🎂 Happy 80th Birthday!
Roger M.
Auerbach
Here's to the man who always showed up — and still does.
Born March 21, 1946 · 80 Extraordinary Years
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Here's to the man who always showed up — and still does.
Born March 21, 1946 · 80 Extraordinary Years
From a New Jersey street to the halls of the U.S. Senate — eighty years of building, organizing, serving, and loving. Click any moment to expand.
From Maywood to Portland and beyond — the moments that make up eighty extraordinary years. Click any photo to view full size.
21 chapters of a life as told by Roger to his daughters Allie and Emery — from Maywood to Portland, in conversation, with warmth, honesty, and the occasional laugh. Click any chapter to read more.
Messages from those whose lives Roger has touched — family, friends, and colleagues across eight decades.
Curiosity. Conviction. Deep love. An unwavering commitment to making the world more just and humane. That's Roger Auerbach at 80 — still going strong.
Roger Auerbach grew up in a small New Jersey town and grew into one of the most quietly impactful figures in American health and human services policy. To know Roger is to know someone who leads from values rather than ambition, who organizes people around purpose rather than power, and who has spent a lifetime on the side of those who need it most — the elderly, the disabled, the worker, the underdog.
He helped elect a senator. He helped pass a law that let people with disabilities work without losing their healthcare. He helped thousands of Oregon seniors stay in their own homes instead of nursing facilities. He helped veterans across the country live with dignity and choice. And he helped two daughters grow into extraordinary women.
"You are the best dad in the whole world."
— Allie & Emery, at the end of every single conversation
The conversations, transcripts, and stories behind eighty years — preserved in Roger's own words, for those who want to go deeper.
The complete recorded conversations between Roger and his daughters Allie and Emery — unedited, unhurried, and in his own voice.
The full written transcripts of Part 1 — every chapter, verbatim, from Maywood to Portland. The complete record of Roger's first memoir arc.
A curated distillation of the memoir — the essential arc of eighty extraordinary years, shaped for sharing and for keeping.