Shelly Kaye Roggendorff

Shelly Kaye (Duzan) Roggendorff, RN, BSN, of Abilene, died Sept. 21, 2018, after a four-year battle with ovarian cancer. She was 44. For 21 years she had served as a labor and delivery nurse in Kentucky, Illinois, and Texas, concluding her career at Abilene Regional Medical Center.
Shelly was born July 6, 1974, in El Paso, Texas, the second of two children born to Robert Duzan and Dorinda Duzan. The family soon moved to Odessa where she attended school through fifth grade before another move to Round Rock.
During her senior year at Round Rock High School she began dating Paul Roggendorff who was attending the University of Texas. After graduating from high school in 1992 the pair continued their romance long distance while she attended nursing school at Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas. They married June 10, 1995, in Austin. Paul took a faculty position at Harding teaching Spanish until she graduated with her Bachelor of Science in Nursing in December 1996.
In 1998 they relocated to Lexington, Kentucky, where Paul enrolled in doctoral studies at University of Kentucky. Shelly worked at St. Joseph’s Hospital where their first son, Chris, was born in 2002 —the first of three times she was a patient in the same labor and delivery ward where she worked. While in Lexington, Shelly became very active in Southside Church of Christ, especially with the young married ladies’ Monday evening prayer group.
The young family moved to the Chicago area when Paul accepted a faculty position at Trinity Christian College. They lived in Romeoville for five years and were active at the Naperville Church of Christ, especially in the young married couple’s class. Ethan was born in 2005 at Hinsdale Hospital where Shelly was on the nursing staff.
In 2008, the Roggendorffs moved to Abilene and Paul joined the foreign languages department at Abilene Christian University. Shelly went to work at ARMC, again in labor and delivery, where their third child, Allison, was born in 2011. Over time Shelly found a unique calling as the nurse for families who suffered a fetal demise, coming to accept as a ministry an aspect of labor and delivery nursing that many avoided. After her cancer diagnosis she transitioned to a nursing educator position at ARMC, a role she continued throughout her treatment. She also assisted with labs for the School of Nursing at ACU, building relationships with student nurses there.
The cancer diagnosis in September 2014 came less than a month after the family arrived in Montevideo, Uruguay, where they had planned to spend a semester with students in ACU’s Study Abroad program. They returned immediately so Shelly could begin treatments at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Though daunting, she learned to live her bonus years with strength and gratitude rather than cower to cancer. She was determined to maintain normalcy in her life, modeling persistent faith, grace, and strength.
Shelly is survived by her husband, Paul, and their three children: Ethan, Chris, and Allison, and her mother-in-law, Bertha Roggendorff, all of Abilene. She also is survived by her father, Robert Duzan of Tennessee Colony, TX, and her mother Dorinda Duzan of Round Rock, TX; her brother, Kevin, his wife Kathy, and their three children, of Chelsea, AL; and Paul’s sister and brother-in-law Leahanna and Tquan Moore, and their three children of Fort Worth, TX.