Harriet Rogers Blazed a Trail for Women

Written by Melissa Karen Sances
Photos by Nikki Gardner and courtesy of the Ahlemeyer Family

Published in Northampton Living (April 2024)

“Did you ever think you’d come into a mess like this?” Harriet Rogers asks. Though I’ve only known her for about an hour, I’ve learned quickly that she is wryly funny.

Truthfully, this interview is a little messy. In the day room at Rockridge, the assisted living facility where Harriet has lived for the past 17 years, she holds court on the couch. Around the room, 3 generations of family listen attentively, pass around old photos, share anecdotes or shout questions. The shouting is necessary because sometimes everyone speaks at once. They are thrilled to memorialize her, and they don’t want me to miss a thing. Her nieces Susan and Jackie Ahlemeyer sit to her right; Jackie’s husband Bill and brother-in-law Bill Klaes are in the back; and Jackie’s son Brian and his kids Jackson, Charlie, Joey and Grace, who have flown in from California, sprawl on the opposite couch. There are countless others here in spirit.

I tell her the chaos is delightful.

“Oh, then you do have a sense of humor,” she deadpans. Then, seriously: “I don’t know why this is even celebrating me. For what?”

Besides being the incredibly loved longest living resident at Rockridge, the 97-year-old was one of the first female bankers in the area, rising through the ranks from bookkeeper to executive vice president over a 47-year career. This was no small feat, considering that she graduated from Deerfield High School in the middle of World War 2. At the time, women had only been allowed to vote for 2 decades. The Civil Rights Movement hadn’t happened. The National Organization of Women didn’t exist. Sandra Day O’Connor hadn’t ascended to the Supreme Court, and Sally Ride hadn’t walked on the moon.

But Harriet – she had potential. At Deerfield High, she was one of the starters on the girls’ basketball team. In a yearbook photo, she sits in the first row, second from the left, legs crossed at the ankles. Her coaches wear skirts that hide their knees. “Many good wishes to a very good player,” Coach McNally wrote under the photo, in perfect penmanship.

I ask Harriet if she was a good shooter.

“Yup,” she says. “That’s why we won the League.” Her family laughs uproariously.

But she can’t believe her eyes when she sees the photo – which is now 80 years old.

“That’s you right there in your basketball uniform,” says her grandson Brian, showing it to her on his phone.

She squints at it and says, “Are you kidding?”

“That was your catch phrase in your yearbook!” he says. More laughs.

At 4’11,” the “class midget” was a dynamo on and off the court. In her senior year, a recruiter came to the high school looking for bookkeepers. The teacher recommended Harriet.

She graduated in 1943 and started work at Lemay Custom Furniture in Greenfield as a bookkeeper the following Monday. The 17-year-old — one of 7 siblings — took the bus from Deerfield to Greenfield and honed her skills. When she saw an ad for a bookkeeper at Produce Bank in Deerfield, she jumped at the chance for a shorter commute. “I shouldn’t have done it, but I just left a note that I wouldn’t be back,” she says matter-of-factly, to more guffaws.

At the bank, Harriet was a natural, whose attention to detail, positive attitude and eagerness to learn made her a shoe-in for teller. She had no qualms about approaching the bank president to ask him to explain procedure. “I’d say, ‘I know you just did this, but why?’” she says. “And that’s how I learned.”

When Produce merged with First National Bank & Trust, Harriet stayed through the night to make sure the funds were transferred securely. The bank would go through 2 more mergers as Harriet was named manager and, eventually, executive vice president.

I ask Harriet if she thinks she was a trailblazer for women. “I never thought of myself as much of anything,” she says seriously. But when I ask if she thinks she had a good career, her eyes widen. “Yes I do,” she says. “Oh my god, yes.”

Brian remembers visiting her often during the 1980s, when the bank, located in the town center, was a vibrant part of the community. “When you walked into that bank, it felt like she was in charge,” he says proudly. “She knew what was going on, everybody was asking her questions, all the customers knew who she was, and she knew everyone. I mean it was like the world revolved around her.”

Outside of work, Harriet met her husband John at the VFW dance hall in South Deerfield. He was not a good dancer, but he was persistent. “I told him not to come back and he still came back,” she says. While the couple didn’t have children, Harriet’s sister Charlotte had 2 daughters, who each had 3 kids. Harriet delighted in taking the grandkids to Hampton Beach, laying out their pajamas for sleepovers, and stocking the fridge with homemade tapioca pudding. Once they were in college, the kids made an appreciative sign for her door: “When the going gets tough, the tough go to Nana’s.”

In 2007 Harriet moved to Rockridge. There, she has enjoyed gardening, taking group trips to Florida, and collecting statues like her beloved Angelina, whom she donated to the facility’s garden. Harriet lovingly wrote the message that now greets visitors: “Angelina is here to wish you a great life.”