Anna Hoagland

Anna Hoagland was born again in Glasgow. Glasgow, Montana, that is. And born again in a humanist sense. But let's begin with her first birth, which was into a humanist family as the third of three daughters in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, at the end of World War II. Her parents, from whom she developed an awe of nature and love of learning, met in 1939 at a Unitarian conference after her father, a Unitarian minister, had already studied at St. Olaf in Minnesota, the University of Chicago, and universities in Marburg and Frankfurt, Germany; had been advised to leave Nazi Germany when he became vocal about the disappearance of Jewish professors; and had been thrown into an Italian jail for calling Mussolini a fascist pig. From Ft. Wayne they had a short stay in Chicago and then moved to Schenectady, New York, into the house being vacated by Ed Wilson and where her brother was born. After nine years there and four years in Tacoma, Washington, they moved to Park Forest, Illinois, where she received one of the best high school educations in the country.

Anna went on to college at St. Olaf, a Lutheran school, which was so restrictive that she transferred to the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where her parents had moved. She graduated in philosophy and psychology in 3 ½ years with honors, but then she always was precocious, having concluded at age 7 that there was no afterlife when a Catholic friend told her that animals don't go to heaven. She married and moved to North Dakota; she taught, her husband was a school administrator. Then on to Wamsutter, Saratoga, and the Wind River Reservation, all in Wyoming. But it was in Glasgow, Montana, that she was born again after giving birth to her son Erik, divorcing her philandering husband, and outgrowing a lifetime of miserable shyness. Humor and friends became important, as she went on to get a master's degree in counseling and human resources at the University of Montana.

She moved on to the favorite of all her jobs, as the director of a 28-county nutrition program for the elderly in Kansas, where she was president of the state association and regional representative to the national board. There she met the love of her life, John, and they moved to Salt Lake and the mountains. After seven years in one job, she went to work for Salt Lake Community College, where she works today as Assistant Director of Sponsored Projects.

She was one of the original members of Humanists of Utah, an organization that is very important to her and one of the things that keeps them in Utah. She has served as treasurer since the beginning except for one two-year break. She keeps mentally healthy with laughter, tai chi, walking her Schnauzer, and eating chocolate, and values friends and family, integrity, leaving things better than she finds them, and humor.

-- Earl Wunderli