Paul Hallinan

Did I ever tell you about my going to Charleston, S.C. for the Centennial of the start of the Uncivil War to visit Bishop Paul Hallinan? My Newman club chaplain at Western Reserve, he told me as he arrived at the airport to take over as the first Northern Bishop in the South since the Civil War that his driver had warned him that "they" were trying to integrate the new Catholic hospital. Paul's reaction: "It's got to be integrated!"

He later became the first Archbishop of Atlanta and a pal of Martin Luther King, Jr. He died at 58 from hepatitis, probably from his service as a WWII chaplain in the South Pacific. I grieved like I had lost my father, which he virtually was.