The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 75, July 1971 - April, 1972 Page: 374

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

A really appropriate tribute to Bill was paid yesterday when a jazz
band played at the services in New Orleans. Bill loved New Orleans
jazz and had done perhaps more than any other man to preserve its
heritage. But I still wish that old George Lewis could have led a
band in a funeral march all the way out to Live Oak Cemetery today
playing "Just a Closer Walk with Thee." Last night I thought wryly
that the most fitting thing I could do for Bill would be to play taps
on the kazoo over his grave. But I promised him a few remarks and
I'll make them, although it is completely impossible for me to sum
up in a few words the essence of this remarkable man.
I shall not impose upon you at this time a recital of William R.
Hogan's curriculum vitae or a list of his honors and achievements
and published works. He wouldn't like it and I am not in the mood
for it. But I do want to state unequivocably that he was an important
historian, a fine writer, and an even finer teacher. In all these things
he was guided by an ever-present sense of balance and proportion and
by a sense of humor which never deserted him. Few historians have
been able to look at the past with the undistorted perspective that
Bill Hogan brought to The Texas Republic, which remains and will,
I believe, continue to remain one of the finest books ever written
about 'Texas. His writing was always based on meticulous research
and always carefully crafted, but above all it was a delight to read.
Bill did not glamorize the past or idealize its characters, nor did he
second guess them on the basis of currently accepted sociological
dogma. His people were real, and their deeds were recounted with
frequent flashes of inimitable dry humor which put them solidly in
perspective.
All important men are the heirs of other men who have touched
their lives. Many men contributed to shaping William Hogan's life
and his thought-chief among them Walter Prescott Webb. In turn
Bill touched the lives of generations of students at Tulane. They
delighted in his classes, participated with gusto in his seminars, and
worked happily under his benign prodding on their dissertations. At
Tulane he built up a history department of unusual quality by at-
tracting to it men of high academic standards who also were blessed
with something of his own sense of perspective and humor. (They
couldn't have survived at Tulane without that sense of humor.) Every
year at the Southern Historical Association his students and friends
came by his suite to refresh their souls and their parched palates, or
gathered under the banner of "Hogan's Heroes" at the annual Tu-

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