Honor for Jimmie Rodgers is deserved
I would like to thank Sharon Ballard and Marquita Call for asking the Camas City Council to name a street in honor of Jimmie Rodgers, that well known singer from the late 1950s and 1960s. The City Council’s resulting action in giving that part of Northwest 10th Street where Jimmie Rodgers lived during his early childhood and school years the honorary name of Jimmie Rodgers Avenue was a most fitting and proper move to show and pay respect to Mr. Rodgers.
I was a high school kid living in southeastern Kansas during the latter years of the 1950s and early 1960s, and I can clearly remember listening to the many Jimmie Rogers songs that were played on the radio. And I wasn’t just one of a few Midwestern kids that liked his songs. He and his songs were very popular with kids in the Midwest (and many of their parents). Both boys and girls liked his songs. I can remember that several of his songs were regularly played at school dances during my high school years.
During the 1960s, as I searched for “my place in the world,” I found myself moving to Camas in January of 1969. A few weeks after arriving in Camas, I had the great privilege and honor of meeting his mother. I regarded that as the next best thing to being able to actually meet him.
It is probably safe to assume that there are many Camas area residents that are too young to be able to remember hearing his records being regularly played on the radio. And it is probably safe to assume that there are probably a considerable number of Camas residents that know very little about who Jimmie Rodgers is and how his life took him from the streets and school hallways of Camas to the world stage as a recording artist.
