Just west of Princeton...
(UPDATE: Mike Hamann finished a distant second in the mayoral primary on Monday.)
Today is primary election day in the mayoral race in South Bend, Indiana, a solidly Democratic ex-industrial city that, like nearby Chicago, bears many obvious images of its ethnic-Catholic past. The nearby University of Notre Dame might loom large in America’s image of Catholicism in this part of the country, but it is in the teeming parishes of the city’s working-class past and present, overflowing with Murphys and Flynns and Horvaths, and with increasing numbers of Diazes and Gutierrezes, too, that the real substance of Catholic life in South Bend is to be found, in the parish schools and the fish frys and bingo marathons and the Sunday green chile of more recent introduction. The Golden Dome and the once-proud Fighting Irish may look like the mothership of Catholicism to the rest of the country, but on the west side of South Bend, Notre Dame is as far away as the monied suburbs of New Jersey.
For South Bend native and mayoral candidate Mike Hamann, a staunch Catholic, father of four, and teacher of theology at South Bend’s only Catholic high school, St Joseph’s, today will be a difficult day—he is running a distant third in a crowded field for a vacant office, in a very blue town where every race is basically over when the Democratic primary is decided. But no electoral loss could possibly compare to the devastating blow that befell him just eleven days ago. On Good Friday, Hamann got a phone call from Paraguay, informing him that his wife of 30 years, Mary, had died suddenly, while celebrating their daughter Kate’s marriage in a rural village, far from medical care.
Eli, Eli—lama sabachthani?
Mike Hamann
Mike Hamann is a Democrat with a strong independent streak, and the traditional forms of Catholic culture have left a real mark on his life and career. The son of German-Polish-Hungarian stock, Mike went to a parish grade school in town and then Catholic high school just outside of South Bend; he continued his studies at Notre Dame, where he earned an MA in American History around the same time as he started a family with Mary. Their first child was just a baby in 1983, and Mike was teaching at Holy Cross grade school in South Bend, when 2 massive truck bombs destroyed the US Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, killing hundreds. Hamann did what any sensible married father and grade school teacher would do—he enlisted in the Marine Corps, leaving job and wife and child behind for boot camp, embarking on a path that would likely take him overseas and eventually into harm’s way. He was ready to fight for his country at the first such calling that seemed to be offered to his post-Vietnam generation. But his fighting days were never to be, probably to the relief of his wife: his spirited stint as a Marine was cut short when he ruptured his spleen on an obstacle course and was given a medical discharge.
Mike Hamann returned to South Bend and to the classroom, and it was in the late 1980s that I got to know him personally when he taught me New Testament, biology, and American history in 8th and 9th grade. He was one of the greatest teachers I have ever had the fortune to know—boys absolutely worshipped this guy, with the mixture of love and fear that a good father elicits. With his unbeatable knowledge of history and politics, his earthy humor, his cannon of a right arm—he always QB’d the lunchtime football games—and his compelling example of faith and family life, he was exactly the kind of man who should be entrusted with the education of the young.
I could easily turn this post into a bunch of Mike Hamann stories, all told through the embarrassingly admiring eyes of a 14-year old. But one such story seems especially appropriate to share, as it touches on his love for his wife and for God. As his students, we were conscious of the fact that this guy already had 4 kids before he was 30, and we did the math and figured out he had been married at age 20 or 21—he had practically been a teenager, not much older than us. One day, someone asked him before class about his marriage, and while I cannot recall exactly everything he shared, he ended up telling us the story of how he threatened to fight the buddies of his who had brought a dirty video to his bachelor party, commanding them to get it out of the house or else he would throw it (and whoever was holding it) out into the street. Since he was built like a miniature Jose Canseco, we all trembled with frightened excitement at his tale. Was it exaggerated? Perhaps a little bit, but Hamann seemed to stay true to those same principles when he made his first foray into politics a few years later, founding a community organization dedicated to regulating strip joints and smut shops out of business on South Bend’s depressed south side.
I also remember the time he told us about how he had picketed in demonstration against a screening of Scorsese’s Last Temptation of Christ on Notre Dame’s campus some time around ‘89 or ’90, standing silently with a sign reading “THIS MOVIE IS A LIE”. (The route that would eventually lead to The Vagina Monologues being given a campus venue seems rather obvious in hindsight.) Again, the impression that was made upon young men was: here is a guy who is smart AND tough, who is willing to fight, but only for what is true and good rather than for what is selfish or fleeting.
Mike Hamann’s career in politics in South Bend and the surrounding St Joseph County has been characterized by this combative streak. He was first elected as a Republican to the office of County Commissioner in the late ‘90s, a political feat almost unheard of in a reliably Democratic county. I’m sure he wouldn’t have had it any other way. Perhaps not surprisingly, he later fell out with local Republicans when, at least as he tells it, he was pressured to become more of a partisan obstructionist towards the Democrats in county government. He switched parties after one term as Commissioner, publicly criticized the ethics of the Republican county prosecutor and helped elect a Democratic challenger to that office, before getting himself elected to the County Council. Through more than 11 years of active involvement in public service Hamann has remained a classroom teacher, shaping the community both at its top and bottom.
When Mary Hamann boarded a plane for South America during Holy Week with her eldest son and 
daughter, Mike stayed behind, certain he would see her again after Easter and for the home stretch of the mayoral campaign. But it was not to be. Mary collapsed thousands of miles from home after a devotional Stations of the Cross hike on Good Friday, and she only had a rural clinic to take care of her, where she died quickly from massive internal bleeding due to what seems to have been a previously undetected uterine tumor. A woman of formidable talents herself who worked in publicity and development at the Notre Dame business school, she was as gentle and quiet as Mike was loud, spirited, and pugnacious. She was Mike’s most trusted counselor, and she lay dead in a jungle village during what was to have been a weekend of joy.
After a sorrowful Triduum and Easter of prayer and discernment, Hamann announced in a Dyngus Day statement his intention to stay in the mayoral race, even as he pledged to discontinue all campaign activities until he could secure the return of Mary’s body from Paraguay and give her proper burial. At Mary’s funeral Mass on Monday, all three of the men Hamann is vying with to be the Democratic nominee for mayor attended to pay their respects.
Albino Luciani--Pope John Paul I
In his Witness to Hope, George Weigel writes that the shocking death of Pope John Paul I after just one month on the chair of Peter prompted many of the cardinal-electors to ask themselves “What is God saying to us here?” One cardinal afterwards reflected, according to Weigel, “This (the death of JP1) was an intervention from the Lord to teach us something” (Weigel 252).
If I were in Mike Hamann’s shoes right now, I would be praying to understand what God was trying to say to me—a beloved wife of 30 years, taken unexpectedly, in conjunction with a daughter’s marriage AND the biggest election of a man’s career. What does it all mean? What is God’s will for my life and what I thought was my calling?
Please pray for the repose of the soul of Mary Murphy Hamann and for the comfort of her husband and children.
Mary K. Hamann (1960-2011)
(* Weigel, George. Witness to Hope. New York: HarperCollins, 2002.)
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