Daughter creates memorial fund at The Trust to her parents to help isolated older adults.
Rodger Elgar (1883-1953)
Jessie Graham Elgar (1885-1967)
Ann Rodger Elgar (1914-2012)
(Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Ceppi, Jessie’s niece)
In 1985, when Ann Rodger Elgar was 71, she memorialized her parents with a fund in The New York Community Trust. She wanted to help elderly, infirm people in their own homes or the homes of relatives or friends. She wanted to foster kindness. She didn’t want older adults sitting at home, always alone, or shuttled off to institutions.
Her parents, Herbert Rodger and Jessie Graham Elgar, were married in 1911 at St. Peter’s-Our Lady of the Rosary, a historic church in Manhattan’s Financial District. H. Rodger, as he was known, was a woodworking contractor, and Jessie worked for a time as an assistant to magazine editors in the city. H. Rodger learned his trade from his father, James William Elgar, who helped build Carnegie Music Hall as well as St. Paul’s Chapel, Hamilton Hall, and dorms at Columbia College.
Shortly after their wedding, H. Rodger and Jessie moved to White Plains, where they raised their family. Ann was born July 10, 1914. She had an older sister, Reba; a younger sister, Jane; and a younger brother, Rodger. H. Rodger Elgar died January 20, 1953.
In July 1940, Ann married Andrew R. Stevenson, a lawyer with a New York law firm. After they divorced, she worked as a stenographer in New York City. She never remarried.
When Ann retired, she moved to an apartment in Washington, D.C., near her niece Regina “Jenny” Clad.
Ann Elgar died October 12, 2012, at age 98.
Her fund in The Trust has been used to expand a virtual senior center and improve the quality of home care for isolated older adults, to train home health aides, and to coordinate physical and mental health services for seniors living alone.