A soccer referee who worked overtime - and then some

Robert Henry "Harry" Rodgers, 104, formerly of Oreland, a retired accountant who refereed soccer games until he was 99, died July 11 at the Regents Park Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Boca Raton, Fla.

Mr. Rodgers began playing soccer when he was 8 in a church league in Kensington and later played on championship teams for the Lighthouse Boys Club. He stopped playing at 24, he told a reporter in 1990, because "I was getting married and couldn't get health insurance in the event of an injury."

A few months later he was back on the field as a referee. When he started out, he said, he was given sage advice to "run as much as you can," and he made it his credo to "be firm, be fair, be fearless."

Mr. Rodgers refereed 4,403 games; he had an accountant's penchant for record-keeping. His 75-year career included eight NCAA finals and 10 semifinals. He officiated at Army-Navy games six times, the U.S. Open Cup Championships five times, and games between U.S. and international teams nine times. In the early 1950s, the State Department sent him to West Germany to teach soccer to GIs.

He was a cofounder and past president of the National Intercollegiate Soccer Officials Association. For 57 years he assigned officials for most high school and college games in the Philadelphia area. Along with his longtime referee partner, Jimmy Walder, he initiated the dual system of officiating in the United States.

In 1957 Mr. Rodgers was graded the No. 1 collegiate official in the country. He was a member of the National Soccer Hall of Fame and received honors from numerous soccer associations.

After he moved to Boca Raton in 1995, Mr. Rodgers planned to referee high school soccer games. He had stopped driving at night, though, so he refereed daytime junior soccer games, his daughter Carol Wheeler said. He was glad to see the explosion in popularity for soccer among young people, she said, and loved working with children. "They had a ball," she said.

In his last game in 2001, he trotted the sidelines and called plays in a league championship game for 8- to 10-year-olds. His age had caught up with him, he told a reporter, and said he decided to quit because, "I'm not going to make a fool of myself."

Mr. Rodgers graduated from Potter Junior High School and studied accounting at Peirce Business School in Philadelphia. He worked as a bookkeeper for paper mills in Conshohocken, and then for many years was an accountant at Fidelity Bank in Philadelphia. He retired from Fidelity in 1967 at 65.

His first wife, Marie, with whom he had two children, died in 1935. In 1941 he married Ruth Ramsey, and he adopted her son from a previous marriage. She died in 2003.

In addition to his daughter, Mr. Rodgers is survived by a son, Alan; eight grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren. Son David died in 1982.

A service will be scheduled for the early fall.