MY UNCLE REYNIE
Hillenbrand, Barry
When I told Hillenbrand that many thought his authoritarian style was disrupting the leader- ship of YCW as well as that of the other spe- Barry...
...The political debates often turned bitter and the uncles Like the assassinating cabal that surrounds Julius Caesar in would go at each other, as well as at the nephews and nieces...
...Later still, I came to think it was a sad hour for all of us...
...nie without his black The venue for all this coat and Roman collar...
...But only to a demost always stubborn gree...
...Reynie crowd of the great and the good from the church in Chicago...
...One of the things that were happening, of course, was that Hillenbrand's work was bearing fruit and that young aking sense of your relatives is never an easy people didn't need him any more to facilitate their think- task...
...The battles started at the dinner table and Keegan, as president of the newly formed International continued late into the evening in a vast book-lined living Commission on the Laity, had become the first layman since room...
...But we seldom did priests who ran parishes in places like Racine...
...His moods, my mother used to become the rebellious champion of the poor and under- to say, permanently darkened after the accident because of privileged...
...nieces to a steady stream of questions, opinion, and harassToward the end of the 1960s, a group of priests, including ment...
...Eleanor was a strong-willed woman brought had to lie down on a bed in the guest room...
...and listened to the eulogists who proclaimed-should I have Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Eleanor cared for a succes- been surprised?-that Reynie was their hero as well...
...He had ing especially warm and cuddly about any of this older gen- troublesome allergies...
...Ultimately Hillenbrand, who perceived truth in its grandeur, believed it could be revealed only through a proper chain of command...
...Then he poured us all a drink, chatted amiably with us for a short while and, explaining that he had work to do, showed us to the door...
...Some unTo one of them, who was known widely for his wit, he said, "And you, it may disturb you to know, are not funny...
...When I told Hillenbrand that many thought his authoritarian style was disrupting the leadership of YCW as well as that of the other spe- Barry Hillenbrand cialized Catholic action movements, he was surprised...
...al chaplain of the specialized Catholic action movements...
...And, by the way, is there and told him he ought to resign from his position as nation- really such thing as a just war...
...What did Gregor Mendel's experiments really prove...
...I never did give my hero also dabbled in Progressive politics and ideas...
...Each Thanksgiving during observe and make judgments about the reality about them the 1950s and 1960s, for example, my father's five brothers and to act bravely on what they saw...
...The family those things in the family...
...We regrouped on the sidewalk in front of his rectory, wondering where we went wrong...
...ways been a rebellious and anti-establishment strain in the A few months later he died...
...Over the were especially close years I came to admire and some of her commy uncles...
...Egan thinks that Hillenbrand understood and accepted the truth of this reassurance...
...The Schmidts were prosper- weakness and vulnerability, something I never really expect ous and civic-minded...
...Those who knew him have not been able to forget him...
...0 Commonweal 1 9 March 10, 2000 cles were devoted carded coats during New Deal Democrats cold winters were part and others true-blue of family lore...
...They could do their own thinking, thank you...
...Yet he was no complainer...
...My mother, who was very fond of eration of Hillenbrand men, and Reynie, even within the fam- Reynie, would make him cookies out of eggwhites, leaving out ily, was peculiarly cerebral, peculiarly aloof, peculiarly reserved.the nuts because he was allergic to wheat flour and nuts...
...Jack Egan visited and pointed to the specialized Catholic action movements and the changed lives of the lay people and priests who belonged to them, trying to reassure him...
...I was part of this cabal and yet I later came to think it was Hillenbrand's finest hour...
...Yes, they passion for the poor were often intellectu- may have had influally arrogant and al- ence...
...There was noth- seemed to leave his brow permanently furrowed...
...I recall coming in up in Dane County, Wisconsin, where her German family to help him...
...In any case, Hillenbrand wasn't quite as self-possessed as he appeared...
...I sat by his bedside...
...was, in a sense, the embodiment of that...
...He himself was always frail and in ill health...
...I was taken aback...
...Like Yet he was, by common agreement, the most enigmatic and many of his brothers, he was plagued by headaches that the least approachable of all the Hillenbrands...
...We awkwardly MY UNCLE REYNIE completed our discussion about other YCW matters and I Propriety & a passion for the poor left...
...When death finally came, the thought that he might have wasted many good years of his life by working with small groups instead of large groups troubled him...
...He Hillenbrand...
...fering...
...For the rest of his life he wore a heavy orwith people, pick up the streak of compassion which led him thopedic shoe on his right foot...
...It was very much a Hillencil...
...I was pleased with myself that I had stood up to him but he dismissed my criticism out of hand...
...If he ever where my Uncle Reynold was pastor...
...There has al- a proper farewell...
...brand thing...
...He wasn't sure he liked the result...
...he asked...
...His funeral attracted a huge family tradition that goes back several generations...
...But the process was challenging, and spent most of his adult life encouraging young people to often entertaining...
...He had M possible...
...Hillenbrand was far less necessary than he had been...
...Why do you come up here and sail into me...
...He was admitting not own, the Hillenbrands did...
...Or the town and, over the generations, produced a number of that I had given him a hug when he left...
...I wish I had taken his hand and held it...
...Reynie had a Reynie-as we called him-who was my personal favorite and strong sense of propriety...
...Shakespeare's play, each one of Hillenbrand's critics took Deep divisions within the family were exposed...
...He championed all the causes that I cared passionately But this is not to say that Reynie was unfamiliar with sufabout in those days: civil rights, the labor movement, poverty...
...He did indeed brighten life, "like shining from shook foil...
...Too bad...
...It was hard for (an unfortunate fami- those in my generation ly trait), but the eclectic to imagine Reynie range of their knowl- working soup kitchens edge was impressive or living in tenements and they taught me a among the poor...
...One possibility-and it is nothing more than a hunch-is My last memories of Reynie were of an Easter meal at my that some of it rubbed off from his mother, Eleanor Schmidt parents' house...
...up spread so widely across the political spectrum...
...His friend Patrick tellectual combat...
...Commonweal 20 March 10, 2000...
...The back fence off the alley, it was said, carried a mitted it...
...I could never his rhetorical shot at the master who made him...
...It was part sophisticated Trivial Pursuit, part Socratic the Emperor Constantine to address an ecumenical coun- exercise, part presidential debate...
...the pain he endured...
...What land in the area the Schmidts did feel so weak, so tired...
...I can't lot about clear and vig- recall ever seeing Reyorous thinking...
...Stories of "Eleanor's boys" sleeping in the basement, now covers international issues for the magazine from Washington, smoking my grandfather's cigar stubs, and wearing his dis- D.C...
...The uncles would subject their nephews and Perhaps he felt that...
...And so Hillenbrand died...
...In the case of my uncles it was nearly iming...
...I was sion of hoboes, vagabonds, and bums who called at the back pleased...
...And Reynie would have been pleased too, although door of the large house the family owned on Hamond Street in his stubborn, reserved manner he might never have adin Chicago...
...And One of the puzzles about Reynie was: Where did this deco- he was hospitalized for nearly a year after a serious auto acrous scholar, seemingly more comfortable with books than cident in Oklahoma...
...John Birch Society Re- Eleanor and Reynie publicans...
...I sat off to the side by myself in the church in Hubbard Woods And there was also Eleanor's own personal sense of duty...
...myself, who had always considered themselves "Hillen- Was Mailer's The Naked and the Dead a great war novel or a brand men," visited him at his parish in Hubbard Woods trashy novel with great war scenes...
...The family helped build the church in from an uncle...
...He was ill and could not finish eating...
...D secret mark used by those forsaken men to identify a house where food, warm clothes, and even some cash were handed Barry Hillenbrand, a long-time foreign correspondent for Time, out...
...intellectual argy-bargy It's a reach to think of was the rectory of Sacred Heart Church in Hubbard Woods, his sitting around eating pizza with YCS staffers...
...hero...
...They had gotten the and three sisters, their spouses and gaggle of children would hang of the thing and now they were challenging their gather for turkey, cranberries, good wine, and bruising inteacher...
...But unlike understand how brothers who shared the same genes, the Shakespeare's Caesar, Hillenbrand refused to die, quietly same upbringing, the same sermons on Sunday could end returning each shot in the volley at the one who had fired it...
...He said something like, "I settled in the 1840s...
...Of all the uncles, it was did, he'd probably have used a knife and fork...
Vol. 127 • March 2000 • No. 5
