Joyce Elizabeth Rogers

Joyce Elizabeth Rogers passed in Casper, Wyo., on March 12, 2025. She was 96 years old. No services are planned at this time. 

Joyce was a deeply caring person, especially when it came to family. 

She could see things others could not. She was a skilled artist and a prolific painter and quilter. Joyce received many awards for her art and was an honored artist at the Nicolaysen Museum in April 2017. When she could no longer paint, she stitched masks for people during Covid and knitted caps for children in need. Her hands were rarely idle. Joyce loved baking bread, her gardens, quilting and old country music. She cared more about making art than housekeeping. 

She was born Feb., 10, 1929, to Minerva and Conrad Stone in a sod house at Flagler, Colorado. She had a brother Lyle, and two sisters, Dorothy and Donna.

On the family farm the field work was done with horses, and it was in helping her dad farming that she developed her life-long love of horses. “When one works, we all work, ”she often said, recalling her growing up on the dry plains of eastern Colorado during the depression.

Books were her first friends and she never ended her quest for knowledge. She could be found hiding in the barn sneaking a read. She was not allowed to take a book while herding sheep! Her dad read to the kids every night by kerosene lantern.

After graduating from high school at Flagler, she attended Colorado State Teachers College in Greeley for a year. On Aug. 21, 1948, Joyce married Virgil Lester Rogers at Flagler. The couple then moved to Rolla, Missouri. where Vigil attended the Missouri School of Mines, and where their first child, Ken, was born. 

In the early 1950s, they moved to Hebron, North Dakota, where Sally and Virginia were born, and the family stayed for many years. Later she lived briefly in Belfield, North Dakota, Belle Fourche, South Dakota and, again, in Hebron. Virgil died in 1984. She eventually moved to Aurora, Colorado, and finally to Casper, where her two daughters made their homes. Joyce made wonderful friends everywhere she lived. 

Joyce is survived by her children, Ken, Sally and Virginia, a grandson, Keith, and many nieces and nephews.