Insight: A celebration of love and laughter

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

As I’ve gotten older, it’s been hard not to think about what life will be like for my family and friends when I am no longer around. But recently the death of a cousin I was close to growing up jarred me and made me reflect upon my own mortality.

Roger Pierce, left, and Ed Pierce were second cousins who
were close growing up during the 1950s and 1960s. Roger
passed away on Dec. 15, 2025 in Rochester, New York
at the age of 70. COURTESY PHOTO 
 

Roger was about a year younger than me and we were second cousins. My parents and his parents were close and almost every Friday night we would visit Roger’s house and while our parents would play cards or talk and drink coffee, Roger and his younger sister Marcia would spend time with me and my younger brother Doug. If we weren’t outside catching fireflies, we were on the living room floor playing a board game or watching an old black and white classic horror movie on television.

I enjoyed visiting with Roger, and we would hang out as teenagers reading comic books and looking at my collection of baseball and football cards. On summer break from attending college, Roger had a car and he would pick me and my brother up and we would drive downtown to watch Rochester Red Wings’ minor league baseball games. That team was loaded with future major league stars such as Don Baylor, Bobby Grich and Terry Crowley and after the games we would stop for a late-evening meal at a local burger joint.

Our paths took different turns in life, but Roger and I remained in touch through the years as I got married and went to work for a newspaper in New Mexico after college. Roger became engaged but it didn’t work out and they split up which devastated him. He went to work at Eastman Kodak and eventually got laid off along with thousands of other employees as the company faltered and struggled to survive.

Despite living thousands of miles apart, Roger would call me at least once a month and let me know how he was doing. He reveled with the resurgence of the Buffalo Bills football team in the early 1990s, and our monthly phone calls became weekly once Doug Flutie became the Bills’ quarterback in 1998. Roger was convinced that Flutie would lead the Bills to a Super Bowl victory and he spent months saving up for a flight to San Diego, a game ticket, and a hotel room there one season when the Bills played the Chargers in California.

I eventually moved to Florida and got a job at a daily newspaper there while Roger went in a different direction, moving to the state of Washington. Inevitably I would be sleeping at 2 a.m. when the phone rang, and I knew it was Roger calling. He always forgot that the time on the West Coast was three hours behind that of the East Coast.

By then Roger had become deeply religious and chose to change his life by doing something radically different. He rented an apartment and worked cleaning fish for a seafood packer and when he grew tired of doing that, he took a job as a custodian at a church. Roger told me he loved that job because he felt closer to God by working for a church.

The last time I saw my cousin was on a trip to Rochester with my wife Nancy in 2008. Driving to his mother’s house to spend the day with her, we drove down a hilly section of her road. Nancy and I both noticed a man walking up ahead of us carrying a huge rock about the size of a suitcase in his arms. As we passed him, I told Nancy I thought it was Roger and it was. We stopped and asked him if he wanted a ride and he answered no, telling us that he was going to carry the rock to his mother’s house and that carrying it there was good exercise for him.

We arrived at his mother’s house and were visiting for more than 30 minutes when Roger finally arrived and placed the large rock on a steep hill in his mother’s backyard which he had transformed since I had last seen it into a beautiful space filled with flowering bushes and plants. He had a knack for landscaping and said being outdoors in fresh air was his favorite thing in life.

When Facebook came along, Roger and I connected and he would always be one of the first individuals to post a positive comment on one of my newspaper columns or other articles with my byline that I would post online. That continued until last summer when he stopped commenting on my posts.

In December, Roger’s sister informed me that he had passed away at the age of 70. A memorial service was held in January for him in the Rochester area, but I was unable to attend. I did send his sister something to read from me at his service which I felt I needed to do given how close we were growing up.

Roger Pierce was more than just a cousin. He was a part of my foundation in life and brought laughter and love to me. For that, he will be forever missed. <