M. Dorothy Rogers

    The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has received word of the death November 21, 2002, for retiree M. Dorothy Rogers at the Royal Megansett Nursing Home in North Falmouth. She was 93.<

M. Dorothy “Dot” Rogers was born May 18, 1909 in Falmouth and graduated from the Lawrence School in 1928. She worked at Rowe’s pharmacy on Main Street as a drug clerk before joining the Institution staff in 1954 as a laboratory assistant in the Biology Department, working with Frank Mather on the game fish tagging program.

In 1957 Dot took on a second job for the National Ocean Survey, measuring saltwater temperatures and the height of tides in Woods Hole from the pump house near the Iselin Building. Each day, she lowered a four-inch bucket 15 feet into Great Harbor to obtain a reading unaffected by the sun, and recorded her measurements at the weather station in the Smith lobby. She retired from WHOI in 1979 but continued taking the temperature and tide measurements until December 1997.

She was honored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 1998 for her 40 years of dedicated service as tide observer for the National Ocean Survey in Woods Hole. The data she collected was used in the tide charts for the east coast of North and South America issued by the Department of Commerce, and her summer water temperature reports were published in The Falmouth Enterprise for many years.

Dot Rogers is survived by several nephews and grand nieces and nephews. A funeral service will be held Saturday, November 30, at 10 a.m. at St Patrick’s Church on Main Street in Falmouth.