Roger Warren Van Laan

Roger W. Van Laan had lived 102 memory-filled years when he passed away on Friday, February 14, 2025.  He was born into an era of one-room schools and horse-drawn plows but left a world where technology from science fiction stories had become real. Roger wasn’t a Star Trek fan, but he was a man ahead of his time, and the Vulcan blessing must have settled on him anyway.  He lived long and prospered.

Born on a dairy farm in rural West Michigan to John and Anna (Ploeg) Van Laan, Roger was the grandson of Dutch immigrants and the oldest of six children. Hard work and frugality saw the family through the adversities of the Great Depression and imparted a set of values that informed Roger’s idea of living well and that he carried with him for the rest of his life.

After enlisting in the Navy during WWII, where he served as a radar technician (when even the word – let alone the technology – was classified), Roger worked in electronic instrument repair and calibration at the Naval Research Lab and then for Horman Associates, a representative for Hewlett-Packard.  He made the transition from vacuum tubes to transistors, and as computer technology developed, Roger enrolled in community college courses for computer operation and programming.  From there, he shifted careers into data processing, usually working second shift to indulge his predilection for sleeping late, until retiring at age 70.  Well before the term came into vogue, Roger always worked a side hustle.  From raising chickens to sell eggs to buying and refinishing antique furniture, he supplemented his regular salary however he could. Not satisfied with just working harder though, Roger also wanted to work smarter. He learned to invest in stocks, became a proud subscriber of Business Week and Barron’s, and made sure his family’s savings was always doing its fair share, too.

His decidedly unprosperous beginnings notwithstanding, Roger thrived.  He met Sue Hester at the Rhode Island Avenue Methodist Church (in what he always described as an act of God's providence).  They would marry in 1945.  As he had fallen in love with the Washington area, and as he and Susie mutually agreed that neither could abide living in the other's hometown, Roger and Susie lived first in Virginia before moving to Frederick County, MD in 1958.  Their Sears-style Craftsman house (shipped and assembled on site by its original owner in the 1920s) would become the family home, and Roger was proud of its history and uniqueness.  They raised their children, made trips to visit family in South Carolina and Michigan, and lived a comfortable, if never luxurious, life together.

The prosperity they achieved was not only material. They had a wealth of friends, interests, and accomplishments.  Roger gardened on a rather grand scale in the days when he was feeding a family of four and literally dug his own potatoes the last weekend before he broke his hip at 97.  His heirloom strawberries were, as he said (and to the annoyance of at least one grandchild), his “pride and joy.”  Reared by a schoolteacher mother who taught him to read at age three, Roger prized education.  Seeing all four of his grandchildren graduate from college is the only blessing Roger ever considered worthy of sharing aloud in church. With limited opportunity for formal education, Roger was self-educated to a level well beyond what his credentials showed.  He was an avid reader, solved crossword puzzles, and played cards, especially pinochle. Early in his life this meant paperbacks, newspapers, and decks, but he adapted his pastimes to the 21st century and began reading on a Kindle, solving crosswords on an app, and switched from Solitaire on a coffee table to FreeCell on a PC and then a tablet. He developed a real interest in woodworking and found that he could exercise his frugality by making bowls, gluing together the scraps leftover from his grander projects like bookcases, tables, and porch swings.

Never a physically big man, Roger was intrigued with big ideas.  He saw the world change from one where less than half of Americans had electricity in their homes to one of mass industrialization, space races, the internet age, and even the dawn of artificial intelligence.  He was amazed at the way we now communicate around the world in real time and that we can see the people we are talking to on our phones.  Living in the DC area rife with free museums, he spent countless hours over the course of several decades at the Smithsonian, and wherever he traveled as a tourist, museums were on his itinerary.  He especially enjoyed science and technology museums, but also reveled in the history that surrounded him and spent many hours at the Gettysburg and Antietam National Military Parks.

Roger’s faith was forever Calvinistic, but he embraced the good old Methodist social gospel and found his gift for sharing the faith lay in installing sheetrock in flood damaged houses, going on a gleaning mission to highlight food insecurity, and refurbishing his church’s fellowship building.  He waited tables and swabbed floors at fundraising dinners, worked at Lord’s Acre sales, and organized envelope stuffing for mass mailings to provide the funds for various projects.

Roger could look back on most of his long, prosperous, well-lived life and proudly say, as in the Frank Sinatra song about another eccentric character, that his regrets were too few to mention.  He famously smoked his pipe every day from his teenage days until the day he died.  He drank almost nothing but black coffee, milkshakes, and an occasional sip of moonshine.  Throughout his life, even after turning 90 and occasionally to the dismay of his family, he remained wholly self-reliant and fiercely independent. His exploits around The Farm included numerous "minor incidents" including several close calls with ladders and chainsaws and once deciding to demolish an old chicken coop by standing inside it and hitting the walls with a sledgehammer.  His friends said that when they heard the scanner report, they knew it was him as soon as they heard "building collapse, patient refused treatment".  He couldn’t stomach paying good money to have someone haul off paper trash and brush, so for decades he would burn it himself. Whether his slower reaction speeds or the frayed hem of his trousers was more to blame no one can be sure, but a stray ember led to third degree burns on his leg.  Roger decided to treat this at home, and it took three days before he was coerced to visit an urgent care center (which immediately transferred him to the Johns Hopkins Burn Center for a week-long stay and skin grafts). These stories were the exceptions though.  Usually he would quietly take care of things himself without any help or any injuries that a nap and some Bag Balm or liniment oil couldn’t fix.

Roger worked hard, lived long, prospered, and when he became weary, Jesus called him home to rest.

He is predeceased by his wife Martha “Sue” (Hester) Van Laan and four of his siblings and is survived by his brother Lawrence “Mike” Van Laan, daughter Virginia Sue Sinclair, son James Roger Van Laan, grandchildren Martha Sinclair (Lyle Jackson), Rebecca Sinclair (Tim Walker), Andrew Sinclair (Lauren Sinclair), and Robert Sinclair (Elizabeth Hartley), and great grandchildren Audrey Sinclair, Samuel Jackson, Henry Sinclair, Augustus Jackson, Sabrina Hartley-Sinclair, and Quinn Hartley-Sinclair.

Services will be at New Market United Methodist Church and streamed online, https://newmarketumc.com/ , on Saturday, February 22nd at 11:00 am with an hour’s visitation preceding.  Friends may call at Keeney and Basford Funeral Home, https://www.keeneybasford.com/, in Frederick between 4:00 and 7:00 pm on Friday, February 21st.  In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to New Market United Methodist Church or Heifer Fund, https://www.heifer.org/.