Douglas Ferguson Rozell (3 September 1947 – 27 January 2026)

Douglas Ferguson Rozell, Ever a Builder, Dies at 78

Doug was always a builder. When he was six, the family went to live in Addis Ababa while his father, a Federal Reserve Bank executive, served for two years as Governor of the State Bank of Ethiopia. Doug organized other young people to build “forts” of wood or of piled stone in the yard. As he put it in a 1995 New York Times interview, “I was pretty lonely, so I lived in my imagination, creating kingdoms for myself.” Back in the US and growing up in Westchester, he organized friends to build forts of rock, broken branches and scrap wood in cavernous spaces he chose between the massive boulders of the still-undeveloped forest lots near the house. When he was ten, the family also got a farm which the people in Plainfield, Massachusetts, still called “the old Jesse Dyer house” for the farmer who first planted it in about 1791. Across summers and many weekends, by himself or with friends when they visited, he built multi-storey tree forts in the chestnut and apple trees and rock forts in the forest on the mountain.

Doug went to Parsons College. He then went to work as a financial analysis at Coca Cola’s headquarters in NYC. He chose to stay in New York when the Coca Cola office in New York moved to Georgia in 1973. He worked at Stewart Stamping, part of Insilco, in Yonkers.

In 1974, he married Patricia Lovinkaitis, a professional in publishing. Together they built a new and still larger life. Kristian, their son, arrived. Then their daughter Pamela.

In time, Doug’s creative building instinct re-emerged and melded with his business skills. It began just with the 1979 building of a garage on the side of their house in Yorktown Heights in Westchester. Then, however, his parents passed some of the land on the hill in Plainfield to him. He designed and organized the building of a vacation home on the side of the hill with a glorious view of the Berkshires. Not only did the house fit comfortably and aesthetically into its maple and pine forest surroundings. This, in 1981-1982, was eco-sensitive design that he created simply because he saw it as good, long before it had become fashionable or an environmental imperative. The house was entirely solar-powered, with a wood stove as a back-up system. The tin roof and solar panels captured the sun, storing it in the gravel/rock foundation to heat the house.

Out of this came his 1984 decision, with the support and help of Patricia, to change direction. From it was born Douglas Development. As he put it to the New York Times, “It was a terrific eye-opening experience. I became addicted. When you build a house, at the end of the day there’s something tangible to show for your efforts. I liked that. So much so that I took the plunge.” He built a house and sold it. Then another. He developed what he called one-stop shopping, the Turn Key Custom Home Program. In consultation with clients, all aspects, the land selection and acquisition, the coordination of architects, construction contractors, building supply and financing companies, were organized by him and his team for a pre-agreed, unchanging price. House after fine house was built in Westchester and elsewhere; family after family had their dream home.

All his life he would love to move forward—well and at speed, and in many ways. He would play golf and ski, summer and winter sports of movement on the shape of the hills themselves. As a kid, already a businessman, he worked a neighbourhood paper route. With the money, he bought a go-kart. Then there was a mini-cycle. Then a dirt bike. He would love his good cars, and was a highly skilled driver. He and Pat, and then Kris and Pam, would ski on the hills of Massachusetts and Vermont. In 1979, he got his solo pilot’s license.

In 2002, he and Pat decided to build a second home in Wilmington, Vermont. His cousin, Jeffrey Bellows, created the architectural design. This would be a return to the hills. It would be a place for them to retire together when the time came. It was also, crucially, near some of the most beautiful and best skiing hills in New England. They would have one foot in Vermont, and the other foot in an apartment in Westchester, near Pam and Kris, now adults with their own careers and partners. In Vermont, he had a wide view of the mountains from the front of the house, and forest at the back.

And so it was until his last days.

Douglas Rozell leaves Patricia Lovinkaitis Rozell, his greatly loved wife with whom he shared his life. He leaves his son, Kristian Rozell (fiancée Paola Moreno), daughter Pamela Rozell (Erin Raponey), granddaughter Avery Elinor Rozell, and sister Suzanne Rozell Scorsone (A. Bruno Scorsone), beloved nieces and nephews and many life-long friends. He was predeceased by his parents Walter H. Rozell, Jr., and Gunhild Nicholson Rozell.

Memorial donations can be made to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital or to the ambulance service, Deerfield Valley Rescue, Inc.

A Celebration of Life in the spring will gather family and friends.

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