After a dismal 2013, Washington Redskins fans are weathering more bad news following the sudden death of a son of Suffolk who was the team band’s percussion coordinator.

Greg Rodgers, a 1978 graduate of John F. Kennedy High School and 23-year veteran of the Washington Redskins Marching Band, died of a massive heart attack on his way to work Monday, his sister confirmed. He was 53 years old.

“He made a stop at his neighborhood gas station … and just collapsed and died,” said Suffolk’s Denise R. Bynum, Rodgers’ only sibling.

Their father, John L. Rodgers, who died in 2010, served in the U.S. Air Force, Bynum said. While she was born in Suffolk, her brother entered the world at Tachikawa Air Base in Japan, she said.

Bynum described her brother’s love of percussion as consuming. As a little boy, he would “beat on the walls and any piece of furniture he could find.”

Rodgers entered the school band during the sixth grade, his sister said, and never looked back.

Pretty soon, he graduated from hands and walls to drumsticks and pads for tapping out rudiments. Then, after also playing in the percussion sections at JFK High School and Norfolk State University, came his opportunity of a lifetime with the ‘Skins.

“He told me he had to wait a year to get an audition,” Bynum said. “Of course, he was good enough and he was able to get in.”

He quickly became an asset to the band, she said, bringing in professional percussionists he’d performed with at college.

“He brought about a lot of improvements to the percussion sections,” Bynum said. “A couple of years ago, he was honored to receive a Super Bowl-type ring from the Washington Redskins organization … it was for 20-plus years of service.”

Once he became percussion coordinator, Rodgers’ star at the ‘Skins continued to rise, Bynum said, and he gained much respect from band members.

For a taste of the Redskins Marching Band drum corps in action, visit the Redskins’ official blog at www.tinyurl.com/m3w63vj and click the link for the video.

As well as his sister, Rodgers is survived by his wife Bonnie Rodgers, 76-year-old mother Julia C. Bradley, and daughter Gabrielle Rodgers, who just completed her first semester at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Bynum said.

“He loved and adored his two nieces, my daughters,” Bynum said. “He always called all of us his girls. He was just a good family man.”

Outside the band, Rodgers was a civil engineer with Fairfax County. He loved music, his church, and his many friends, his sister said.

She said he’d been filling his car at the neighborhood gas station he died at for at least the past 20 years.

“He lived in the same little cul-de-sac and went to the same gas station, and people in the store knew him personally, by name,” Bynum said. “He took me in there one of the times when I was up visiting, and introduced me … ‘Hey, this is my sister!’”

Whenever he came home to Suffolk, he’d always get his hair cut by barber Herbert Smith. “They would always work him in,” Bynum said.

A 10 a.m. funeral is planned for Ebenezer AME Church in Fort Washington, Md. Monday, while the family is also planning a Suffolk service at Metropolitan Baptist Church sometime afterward next week.