One day in winter 1937, Joe Rogers and a fellow teenage National Guardsman sneaked away from their windy post on a Mississippi River levee to have a meal in the home of an elderly couple. This wasn’t a fancy dinner. The house was more of a shack. The boys ate turnip greens, fatback and cornbread, and drank coffee from tin cups. But they were tired and hungry — weary young men in need of a break and a hearty bite. “I can't recall a better meal," Rogers would later say. On Friday, Rogers died, leaving a legacy as a man who lived to feed the tired and hungry, to give the weary a break and a meal as the co-founder of iconic all-night diner chain Waffle House.