1/6/2021 First Unitarian Society of Milwaukee From the Opening Words John Hagedorn died Oct. 31 after a year-long struggle with cancer. He was 76. He is survived by his wife, Mary, his former wife, Kathleen, six children, and 10 grandchildren. And of course, by all of you, who were in some way, touched by John’s life and his work. Today we are here to bear witness to a life, and to all life. To witness is to speak the truth you see. That’s what John did. He sought the truth and he spoke out. He was, in fact, an expert witness, speaking the truth on behalf of many whose own truth was obscured by prejudice, stereotypes, fear. Throughout his life, he sought the truth, he spoke truth, against prejudice, against injustice, against power. Eulogy John Hagedorn was born in 1947 in Milwaukee and grew up in Clintonville, in Waupaca County. He and his family made weekly trips back to Milwaukee to visit relatives, and maybe to escape to a different sensibility. The contrasting politics between conservative north-central Wisconsin and socialist Milwaukee might be an early backdrop to how John’s life would develop. In 1967 -- when he was 20, in college in Milwaukee -- he was a member of the campus Democrats and drawn to the campaign for open housing, against segregation. So he joined in with hundreds of others from the NAACP Youth Council, and with Father James Groppi, to famously cross the 16th Street viaduct, where he was arrested, two nights in a row, and bashed on the head and hands by police for trying to protect a black man who had been even more severely beaten. That set him on a path. To fight injustice wherever he saw it, wherever he witnessed it. A year later, he helped the group of clergy known as the Milwaukee 14 burn draft records stolen from a federal office building in protest of the Vietnam War. That earned him a felony record. You can read in recent accounts how, in 1972, he and others crashed a cocktail fundraiser for presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy here in Milwaukee, pushing issues into his platform. Soon after, he moved to Boston to join in larger efforts at justice work, organizing factory workers, joining picket lines, and getting bashed on the head again. One of his children told me he once told them “If you’re not getting hit by the rocks you’re not close enough.” In Boston, in the early 1970s, he met Kathe on a picket line, and the two joined together supporting each other in their work, fighting for rubber workers and United Farm Workers, boycotting grapes and lettuce across the nation. And they started a family. Tracey, and then KJ, were born there. In Boston, John also met Paul Elitzik and Peggy Weidmann who would become lifelong friends, and also other friends from Palestine, providing a personal connection to conflict in the Middle East. These were incendiary times. The work of organizing is often messy. In 1979 John moved with his new family back to Milwaukee. This city’s long history of socialist government, and its increasing racial and economic injustice, might have been the draw for a good communist like John. But when I asked Kathe what brought them here from Boston what she said was one word: Bratwurst. You can take the boy out of Wisconsin… Even revolutionaries march on their stomachs. John and Kathe’s third child, Marty, was born here, and they continued to work in community organizing. In 1982 John took a job as an organizer with the Sherman Park Neighborhood Association, where he worked directly with current and former gang members, hiring them, getting to know them. In 1984 he returned to the university, which he had left back in the late ’60s, and there he met Joan Moore, professor of sociology and herself a student of gang culture, who encouraged John to continue his research and understanding of gangs and gang stereotypes, leading to a master’s degree and then a PhD. His thesis, and then dissertation, would each become books, published by his friend Paul Elitzik, who had since moved to Chicago and started a publishing business on the side. His research and collaboration with Moore would continue, expanding into experience with female gangs, and in 1996, he applied for and became professor of Criminology, Law, and Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His CV brims with awards, honors, research grants, six books, dozens of articles, speeches, presentations, and chapters in other books, and professional experience including at Milwaukee County Human Services, where he designed and implemented a neighborhood-based reform of county social services. And as I alluded to earlier, his work with and research of gangs in Milwaukee and Chicago led him to become an expert witness – speaking the truth he saw – in court cases involving gang members, breaking down stereotypes, fighting the cultural narrative. In the meantime, his marriage with Kathe had come to an end. This was difficult at first, but over time they reconciled. He and Mary met while both were pursuing PhDs, and making more “good trouble” together. They would be married and, with her children, Bryna and Zach, would expand the family to include Jess. I am so grateful for the time I have had with this family over the last few weeks. I am struck by their insight and their honesty. John was in many ways larger than life, iconic. Mary described him as a “desperado,” who could not follow rules. Paul says he was always an “outsider,” which, academically, allowed him to take a larger view. His academic work was always grounded in the street, always a part of his activism. He also could be emotionally distant, especially for his children, either buried in his study or off somewhere. This was hard, to be so close to such a dynamic person, and yet so far away. He was a person who lived in a world of ideas, speaking the language of Marx or Euripides, in the vernacular. The kind of guy, who, if you are in a Turkish prison, would come storming in to break you out. But day-to-day, heart-to-heart? Not so much. I imagine that for you (children) today, you might find grief on top of grief. I also heard great, fun, and defiant stories. -- Bombing down the road in a rusted out Honda Civic that would not die, singing Bob Dylan songs at the top of his lungs to an exasperated child --- How. Many. Roads? -- Lumps of coal, actual charcoal briquettes, in stockings at Christmas. Or a plastic bag full of gravel for Kathe, which became the floor of an aquarium, produced sometime later. -- And proud things. Coaching basketball. Recounting each year of a teenage birthday, not missing a year. Witnessing for himself the families born of his children and the values they carry. -- And getting all of your heads bashed in, too. Moms, Dad and the kids, all there at the protest. Mary and Kathe in fact once shared a night in a jail cell. I learned that all dogs loved John. I learned that he, and the rest of the family, come from a long line of goofballs and eggheads. And that they lived in what KJ calls the “opposite world,” opposite cultural norms, opposite the Calvinistic, capitalistic, racist landscape of America. When Mary started running triathlons, John took up bicycling, riding long distances, loving it. Along with everything else he did in life, he was fervent about it. In 2016 he was hit by a car, went through the windshield, broke his spine. After a long recovery tended by Mary, he posted a proud photo of himself back on the bike AMA, not “against medical advice,” against Mary’s advice. Mary, says one of the kids, saved John. He was always chronically Ill. She paid attention to his blood sugar. She was all about raising the children as vegetarians. He was all about bratwurst. Her attention to the family allowed John to be John. On the back of your order of service is a small om symbol, with a short paragraph that says that the symbol also can be understood to mean “true.” John’s mind journeyed in search of what is true. He didn’t leave it there. He spoke the truth he saw. He witnessed. He worked for change. So may we all.