Ethel “Ets” Rogoza

Ethel “Ets” Rogoza (nee McKay) age 90 of Wayne passed Monday, December 6, 2021.

She was born on Thanksgiving Day, November 26th, in the family home at 282 Secaucus Road in Secaucus to the late Joseph and Sophie McKay. She was raised in Secaucus and graduated from the Weehawken High School with the Class of 1949. During high school she joined the chorus where she sang so bad the chorus director asked her to just "mouth the words".

As a young girl she worked in a florist shop and taught kindergarten before marrying and dedicating herself to raising a family.  Ets met her future husband, Ray, while renovating a small home for sale that was next to his parents’ deli, Rogoza’s Luncheonette, located at 246 County Avenue in Secaucus. They fell in love and married at Immaculate Conception Church in on October 7, 1961, and honeymooned in Bermuda.  Ets and Raymond enjoyed a loving and devoted marriage of thirty-seven years that was blessed with two daughters, Patrice and Kim.  

Ets will be lovingly remembered for her warm hearted, generous, caring and compassionate way.  She was welcoming, hospitable, yet had no filter: she said it "as it was”. For many years she enjoyed both vegetable and flower gardening at her home. Another hobby she shared with Ray was building birdhouses and they had forty-two of them hanging in the backyard in their Wayne house. This hobby was just a glimpse of her love and compassion for the birds, animals, and all of nature’s creatures. Most of all, Ets will be remembered for being a loving sister, wife, mother, aunt, Godmother, and very proud grandmother.

Ets was the loving wife of the late Raymond Rogoza (d. 1998); devoted mother of Patrice Rogoza of Wayne, Kim Tobin and her husband Greg of Bronxville, NY; cherished grandmother of Brianna Stopper, Gabriella Stopper, Julia Tobin, and Kayla Tobin; and loving sister of Gloria Reichlen and Opal Panzella, both of Florida, and the late Kay Hulbert.

In lieu of flowers memorial donations to the American Diabetes Association – https://diabetes.org/ or to plant a memorial tree CLICK HERE would be greatly appreciated.