I Never Stopped Believing: The Life of Walter Hubbard

By Roger Yockey

"I NEVER STOPPED BELIEVING" is the remarkable story of Walter Hubbard, a Black Catholic who as a member of "the greatest generation" fought the Nazis on European battlefields and came home to the United States to battle discrimination, bigotry, hatred. He became a union leader, a prominent civil rights leader, a pioneer lay leader in the Black Catholic Movement, and a distinguished public official.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 8, 2007
• ISBN: 9781469102863

Roger Yockey

Roger Yockey is a journalist. He was for many years a union representative and a community organizer. He has been an instructor at a university and taught union education classes. Roger and his wife, Marilyn, are Secular Franciscans and they live in Lynnwood, Washington.

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Copyright © 2007 by Roger Yockey.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2007903080

ISBN:     Hardcover     978-1-4257-6881-2

Softcover     978-1-4257-6877-5

ISBN:     ebook     978-1-4691-0286-3

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Contents

INTRODUCING THE AUTHOR

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

PART I

1

2

3

4

PART II

5

6

7

8

9

10

PART III

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

PART IV

18

19

BIBLIOGRAPHY

In memory of

WALTER T. HUBBARD, JR.,

1924-2007

This book is dedicated to

the memory of

JAMES MCCONDUIT,

former President of the

National Office for Black Catholics

and trade-union leader.

Jimmy spoke the truth to everyone—

bishops, priests, sisters, brothers, and lay people.

They didn’t always listen.

They should have!

INTRODUCING THE AUTHOR

Roger Yockey is a journalist and a retired union representative and a community organizer. He has journalism degrees from Marquette University and Indiana University.

Roger taught journalism at Seattle University and also taught union education classes for many years. He was a reporter and editor for newspapers. His articles for union newspapers won awards from labor press associations. He is co-host of a radio program, Part of the Union.

He also served as the director of a community based economic loan fund, which made micro-loans to women, people of color, and displaced workers, especially in timber communities.

He and his wife Marilyn are Secular Franciscans who volunteer at a soup kitchen and also are volunteer servant learners in programs in the United States and other countries.

They have three children and six grandchildren plus a loud barking, but lovable beagle, Noah.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you, thank you! This book was made possible because of the help of many wonderful human beings. Marilyn, my wife, provided the encouragement, some gentle pushing, and her considerable computer expertise to get the book done. The Hubbard Family—Frances, Walt’s wife, and their children, Walter, Donna, Colette, and Anthony—provided their thoughts, memories, and suggestions for this book.

There are two special people who helped me get it all together. Joe Holland, is President of the Board of Directors of Pax Romana / Catholic Movement for Intellectual and Cultural Affairs USA, and is also Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Saint Thomas University, Miami Gardens, Florida. Walt Hubbard and Roger Yockey have been blessed to have been friends of Joe Holland for many years. I have been pleased to have read Joe’s books and papers and heard his lectures on social, economical, and environmental justice for many years. Joe’s Preface, his editing, and his advice were a tremendous advantage in the completion of this book and improved the final product.

Gerrit W. Kouwenhoven has known Walt Hubbard and Roger Yockey for many years. But the fondest memories of this trio was our association with the Seattle Urban League in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when it was very actively involved in striving for equal opportunity for all. Jerome W. Page as the Seattle Urban League’s executive director, Gerrit leading efforts in education and employment and as Page’s very capable assistant, plus a very talented staff opened doors, made needed changes, and produced real results.

Gerrit recalled those days for me and helped get me over the hump to finish the book.

St. Thomas University, an outstanding Catholic university and a very diverse one, deserves special recognition. Joe Holland, a distinguished faculty member at St. Thomas University, cannot ever adequately be thanked for his help. But I also want to express my appreciation to Monsignor Franklyn M. Casale, President of St. Thomas University, and to Dr. L. Bryan Cooper, Director of the University Library and Professor, as well as to Dr. Francis Sicius, Professor of History, and Pedro A. Figueredo, Technical and Distributed Education Service Coordinator for the University Library and Assistant Professor, and to all the Library staff at St. Thomas University for having the University serve as home of the files and archives of the National Office for Black Catholics. These archives are a valuable resource for authors, researchers, historians, scholars, and students interested in the history of Black Catholics in the United States.

There is someone else at St. Thomas University I want to thank. Cesar Baldelomar, President of the Pax Romana Global Leadership Student Society, worked long, hard, and very well in copy-editing the manuscript.

Phillip Runkel, Archivist, and Susan Stawicki-Vrobel, Archival Technical Assistant at Marquette University’s Raynor Memorial Libraries Special Collection and University Archives, were very helpful when Marilyn and Roger Yockey visited to review the National Catholic Conference for Interracial Justice (NCCIJ) files and archives housed at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Jessica Pitre-Williams, Information Specialist for the Archdioce of Seattle archives was helpful.

Trevor Griffey, Project Coordinator, Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, conducted interviews of Walter Hubbard as part of the project based at the University of Washington, Seattle. The activist oral histories of Walter Hubbard and other veterans of Seattle civil rights campaigns are very worthwhile, and I encourage going to look at the following website: www.civilrights.washington.edu. It was a pleasure meeting with Trevor and Walt for breakfast and later seeing and hearing the interviews of Walt by Trevor and Brooke Clark.

LaVern Marquez and Marco Nepomuceno at Xlibris were of much help in moving through the publishing process.

Michael McGarvin, SFO, of Fresno, California, the Executive Director of Poverello House, provided me with knowledge of the importance of historical sensibility and another good reason why this book had to be written.

My children, James, Mark, and Katherine, have known Walter Hubbard for many years. I wanted their children, my grandchildren—Amirah, Charlie IV, Nathalie, Nicklas, Lauren, and Taylor—also to know about this remarkable man, Walter Hubbard.

Grandson Charlie has expressed an early interest in being a writer. Maybe this book will increase that interest.

Granddaughter Amirah had a conversation with Grandfather Roger one sunny afternoon about the importance of standing up for what a person believed, even if it meant demonstrating, protesting, being arrested. I hope that this book will strengthen that belief for her and others.

Finally, during my almost forty years of traveling with Walt Hubbard I met many African Americans, like Walt who had come up the rough side of the mountain and had come thus far by faith. To Walt and all African American Catholics, I say thank you.

PREFACE

Joe Holland

Walter and I first met when I was organizing an international meeting in Rome to take place in solidarity with the upcoming 1987 World Synod of Catholic Bishops meeting on the theme of The Mission and Vocation of the Laity.

I will return to that event later, but let me first say that from that point on Walter and I became close friends and co-workers for common goals. Our home in Washington DC soon became his hotel in that city, and my wife Paquita and I spent many wonderful evenings with him there. For this friendship, and for all that I have learned from Walter, I will always be deeply grateful. He is one of the most profound and most generous colleagues I have ever known, and he has taught me so much.

I will also be forever grateful to Walter for the opportunity to know and become friends with two other wonderful people, namely Roger and Marilyn Yockey, who in turn have been dear and close friends with Walter. Great thanks are due to Roger for undertaking the enormous task of publishing this book. And he has done an extraordinary job of chronicling Walter’s life.

It is my conviction that Walter, in and through his leadership in society and church, became a deeply holy man. Though not any less human than the rest of us, authentically holy people are prophetic visionaries who teach us truly how to live creatively, according to God’s own vision. They also show us in their personal lives what creative path follows God’s call into the future. Often, because of their prophetic mission challenges the selfishness of established power, their leadership costs them great personal sacrifices. In my view, such a holy and prophetic visionary, and indeed one who has suffered enormous personal sacrifices, is Walter T. Hubbard, Jr.

Going back now to our first meeting, I recall—on a Saturday afternoon at our family home in Washington DC—receiving a phone call from someone who introduced himself as Walter Hubbard, President of the National Office for Black Catholics (NOBC). Walter had just learned that we were organizing the lay Catholic conference in Rome. Never one to delay in acting, he wanted to come right over to discuss the meeting. Within about 30 minutes, Walter arrived with two other board members of the National Office for Black Catholics (NOBC).

The lay meeting in Rome was being convened initially by the American Catholic Lay Network (ACLN), which I had formed and directed as an outgrowth of my work with US lay leaders. It was also being convened by the Pallottine Institute for Lay Leadership and Research (PILLAR), a research and advocacy center on the Catholic laity based at Seton Hall University, for which I was also Executive Director. Also, not far into the planning process, ACLN and PILLAR had invited the National Association for Lay Ministry (NALM) to become a third convener for the Rome meeting.

Walt had heard about our plans from Jim Henderson, Executive Director of NOBC, and also a founding board member of ACLN. Following the conversation at