing mass members after its first year because it wasn’t representative of all the communities.

Rogers as a mediator

Rogers has played mediator between the Tulalips and city many times. One effort was the tribes didn’t like the water tower being used as a symbol of Marysville.

“This isn’t Petticott Junction,” Rogers recalled them saying, referring to the old TV show. “I got phone calls of rage that would blow my hair back.”

The Tulalips wanted to boycott Marysville businesses. Such a strike would have put many in Marysville out of business. So she explained to the tribes: “(Chairman) Stan Jones, you won’t be able to use Elmer then as your barber. And you are going to have to provide buses to take people elsewhere to shop.”

We can’t afford that, Rogers said the tribes responded. “That was music to my ears,” she said.

The city also was making demands. It wanted the tribes to do something that actually was illegal because it was restraint of trade. The mayor at the time didn’t want the tribe to bring in any business that would compete with one already in Marysville.

But by working together they came up with a mountains to the ocean theme they both liked for logos and came to other consensus.

Another battle she fought was in favor of NASCAR building a track between Marysville and Smokey Point. She was asked by county officials to help inform people on the issue. “It was all fear, not knowledge based,” Rogers said.

As a result, she became an enemy of the anti-NASCAR people. “They thought it would upset their wonderful country life,” she said, adding how ironic it is that area is now full of businesses.

She described a meeting she went to. A “shock jock” was hired to stir up the crowd. He led a chant of “Death to Caldie Rogers.” He then heard that she had arrived and said, “Caldie Rogers is in the building.” The jock then asked women point blank if they were Caldie Rogers. When the jock got to her, she spoke quietly so everyone would have to quiet down to listen.

She said: “You all care so much, I can’t admire you more. Thank you for letting me speak. You have a passion for your community, and you want to make it great.”

Those comments quickly took the hate out of the room, she said.

One of Rogers’ favorite projects was helping military women get jobs. She was raised in a military family so she knew how tough it was for spouses to get work, based on short assignments and being transferred to different communities. She felt that idea was outdated because duty stations were getting longer.

She started a county initiative giving preference for jobs to military families, and every council and tribe has adopted it.

Dealing with death

Most of Rogers’ family died by the time she worked for the Everett chamber.

“Each death takes away a little part of you,” she said. “Grief can hit you in cycles.”

The first year it’s all you think of. But when it happens again, it brings back all the other losses, she said.

Besides Nathan, her only relative is Wendy, who is half an hour younger.

“We are at extreme ends of the spectrum,” Rogers said. “She says I’m stupid for working for people in need. But I’m blessed with a huge circle of friends.”

Rogers started noticing her health problems about two years ago, when she started having mini strokes. No salt was getting into her organs. She could not eat much. She started having problems with her balance, breaking her nose on a hearth on one fall. She started to have seizures. Her spine is in decay. She has a tumor near her brain stem that can’t be operated on.

“This is not how I expected it to play out,” Rogers said.

She said doctors have her on a heavy dose of medications that include low-drip opium so her driving is restricted.

“If I wasn’t on my meds, I couldn’t connect my verbs, and I’d have no balance,” Rogers said.

It’s frustrating because she’s been independent for so long.

“I’m not used to being weak,” Rogers said. “It’s come slowly.”

Her doctors have tried some “Hail Mary’s” experimental treatments to try to prolong her life. But Rogers said she’s ready for those to stop. She feels they are going more harm than good.

“I’m ready to accept what’s coming,” she said.

When word got out about Rogers’ illness and retirement, the chamber was inundated with phone calls. The community has been so caring.

“I’ve never seen a community so church oriented,” she said.

Rogers said when she was young and alone, “angels kept me company. I had a spiritual manifestation. I admire people who have faith without that.”

Although she retired Oct. 15, Rogers is still working to help the chamber be functional when she’s gone.

“God take anything but not my skills,” she said, emotion evident in her voice as she feels she still has work to do. “I have to let go.”

Resignation letter:

Due to an incurable health condition, it is with profound regret that I have submitted my resignation as President/CEO of The Greater Marysville Tulalip Chamber of Commerce.

I will continue to serve by providing help and assistance to the formation and process of an Executive Selection Committee. Subject to the speed of physical deterioration that lies ahead of me, I also hope to be involved in the creation and launching of our 2015 Legislative Agenda representing the needs of our partners, The Tulalip Tribes and the city of Marysville, as well as protecting the needs of our two business communities.

There simply are no words to express the joy, pride, and gratitude that I feel for what we have accomplished over the last 22 years as we went from being a chamber of debt and scandal to being a regional power organization, respected across our county, our state, our nation, and our country’s sovereign nations – for being the first and, to date, only chamber to have partnered with a sovereign nation.

Caldie Rogers

Career highlights

• The only chamber in the U.S. to partner with a sovereign nation, it serves as a bridge between Marysville and Tulalip, uniting both communities.  This partnership has been promoted as a national role model by the U.S. Chamber.

•She started a series of award-winning North County Summits that brought eight warring communities together to partner on behalf of economic development.

• She led a county-wide Military Family Friendly Employment Initiative to help employment needs of Armed Forces family members.

• Key issues she has been a leader on include: Alternative education programs; Everett Navy Homeport; skate parks in local cities; and a NASCAR facility in north Marysville.

•She has served on the boards of the Association of Washington Business, the Economic Development Council of Snohomish County, Washington Chamber of Commerce Executives board, Marysville Economic Revitalization Commission and Quil Ceda Village Business Council.

•On four occasions, her chamber has won first place for “Projects That Mobilize People and Move Communities Forward” from the AWB. She has won national awards from the U.S. Chamber for Membership Retention. She was named Outstanding First-Year Chamber Executive from the state Chamber in 1993, and received honors from former President Bush as chairwoman of Snohomish County’s Human Services Commission, for Project Self-Sufficiency, a program that became a national role model for breaking the cycle of poverty for welfare mothers.