Audrey Claire Rodgers

Audrey Claire (Atkinson) Rodgers passed away on February 10, 2025, at age 90, peacefully at home with family. She was born on September 10, 1934 to Clare and Florence Atkinson in Janesville, Wisconsin. Audrey split her high school years between Stoughton, Wisconsin and Tucson, Arizona, where her family had moved for health reasons. She graduated from Tucson High School in 1952 and completed nurses’ training from Madison General in 1956.

As it happened, while Audrey was living in Tucson, she met Paul Rodgers, a young Airman from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania who was stationed in Arizona. They spent their first date at the local bowling alley where, at the end of the night, Paul helped her get her car started – followed by evenings talking under the desert sky. After a brief courtship, Paul and Audrey were married on Lowry Air Force Base in Denver, Colorado (where Paul was in training) on April 12, 1959.

Embarking on an entirely new life as a military wife, Audrey spent the next nearly two decades living all over the country while starting and raising a family. The stories they would tell about fellow service-members and wives and the adventures during their travels could fill a book. Audrey was employed as a nurse and, in places like Louisiana in the 1960s, she found herself fighting racism and maintained a strong belief in social justice in her passion to help all people. She had the courage of her convictions to speak out for what was right.

After Paul left the service as a MSgt in 1977, Paul and Audrey settled in the Stoughton area near her family and raised four children – aged sixteen to one year. Audrey stayed at home with baby Jill and stayed busy gardening, exploring nature, and nurturing heart and soul until school started. Then she worked as a Registered Nurse at Stoughton Community Hospital. In 1993 Audrey successfully completed certification in the nation’s first certification for CARN – Certified Addictions Registered Nurse – when she worked with patients on the alcohol and other drug addictions unit.

Paul and Audrey loved to travel and saw all fifty states and many foreign countries. They enjoyed an African safari, saw inside the pyramids in Egypt, and fulfilled a lifelong dream to cruise Alaska. Audrey took not one but two trips to Norway with cousins, to see from where her family came. The couple especially loved to travel with Audrey’s sister, Mayre “Bitty” Miller and her husband, Mark. Audrey dearly loved her sister and missed her every day. Now they are together again.

Through the years and into retirement, Audrey held fast to a whimsy that delighted herself and those around her. She had a talent for painting including landscapes, buildings, flowers, and faeries. She filled her home with things that made her happy. She always had open arms and an open heart for family and especially loved time with grandchildren and great grandchildren. In her last years, nothing satisfied as much as going for a ride with her kids, and a stop for ice cream was even better. Audrey taught her daughters and granddaughters to use their voices and speak up for whomever was downtrodden, whether themselves or others. Some might call it stubborn; we call it strength. We are grateful every day for every moment we had together.

Audrey is survived by children David (Saadia Noubi), Bekka Rodgers, Melissa (Fernando) Manfredi, Jill (Mark) Kiesow, and grandchildren Elizabeth (Michael Edwards) and Joseph (Lydia Howery) Mahsem; Ahmed, Abdullah, and Lena Rodgers; and Claire Kiesow, and great grandchildren Michael and Barrett Edwards; by her brother Bill (Linda) Atkinson, and by nieces and nephews.

Celebration of Audrey will be held on Wednesday, February 19, 2025 at Cress Funeral Home, 206 W. Prospect St., Stoughton, WI. A visitation will be held from 11:30 a.m. until the time of service at 1:00 p.m.. Interment will follow at Riverside Cemetery in Stoughton. A luncheon will be served at Halverson’s Everything Nice 1965 Barber Dr. Stoughton, following interment.