Uncle Bill

A quick writeup on my uncle, Bill Hogan, who died earlier today. Sent this to the Tribune and Sun-Times in Chicago, in the hopes they'll do more than a simple death notice for him.

The Rev. William Hogan
Born Jan. 9, 1927, in Chicago
Died in Chicago Dec. 31, 2003.

Bill suffered a heart attack early this afternoon and died after being taken
to St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital on the West Side. Arrangements for a
funeral and other services are pending.

Bill was a former Roman Catholic priest (though he would have disputed the
adjective "former"), ordained in 1952, whose career was marked from its
earliest days by political activism, notably in the civil rights, antiwar,
and antinuclear struggles of the 1950s, '60s, '70s, and '80s.

He was prominent in the campaign to oust Chicago school Superintendent Ben
Willis
in 1963 (or maybe '64; there were daily marches against Willis to protest
school segregation in the city, and one day the Chicago Daily News landed on
our front step with a picture of Bill being carried to a paddy wagon;
another notable picture appeared on the front page of Chicago Today around
1970 -- he and another protester climbing out of a canoe near the Michigan
Avenue Bridge after dumping red dye in the river to protest the Vietnam War;
they were both arrested for their trouble).

He participated in several of the major civil rights campaigns in the South,
including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Selma-Montogomery march in 1965.
Later, he joined in the local and national campaigns to end the U.S. war in
Vietnam, was a leader in Chicago Clergy and Laity Concerned (an antiwar
group), and was one of the plaintiffs in a pair of federal lawsuits
in 1974 and '75 that sought to stop alleged Chicago Police Department
harassment of political activists (the suits led to a consent decree, still
in force, that
restrains police surveillance of political groups).

Bill's work in the streets frequently put him at odds with the leadership of
the Chicago archdiocese, and in the 1970s he was suspended for disobeying
directives to refrain from political activity. He drove a cab for a time to
make ends meet (he turned over most of what he made to peace organizations;
Jack Star of the Tribune magazine did a long feature about Bill, with a nice
picture of him in his cab, outside Holy Names Cathedral, that was published
in 1976 or so). In part because members of his Mundelein seminary class
protested, the diocese reinstated him in 1977, the class's silver
anniversary year. Bill wound up leaving the priesthood in the early 1980s,
partly over his opposition to the Church's position on
celibacy. After leaving the priesthood, he got married and taught for a time
in the Chicago
schools; for the past decade or so, he worked as a case officer in the Cook
County adult probation department.

His first assignment was at Holy Angels, which was later George Clements's
parish (on Oakwood Boulevard on the South Side). He also served at St.
Martin de Porres and St. George parishes (both adjacent to the Dan Ryan --
St. Martin's around 55th Street is still there, though St. George was razed
in the early '70s) and after his suspension and reinstatement at Our Lady of
Lourdes on the West Side.

He was the oldest of six children born to Daniel Edward and Anne O'Malley
Hogan; his father, a First National Bank employee, died in 1941. His mother,
a longtime teacher at Chicago's Copernicus elementary school, died in 1980.

Bill was the oldest of four Hogan sons to be ordained Roman Catholic
priests. His twin brothers Tom and Ed were ordained Carmelites in 1958 (Tom
died in 1980; Ed -- also known by his order name of Ben Hogan, served at
Mount Carmel High School among many other assignments -- died in 2001). His
brother Dick was ordained in 1965 and served in the Joliet Diocese; he died
in 2000.

My mother, Mary Alice Hogan Brekke, was Bill's only sister. She passed away
in August.

He's survived by his wife, Jackie, his stepson Jeff, and stepdaughter,
Katie; by his brother-in-law, Steve Brekke; by me and my brothers, John and
Chris, and sister, Ann; and by great-nephews and -nieces in Chicago,
Brooklyn, and Berkeley, Calif.

But most of all, he's remembered by everyone he met in his journeys through
the Church and "the Movement" (as he
still called it) as a real lion for justice and for people's rights and
dignity; and as one
of the world's great optimists: someone who was sure that the world will
come out right if you keep fighting for what you believe is right.

Last update: 6/30/04; 11:36:05 PM.