After a brief struggle with acute myeloid leukemia, Rollie died on November 4, 2016, at home in Helena, Montana. He was born on September 25, 1926, in Oroville, CA. Rollie graduated from Helena High School one year after being severely injured in a hunting accident during his junior year. The accident prevented him from serving in the military during WWII, something he regretted most of his life.

While in high school and college, he worked skidding logs outside of Lincoln and transported logs over Stemple Pass to the sawmill at Silver City. He played football for the Montana State University Grizzlies for one year before transferring to Bozeman to attend what was then Montana State College

After working for Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph for twenty years at different levels of sales and marketing management, he took on the challenge of helping Montana hospitals navigate a relatively new program called Medicare as the Executive Vice President of the Montana Hospital Association. He retired in 1988.