The March 11 edition of the Butler Eagle included the obituary of the Rev. Dr. W. Carl Bogard who died at age 100. The obituary praised his homiletics. I would like to share some personal observations from my decade of attendance at the First Presbyterian Church (now Covenant) in the 1960s. Bogard was an ecumenical leader of enlightenment in a dark time. He preached vehemently and frequently against the war in Vietnam. He appointed a conscientious objector, John Carlson, as our minister of music. Carlson organized the 3- and 4-year-old children to sing in harmony for the A.M. Easter service. Bogard invited then-Bishop John Joseph Wright (later Cardinal Wright) to give the Humanitarian Association address at First Presbyterian. Bogard was the only Protestant minister in attendance at a full house. Wright's topic was "There is no word for race in Latin." Bogard organized an ongoing seminar on corrections using Karl Menninger's book "The Crime of Punishment." The district attorney and numerous other lawyers attended. The Humanitarian Association of Butler began in the church basement. Norman Jaffe, still in legal practice in Butler, was one of the founders, as were the late George White and Otis Williams. A huge contributor to the church insisted that Bogard not take in an African-American family into the church. The family joined. That bigot left First Presbyterian to join First Methodist Church, where shortly later an African-American family joined as well, and the bigot and his family moved to Florida. For Bogard's 25th anniversary service, he didn't say a word. Instead, paper and pen were at each place: to write one's own sermon. Later, Bogard quipped that he now had enough material for another 25 years. Bogard was a brilliant joy, and if Protestants had such a designation, he should be considered a prophet. Long before Daniel Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers and wrote his monumental history of our engagement in Vietnam, Bogard spoke out to the people of Butler. Bogard was a true pioneer of human rights movements in Butler. May he rest in peace.
