“It Was Never Just About the Driving”
When Roger Coker pulled his car over on Joyce Boulevard in early 2020 to take a call about a job he had applied for, he wasn’t dressed to interview. New to the Fayetteville area, he wasn’t even sure where he was headed – just out on an errand, when Butterfield called. He was asked if he would consider coming by for an interview on the spot, since he was so nearby. He agreed, and that led to a second interview. As he walked to his car afterward, Michael Burks, the transportation team’s leader, came jogging out behind him, yelling, “Come back in!
We want to hire you!”
Six-and-a-half years later, Roger — Butterfield’s “Driver Extraordinaire” — is retiring. He’ll tell you
the same thing he tells anyone who asks what makes BTV special. “It was never really just about the driving.”
“This is a lot more personal,” Roger says, comparing it to all the years he spent delivering flowers and freight before landing at Butterfield. He drove trucks and buses, hauled wholesale floral orders all over the region. Nothing prepared him for what it would mean to spend his days transporting much more precious cargo: senior citizens who chose Butterfield as their retirement home.
It started during his first week on the job. Standing in The Bistro, Roger heard a voice call his name – he recognized resident Janice Umberger instantly. They went to church together years earlier in his hometown of Searcy, Ark. It wouldn’t be the last small-world moment. Roger’s childhood friend and paper route buddy years later ended up as the neighbor of a Butterfield couple. His own parents, still in Searcy, were known by people who lived just down the hall from Roger’s desk.
“People make this place,” Roger says. “You can go to church and see people for years, meet new people all the time, but you won’t ever get to hear the in-depth history like you do with the residents here.”
That depth comes with a price he has never tried to hide. Roger speaks openly about getting attached – about the residents he loves, and those whose passing he has mourned. He’s learned to read a room, to consider each face that appears in the door of the vehicle he’s driving. Who is having a good day, who could benefit from someone slowing down to meet them halfway. Over 400 residents, he says, means 400-plus people who might need him at any moment – and he would never trade the unpredictability of it for anything simpler.
What Roger will miss most is exactly what drew him in: the people. And, what he’s looking forward to in retirement is just as clear. He and his wife, Robin, live down a gravel road on their property in the unincorporated community of Hogeye. He cherishes seven grandchildren who call him “Podger,” some of whom are lucky to live on that same stretch of family land. He keeps a mental list of what he wants to build for those grandkids: hiking trails, a pond, native trees he’s begun to plant. There’s a six-year-old little boy, he says, who won’t put down a fishing rod, and Roger intends to be there for each cast. He plans to attend every child’s ball game he can possibly pack onto a calendar.
He’s told Michael he’ll help part-time after the newness of retirement wears off — but only if he can be the ever-present grandpa he intends to be — and supportive son to aging parents a few hours away who may need him at a moment’s notice. Roger is reveling in the idea of a future when he chooses where his time goes.
Asked what he’d want someone to understand about Butterfield, Roger shakes his head, grins his signature broad, lopsided smile and answers without hesitation, “These people.” After safely logging untold thousands of miles with his passengers, listening to countless life stories, that’s his whole answer. Because he means it deeply from his very big heart, it’s precisely the reason Roger Coker will be so deeply missed.
