Kathleen Mary Rodgers

Kathy Rodgers, 65, died at her home in Bowie just before dawn on Feb. 10, as her three children prayed at her bedside.

They’d learned to pray from her, by watching her lift up thanksgiving and requests to God over many decades, through heartache and physical pain. She showed them how to walk by faith, read the Bible, and love without keeping score.

She also taught them how to celebrate.

She dyed their milk pink for Valentine’s Day and green for St. Patrick’s Day. She made real-life “green eggs and ham” for them.

Generations of children loved her for her elaborate birthday parties. She cut out foam swords and paper shields to arm her youngest son and his friends for a gladiator-themed party. (She convinced her husband to play the role of a Colosseum lion for the young warriors to attack.)

Decades later, she was still at it with her grandson’s Spider-Man party, filling her home with “POW!” and “BAM!” posters and fake spider webs. (She convinced her husband to play the role of the nemesis, Venom, for the young superheroes to attack.)

Though she had a multitude of talents, her dinner rolls were the only things she’d brag about. She was confident that her rolls were the best around, and they were. A few people tried to replicate the recipe, but they failed, and she didn’t seem overly sorry about it.

She was known as a masterful storyteller who never let accuracy stand in the way of a good yarn. No one ever bothered to correct her.

She created “treasure boxes” and scrapbooks for each of her children, keeping their birth announcements, hospital bracelets, and height charts.

She saved her own treasures, too, including the program for her high school graduation, where she was one of two student commencement speakers. The title of her speech was, “The door to happiness opens outward.”

Kathleen Mary Daheim was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Jan. 23, 1956. Her father was an attorney, and her mother was a homemaker.

She spent her first few years living with her parents and siblings in a drafty Quonset hut, where the carpet would freeze to the ground on frigid mornings

When she was 6, her father suddenly packed his young family into their Ford Falcon and moved them to Washington state. Her infant brother made the trip inside an apple box in the front of the car with their parents, while she and her three sisters crammed into the backseat.

Her family continued to expand in Tacoma, with the addition of enough siblings to fully cast the Christmas play they would stage each year in their living room. 

Known for her studious nature, she excelled at school and headed to Gonzaga University after graduating from Washington High School in 1974.

She explored the world during her high school and college years with school-sponsored trips to England, Ireland, the Middle East, and Italy, experiences that would give her a lifetime’s worth of adventure stories and a lasting love for Florence.

And she wasn’t ready to settle down after college was over. Just a few months after graduating from Gonzaga, she took a teaching job at a Catholic school in Saipan, a 46-square-mile speck of land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

There, she learned how to sleep with geckos sticking to the ceiling over her head and took to wearing colorful muumuu dresses, which would become her outfit of choice for the rest of her life.

She also quickly formed friendships with a group of young Christian missionaries, drawn in by the way they practiced their faith. They baptized her in the ocean water around Guam in 1980.

She followed the call out to Washington, D.C., and was working in the city suburbs when she met a handsome Navy sailor, John Rodgers, at her church. In less than a year, they were married.

Their early life together was full of challenges: John was simultaneously working and trying to complete an undergraduate degree, their first child was born, and the farmhouse they were renting burned to the ground while they were attending a Sunday church service. They lost nearly everything they owned in a single morning. 

In the middle of all that, Kathy managed to earn a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University, graduating summa cum laude with specialties in early childhood education and learning disabilities.

Their second child was born a couple of years later, around the same time that they bought their first home, a brick colonial in Bladensburg. Around then, they also began attending Solid Rock Church, which would be Kathy’s congregation and Christian family for more than three decades.

She devoted the next part of her life to homeschooling her children, Bethany and Ben and later Charles. Modern homeschooling was a relatively new movement at the time, and she was a pioneer who generously passed down her knowledge to other families who were interested in the education model.

As her children’s one-and-only teacher, she instilled a love of reading and thirst for knowledge. She helped them build solar systems out of Styrofoam and wire and experiment with papier-mâché volcanoes.

After her children reached adulthood, she poured her energy into younger families and anyone else who needed wisdom, kindness, or to hear a funny story.

She created hand-stamped cards for baby showers and birthdays and take-home favors for any number of weddings. She knitted blankets for every child born in the church and made scarves, hats, and mittens for many of the adults. During the pandemic, she learned how to knit woolen songbirds to cheer up her family and friends.

Most of all, though, she doted on her three grandchildren, Malachi, Hadassah, and Calvin, who knew her as their beloved Gigi. She smiled whenever their faces popped up in her video chat, and if they wanted something, she’d buy them 10 of it. Her husband joked that their home must have its own assigned Amazon delivery man.

When John began receiving treatment for brain cancer, she cared for him tirelessly. She taped gold and silver stars to the wall for every week he completed a round of chemotherapy and radiation. His seizures made it too dangerous for him to operate a car, so she drove him to work, the Naval Academy, and medical appointments.

At the time, she had no idea that she was also suffering from advanced cancer.

When she found out, she prayed for healing but entrusted herself to her God. Her unshakeable hope was in the life to come.

Kathy was preceded in death by her parents, Warren “Bud” and Betty Daheim. She is survived by her husband, John; her daughter, Bethany; her sons, Benjamin (Kennesha) and Charles; her grandchildren, Malachi, Hadassah, and Calvin; her sisters, Theresa Boyle (Russ), Lisa Daheim, Margaret Herd (Damon), Cynthia Stuart (Rich), Beth Dykman (Kevin), and Sarah Daheim; and her brothers, Timothy (Sandy) and Matthew (Kristina).

A virtual celebration of life will be held Feb. 21 at 1:23 p.m. and can be streamed at solidrockchurch.net/live by clicking the play button at the beginning of the service time.