William P. Rogers - Subsequent Years

Subsequent Years

Rogers led the investigation into the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. This panel, called the Rogers Commission, was the first to criticize NASA management for its role in negligence of safety in the Space Shuttle program. Among the more famous members of Rogers' panel were astronauts Neil Armstrong and Sally Ride, Air Force general Donald Kutyna, and physicist Richard Feynman.

Rogers worked at his law firm, now renamed Clifford Chance Rogers & Wells after a 1999 merger, in its Washington office until several months before his death.

Rogers died of congestive heart failure on January 2, 2001, at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. At the time of his death, he was the last surviving member of the Eisenhower Administration.

In 2001, the Rogers family generously donated to Cornell Law Library materials that reflect the lives of William and Adele Rogers, the majority of items from the years 1969-1973.