Issue link: http://www.wacmagazine.com/i/1504946
36 WAC Magazine | wac.net "When I was growing up, my Scoutmas- ter had two colonies of bees in his yard. I was absolutely fascinated and have wanted bees ever since." Roger is an Eagle Scout and has been the Scoutmaster of Magnolia Troop 80 for the past 10 years. Being a Scoutmas- ter also allows him to spend more time in nature, with backpacking and hiking being his favorite scouting activities. His passion for nature also helped convince Roger to make the move to Seattle. "My wife has three sisters, and two were living out here," he says. "One of the sisters and her boyfriend, now husband, took us out to the Olympic Peninsula. In a single day we went up to Hurricane Ridge and stood in the snow, hiked through massive trees in the Hoh Rain- forest, and experienced a storm with enormous waves at Rialto Beach." ey spent that night tent-camping a couple of miles from the coast. "I heard some noise, and I stuck my head outside, and there was a herd of elk standing around the tent," Roger recalls. "And I said to Daiva, 'at's it, we're moving here.'" ree months later, the couple le Atlanta and resettled in Seattle. at was 1996. ey joined the WAC shortly thereaer. Daughter Asta, now 24, starts law school at Pepperdine this month. Roger began taking her to the WAC's annual Father Daughter Banquet when she was about three. "We think we have been to 16 or 17 Father Daughters," he says. "She remembers each one by which dress she wore. She has had several years of ballet, ballroom dancing, and Latin dance train- ing, so she is a significantly better dancer than I am, but she tolerates me on the dance floor, and we have a great time." Aidan enters his second year at Car- leton College this fall. Both kids learned to swim at the WAC, took sports lessons here, and attended various Club events through the years. "And they were enormous fans of the WAC Café," Roger says. "It was like bribery when Daiva and I would say, 'Let's go the 8th Floor of the Club.'" Roger and Daiva met while working for the same small law firm in Atlanta. "We first became very close friends and then started dating," Roger says. "We dated for about a year and a half and got married." During their early Seattle years, the couple again landed at the same firm. "We worked together for six years, and it worked for us," Roger says. Roger has been with Kilpatrick Townsend for the past 15 years and trav- els regularly to company offices around the country, including headquarters in Atlanta. He still works with some of the same lawyers he started his career with. "It's worked out really well," he says. "I started my legal career in Atlanta, and I'm from Georgia. My mom still lives in Georgia. My sister lives in north Atlanta. I have a lot of connections there." Roger also has a brother who lives in Kirkland and moved to the area a few years aer him. might make it into the magazine," he says, looking up from one of his bee frames. "I used to catch snakes for pets. I proba- bly had about 600 different reptiles and amphibians as pets as a kid." He's still inspecting the largest of his three beehives, which are essentially stacks of boxes. "I'm looking for eggs, larva, and how much honey they've put in," he explains. "More bees equals more honey. Twelve bees in a lifetime will make a teaspoon of honey. If you extrap- olate that to the eight gallons of honey that we had last year, that's several tens of thousands of bees." Northwest impressions You could call beekeeping a pandemic development for Roger. "I spent 20 years of our marriage trying to talk Daiva into getting bees, and in a weak moment during COVID she said yes," he smiles. Continued from page 35 The Wylie family. Photographed in the Presidents Suite at the Inn at the WAC.