Jackson Lozier Bogert Jr.'s Obituary
Jackson Lozier Bogert, Jr., was born on November 16, 1923, in Washington, D.C. to a veteran of the First World War from Martinsburg, WV. His mother, Maxine (Jean) Elliott, originally from Montreal, Canada, was eighteen when her only child was born. They divorced soon after, and Jackson’s youth alternated from the lap of luxury to severe deprivation, and everything in between. He and his mother lived at the St. Regis Hotel in New York City, and then moved to an apartment on 59th Street, two doors down from the Plaza Hotel. Taught by a French maid, he spoke French before learning English. One day while he was on the playground at pre-kindergarten, his father approached the teacher and asked to take the boy down the street for an ice cream cone. Jackson, Jr. neither received the ice cream nor returned to school. Jackson L. Bogert, Sr., was unable to care for his son after kidnapping him, given his itinerant life as a professional gambler, so he stashed him with a friend’s family in Boston. Jackson slept on the back porch during the Winter. Eventually he went to live with his aunt, Jessie Bogert Catrow, who raised him along with two of her own children in Alexandria, VA. Aunt Jess was the supervisor for bank tellers at the Riggs National Bank in Washington, D.C. She taught him the importance of conserving resources: “A dollar saved is a dollar earned.” This was one of the happiest and most memorable periods of his life. When his mother finally located him, with the help of a private detective, she brought him to Ft. Worth, TX, to live with her new husband, William H. Dunning, an independent oil producer from East Texas. Dunning knew a number of luminaries in show business, aviation, and oil, e.g. Sid W Richardson and Billy Rose. One time when Jackson was riding the train alone from Ft. Worth to NYC, Dunning asked Jimmy Doolittle to board the train in St. Louis to check on his stepson and make sure he was okay. In 1928, Dunning purchased a 91-ton Trumpy yacht, the Sequoia. So enamoured was he of the pleasure craft that he named his oil company after it. Sequoia Oil fell on hard times during the Depression, and he sold the boat to the U.S. government in 1931, whereupon it became the presidential yacht. These were halcyon days for Jackson, Jr. The family’s cook prepared squab for breakfast, which were raised in the rear of his residence at 900 Alta Drive, adjacent to the Rivercrest Country Club. Mills, the chauffeur, drove him to first grade at North High Mount. There was also a maid and the butler, Major, a former preacher. He spent many fond hours playing checkers with “Uncle Bill,” as he referred to his stepfather. When Jean filed for divorce, Uncle Bill wanted to adopt Jackson, but she refused. Jackson was sent off to boarding school, until she married Walker H. Gill, of the Nashville Trust Company. Due to financial problems at his business and an unhappy marriage, Gill committed suicide in their home. Jackson was then installed at Castle Heights Military Academy, just outside of town in Lebanon, TN. He liked Castle Heights, and he desperately wanted to finish his last year of high school there, but his mother had just married Sam F Nelson, Vice President of the Ideal Publishing Company (publisher of “Look Magazine” and “Movie Stars On Parade”) in New York City. Nelson bought a lovely home in Norwalk, CT, carved out of the woods and featuring a goldfish pond in front. Despite her son’s strenuous objections, she pulled him out of Castle Heights in 1940. His new stepfather obtained a summer job for him at the Norwalk Hat Factory, and he enrolled for his Senior year at Norwalk High School, graduating in 1941. Forty years later, while driving through Nashville, he made a return visit to Castle Heights. The school had closed within the year, and a monument had just been erected to Castle Height’s graduates who had been killed during WWII. He read through the names on the monument and began to shed tears as he recognized his classmates, most of whom were casualties during the first full year (1942) of the U.S. entering the war. In the Fall of 1941, he enrolled at Bates College, in Maine, relying on his mother to pay the tuition. When the payments stopped, he got three jobs. But squeezing in studies while working to make ends meet got to be too much, so he left after the beginning of the second year. He enlisted in the Army on November 2, 1942, figuring he would have a higher status than if he waited to be drafted. He was inducted into the 98th Infantry Division. On April 19, 1944, 15,000 soldiers of the 98th landed in Oahu, Hawaii to relieve another division in the defense of the Hawaiian islands and to continue “jungle training” prior to deployment to Asia. They were prepared to invade Japan, but instead they arrived on September 27, 1945, in Osaka as part of the occupying force. “The Fighting 98th” was the only infantry division of the U.S. armed forces not to see active combat during WWII. With the war over, he decided it was time to chart his own course in life. He applied to various colleges and universities, but they were full with returning soldiers on the G.I. Bill. Then he found Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, IA, which was pleased to have an Easterner, and one who had served in WWII. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1949 with a double major in history and political science. Following college, he met with each of his parents separately, offering to take care of them. Both declined. Having stayed in the reserves since the end of the war, he was called back for active service in Korea on June 5, 1951. Enduring bitter cold, he navigated a truck platoon through treacherous mountain passes. He was instrumental in establishing the Happy Mountain Orphanage for Korean children. He rode in an army bus around the area looking for kids with burr haircuts, indicating they had been in the orphanage previously. By the time he deactivated from the Army on August 15, 1953, he was awarded the Bronze Star and had achieved the rank of First Lieutenant. Returning to Iowa, he taught at Ackley High School, but soon found that teaching was not to his liking. He headed South, remembering the happy times he had spent in Ft. Worth, and found a job in Dallas selling draperies at the Titche-Goettinger Department Store on Main Street. That provided him a foothold to obtain a job in 1953 at Employers Insurance of Texas, located at the corner of Akard and Young streets. Always having hoped to be married with a child, he met Jo Ellen Smith in a Sunday School class at Kessler Park United Methodist Church. They married on July 3, 1958. He bragged about his 8′ x 35′ ash-panelled, all-aluminum Spartan house trailer, but she joked that he really married her for her ’53 Chevrolet. Five years later, their only child, Trafton, was born. Jo Ellen worked for four years as a Public Health nurse for the City of Dallas. Jackson claimed he had married a nurse so that she could take care of him during his old age, but everyone thought he was joking. She next managed the Huntington Terrace Apartment Complex in Oak Cliff. Several years later, she began working for Dallas ISD as a school nurse, where she stayed for the next forty-three years. During that time she also earned her Ed.D. in Educational Administration and helped establish DISD’s Health Magnet School. As a Claims Adjuster Supervisor, Jackson oversaw catastrophic events, including major hurricanes which hit the South Texas and Louisiana coastline (Carla in 1961 and Camille in 1969), hiring local claims adjusters to write the settlements. He also oversaw “specialty accounts,” the largest of which was the H-E-B Grocery Company (Central Market). He earned his Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU) designation in the mid-1960s. One day on a weekly lunch outing, he offered to treat several colleagues to lunch. Anticipating a juicy steak at a fancy restaurant, they ended up at Trafton’s elementary school for a special event where they were given public school cafeteria food (vintage 1971) as they attempted to position themselves into toddler chairs. Wishing to become an entrepreneur and be his own boss, he decided to follow his Aunt Jess’s advice and save his money. The Bogerts devoted all available income to the acquisition of rental properties, mostly within a three block span. At its peak, Jackson managed thirteen properties, and 57 units, all while he was taking the bus to work at a full-time job. They were passionate too about investing in the stock market, and he used many of his lunch breaks to monitor the ticker tape. In 1973, he experienced a short bout with Type 2 diabetes–perhaps because he had consumed too much high calorie Mexican food during his years of settling claims in Midland and Odessa. Rather than being permanently on medications, he vowed to beat the malady on his own. He became a patient of Dr. Kenneth Cooper at the Cooper Aerobics Center, and he jogged up to seven miles around the neighborhood at 4:30 AM, referring to himself as “Jackson the Jogger.” All of these experiences provided ample material for the occasional Christmas letters which he sent throughout the 1970s, containing anecdotal information about family events, the joys of apartment management, and short essays and poems. Though called a “Christmas letter,” it was sometimes issued in January, February, July, or whenever he could find time to work on it. One of the mottos he lived by, and which may have been an original, was “Jog before you jug!” During the late 1970s and early 1980s, he took Trafton on several trips back East to visit his Aunt Jess and one trip to reunite with his mother’s relatives in Syracuse, NY. In 1981, he retired from Employers Insurance after 27 1/2 years of service. By 1983, when Trafton was old enough to take care of the tenants, he and Jo Ellen celebrated their 25th anniversary aboard the QEII, followed by a European tour. In subsequent years, they travelled to five continents and approximately forty countries, including Egypt, Russia, Morocco, Turkey, China, and seven trips to London. Though family and numerous friends urged him to write a history of his life, he never did. Still running several times per week, his pace slackened around 2005. He transitioned to walking and was affected by a slight shuffle in his step, and he stopped driving. One morning in 2008, he rolled out of bed after Jo Ellen had left for work, and he was unable to get off the floor. Despite rehabilitation therapy, he was now using a walker. He was eventually confined to a wheelchair and then to bed from then on. He succumbed to pneumonia and passed away at 10:30 PM on 22 March 2015. He didn’t always understand that what was good for him (buying apartments, investing in the stock market, losing weight, and jogging) was not necessarily the best pursuit for everyone else in the world. But most of his friends tried to overlook his twisting their arm a little too hard, because they appreciated his shrewd advice, constant humor, and unrelenting optimism about the future. He was a loving husband and father and an inspiration to many who knew him. A graveside service will be held at 2:30 on Friday, April 3, 2015, at Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in Jackson’s name to Baylor HealthCare System Foundation, “Nursing Scholarships,” 3600 Gaston Ave., Suite 100; Dallas, TX 75246, or to a charity of your choice.
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