Douglas Ferguson Rozell
Douglas Ferguson Rozell
Douglas Ferguson Rozell, 78, died on January 27. Doug was always a builder. When he was 6, the family went to live in Addis Ababa while his father, a Federal Reserve Bank executive, served for two years as Governor of the State Bank of Ethiopia. Doug organized other young people to build “forts” of wood or of piled stone in the yard. As he put it in a 1995 New York Times interview, “I was pretty lonely, so I lived in my imagination, creating kingdoms for myself.”
Back in the US and growing up in Westchester, NY, he organized friends to build forts of rock, broken branches and scrap wood.When he was 10, the family got a farm in Plainfield, MA. Across summers and many weekends, he built multi-story tree forts in the chestnut and apple trees and rock forts in the forest on the mountain.
Doug went to Parsons College. He then went to work at Coca-Cola’s headquarters in New York City. He worked at Stewart Stamping in Yonkers, NY. In 1974, he married Patricia Lovinkaitis. Together they built a new and still larger life. Kristian, their son, arrived. Then their daughter Pamela. In time, Doug’s creative building instinct re-emerged and melded with his business skills. It began just with the 1979 building of a garage on the side of their house in New York. Then his parents passed some of the land on the hill in Plainfield to him. He designed and organized the building of a vacation home. This, in 1981-1982, was an eco-sensitive design that he created simply because he saw it as good, long before it had become fashionable or an environmental imperative.
Out of this came his1984 decision to change direction. From it was born Douglas Development.As he put it to the New York Times, he built a house and sold it. Then another. He developed what he called one-stop shopping, the Turn Key Custom Home Program. In consultation with clients, all aspects,the land selection and acquisition, the coordination of architects, construction contractors, building supply and financing companies, were organized by him and his team for a pre-agreed, unchanging price. House after fine house was built in Westchester and elsewhere; family after family had their dream home.
All his life he would love to move forward, well and at speed and in many ways. He would play golf and ski, sports of movement on the shape of the hills themselves. He would love his good cars and was a highly skilled driver. He and Pat, and then Kris and Pam, would ski on the hills of Massachusetts and Vermont. In 1979, he got his solo pilot’s license.
In 2002, he and Pat decided to build a second home in Wilmington. This would be a return to the hills. It would be a place for them to retire together when the time came. It was also, crucially, near some of the most beautiful and best skiing hills in New England. They would have one foot in Vermont, and the otherfoot in Westchester, near Pam and Kris, now adults with their own careers and partners. In Vermont, he had a wide view of the mountains from the front of the house, and forest at the back. And so, it was until his last days.
Douglas Rozell leaves Patricia Lovinkaitis Rozell, his greatly loved wife with whom he shared his life. He leaves his son, Kristian Rozell (fiancée Paola Moreno), daughter Pamela Rozell (Erin Raponey), granddaughter Avery Elinor Rozell, and sister Suzanne Rozell Scorsone (A. Bruno Scorsone), beloved nieces and nephews, and many lifelong friends. He was predeceased by his parents Walter H. Rozell Jr. and Gunhild Nicholson Rozell.Memorial donations can be made to the ambulance service, Deerfield Valley Rescue, Inc., PO Box 854, Wilmington, VT 05363.
A celebration of life is planned for the spring.
