Faces & Names: An Interview with Fr. Hagan

From the Archive: Re-printed from a Special Edition of the Prep News, Vol. LXII 1997-98

Editor’s Note: Among all of the faculty and staff in SLUH history, few are more revered than Fr. Martin Hagan, SJ, affectionately known as “Uncle Marty.” Fr. Hagan, who taught at SLUH for more than 50 years, mentored three generations of Jr. Bills and knew them each by name. He died on April 28, 2008, yet his longstanding legacy – marked by a kind, gentle spirit and quiet, humble leadership – endures at Backer Memorial.

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Born: March 11, 1919, in Wichita, Kansas
Entered Society of Jesus: September 1, 1937
Finished Jesuit training: June 2, 1952
Came to SLUH: June 2, 1952
Ordained a priest: June 14, 1950
Celebrated 60th Anniversary as Jesuit: September 1, 1997

September 1, 1997 marked Fr. Martin Hagan’s 60th year as a Jesuit. I sat down with him that week in his Jesuit chapel office. With his “better” ear turned toward me, he candidly answered questions about his life, St. Louis U. High and religion. In this special edition of the Prep News, we reprint the interview, with as little editing as possible.

JEFF EBERT ’98
Co-Editor-in-Chief

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PN: What did you do this week to celebrate your 60th anniversary as a Jesuit? 

Hagan: Well, I got out a bunch of old pictures from the day we entered. The only classmate living in town was Fr. Vincent Dawes ... so I went down to his room and we got out a box of old pictures of our classmates from the old days and down through the years. It was Labor Day. It was during that day so we just happened to have a Jesuit party, a barbecue down at the White House retreat. So there were about a hundred guys down there and we had quite a celebration. I was out-classed because there were three guys there that were on their 70th jubilee ... It was a lot of fun. 

PN: What can you tell me about your early years in Wichita, Kansas?

Hagan: Well, I went to Cathedral Grade School and Cathedral High School. My father was a doctor. We had 10 children; I was about in the middle. So I had big brothers and sisters and little brothers and sisters. We grew up and had a lot of fun together, you know 10 guys, we always played something with somebody. And of course, the neighborhood kids were our age.

The school was run by the sisters, except the Brothers of Mary, who run Chaminade – they taught the boys in high school. So I had the brothers for one year, 1931 and '32. And then the Depression crashed us, and they had to ease the brothers out of there, and the sisters took over and ran the school. I got a pretty good education. 

When I went to Creighton University in 1935, a lot of my classmates were from Creighton Prep, a Jesuit High School, and you could tell they had been better disciplined on their studies than we had been. In some areas I was stronger than they were, but in a lot of areas you could tell they had superior training because they were from a Jesuit prep high school. 

PN: What kind of student were you in elementary school and high school?

Hagan: Well I was number two in my senior class, which of course was a pretty small class. We had 60 students in the class, and so I was the class historian; I didn't make valedictorian. I was number two. Played basketball. I made varsity in my senior year. And then I got cut about a month into the senior season because some kid on the B team made 23 points in a game one night, and no way I was ever gonna make 23 points. So I had to turn in my uniform. But I went to all the games after that, and I got very involved in the cheering…

They had football when I was a freshman, and I went out for it. There was only one team – it was a fairly small school. As a freshman I really didn’t have much of a shot at it. And when they moved the brothers out and the Depression hit, they dropped the football. The only sport we had was basketball. 

Those were Depression years. I got a job at the end of my freshman year working at a drugstore. I was paid eight cents an hour, plus tips. And a nickel tip was a big tip. I mean if you got a nickel tip that was good – very good. You might clear 25 to 30 cents a week in tips. A nickel was bigger in those days. You could buy a soda for a nickel; you could buy a candy bar for a nickel; you could buy White Castle hamburgers for six a quarter. So times were different. 

PN: Why did you take a job your freshman year? Was it to support your family?

Hagan: Spending money. No, my father was a doctor. No, it was something to do and it was spending money. It was very interesting – that was a valuable experience. 

I had to have a bicycle, and we delivered things on a bicycle. We’d bike around the neighborhood; it was a neighborhood drug store. And even at night we’d ride around on bikes. I even biked over in the black neighborhood which wasn’t terribly far away. At night, delivering a pint of ice cream. A white man going around on a bike. In those days, no problem; never even thought of that. 

I had a friend who was a diocesan priest. He taught me how to play golf. I was never really good at it – never played enough to be good at it. 

I thought I’d be a diocesan priest like he was, but a Jesuit came through and gave our retreat. And I got interested in the Jesuits and I read about them in history books and so on. I contacted the Jesuits and decided to go to them. 

They told me to wait a year, because when I applied I had just turned 16 in my senior year – I graduated when I was 16. They did more of that in those days. So I went to Creighton University, a Jesuit school, for a year. And then they decided I really oughta stay another year. So I went till I was 18. Then I went to the Jesuit seminary. That was 1937. 

PN: When did you first feel a call to religious life? 

Hagan: Oh, I would say in 6th grade. We had a young priest. The priest used to teach the grade school – catechism classes in junior high. That’s when I first got interested. [The priests] seemed to be such happy people – and they were. 

One of the things that is hurting the Church today is there aren’t that many young priests available in many places. To work with the kids who want to be servers. 

One of the big factors today as far as shortage of vocations: half, almost half of the Catholic mothers in this country don’t want their sons to be priests. That’s been going on for a long time. 

PN: Explain your training to be a Jesuit. 

Hagan: We took four years out at Florissant [Jesuit Seminary]. We lived in Florissant. The first two years were Novitiate: spiritual training, three hours a day of prayer, silence most of the day. We learned to speak Latin. Then after that four years, we came to St. Louis University for three years of philosophy. And then three years of teaching high school for most of us. I taught two years at Rosewood reservation – the Sioux Indians in South Dakota, St. Francis Mission. And then one year in Milwaukee at Marquette University High School. 

At the end of three years of teaching high school: four years of theology, and then one year of spiritual training at the end, with a 30 day retreat. There was a 30 day retreat in the last year. The whole thing was 15 years. And I came here after that 15 years, and I’ve been here ever since. 

PN: What did you learn during your training, about yourself, others, and God?

Hagan: Well, that’s a, that’s kind of a book, the answer to that question. 

Self-knowledge: considerable. I think you don’t work around high school kids very long without getting a great deal of self-knowledge. You know, you can go and talk to mature audiences in churches and parishes and they’re too polite to tell you that you’re boring them. But teenagers, if you bore them in class, they have a dozen ways of letting you know that.

But basically, I had the idea from the young priest that it was a happy life. That if you worked for the Lord and the Church, the Lord would make your life happy. 

And it was the trust in the Lord. The apostles asked our Lord one day, you know, what’s in it for us? And Jesus said, you will have a hundredfold in this life, an eternal joy in the life to come in the next world. By a hundredfold, he didn’t mean more money and more convenience, but a greater satisfaction. In other words, if you do what God asks you to do, He’s gonna take care of you. 

And I find that is very true. I wouldn’t trade places with anybody.