Clifton “Rocky” Rockwell, Jr.

9/20/1926 - 10/2/2019

Visitation:

Monday, October 7, 2019 10:00 - 11:00 AM at the church

Funeral Mass:

Monday, October 7, 2019 11:00 AM at St. Patrick Catholic Church - Gretna 508 Angus St. Gretna, NE  68028

Roeder Mortuary:

11710 Standing Stone Dr. Gretna, NE  68028  332-0090

Clifton Granville (“Rocky”) Rockwell, Jr., passed away peacefully at home on October 2, 2019. He had been in declining health over the past few months.

He is survived by his wife of 68 years, Janet, his children Lawrence (Carol), John (Sylvia), Mark and Paul (Susan), his grandchildren John, Barbara, Katherine, Benjamin, Samuel, Valerie, Don, Kala and Jesse, and his great-grandchildren Zoe, Mira and Stella. Rocky was preceded in death by his parents Clifton Granville Rockwell and Margaret Amelia Rockwell (Eriksen), brother Milton and sisters Anna and Margaret.

Services will be held at St. Patrick Catholic Church, Greta on Monday, October 7, 2019 beginning at 10 a.m. and will include visitation, Mass, Honor Guard and light lunch.

Memorial donations in memory of Clifton can be made to The Missionary Society of St. James the Apostle, 24 Clark Street, Boston, MA 02109.

Rocky was born at home in West Bridgewater, MA, on September 20, 1926. Upon graduation from high school, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1944. He served in the Pacific Theater as a radar operator aboard the USS Trego. He saw action in major battles including Guadalcanal. Commendations included the World War II Victory Medal and the Asiatic Pacific Campaign Medal. Upon return from service, he worked long hours as a janitor to put himself through college, and upon graduation from Boston College (BA Physics) he was the first person in his family’s history to graduate from college. He later obtained an MS in Education from the University of Nebraska, Omaha.

His career in science was varied and notable. During the Cold War he brought his wife Janet and then three children to Europe for over a year while he served as part of a small mountain team of scientists and climbers setting up NATO defense communications monitoring sites in the European mountains bordering the Warsaw Pact countries. In 1959, he returned to the U.S. and his home in Brockton, MA, where his work included being on space flight science teams including the 1960s’ successful OSO project. He took a job opportunity at JPL and moved his family to Pasadena in 1969. With the ensuing rapid decline of the space program, he took a job as an engineer and moved his family to Omaha in 1971. With the revival of science companies in the mid-1970s, he jumped back into science and worked on space flight projects in Florida including the NASA Apollo and Space Shuttle programs. With the close of a project in Florida, and understanding that his career moves had made life a little tough on his family, the next turn of choosing a home site was left to his wife. He invited her to head West in one of their cars, take her time, and let him know where she picked, and he would leave his job and they would live where she had selected. She stopped for an evening in Omaha, she stayed another, she picked Omaha and he quickly followed. He then taught mathematics until retirement and built the Gretna house in which Janet and he would live for over 30 years.

Rocky’s second home was in New Hampshire on Newfound Lake, where he first spent time during summers visiting his future wife Janet, while she was working as a housekeeper and he was sleeping Saturday nights in a car by the roadside. That lake drew them back to regular family summer vacations in the 1960s and then again in 1982 when they acquired a condo at the Wagon Wheel Condominium on the lake. He and Janet would go on to spend over 35 summers and early falls there with their visiting children and several of their grandchildren, forging a lifetime of close family bonds. The enrichment was mutual and lifelong, and to that end he will be finally interred at the Homeland Cemetery just down the road from the lake.

Rocky was a devout, lifelong, practicing Catholic who took deeply to heart the sacraments and to mind the teachings of the Jesuits at Boston College. He was vocally very proud of it.

Rocky was a volunteer for decades as the President of the Wagon Wheel Condominium Association, overseeing the larger property within which his NH condo was located. He served as President Emeritus (since July 2019) at the time of his passing  

Rocky had a passion for passing along family history down to new generations. He worked studiously to compile and input family lineage in Ancestry.com, so the information about ancestors who were part of him, as well as those who came after and of which he was a part, could be known and be a source of inspiration.

Rocky had some oft-repeated hopes. He wanted to reach his 65^th wedding anniversary. He did in 2016. He wanted to live to see each of his grandchildren graduate from high school. He did in 2017. He wanted to live out his life in the house he built. He did in 2019. He wanted his wife, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren to love him. They did and do… undated. He wanted to pass away in a state of grace as he began his new exploration of space. He did in 2019. His was a life well lived. 1926-2019. People who knew him are the better for it, and he will be missed 1926-Infinitum.