'A Popular Guy'

His music lessons started early in life, and Archbishop Egan's talent as a pianist was already apparent when he entered Chicago's Quigley Preparatory Seminary as a young teenager in September 1946.

A grand piano was a prominent feature in the large, comfortable living room of the Egan home in Oak Park, Ill., and it was there that "Eddie played his music," says a Quigley classmate who still calls the archbishop his best friend.

"We would have parties at his home, and we'd all gather around the piano and he'd play any songs we would want," recalls Father Richard Ehrens, associate pastor of St. Rosalie's parish in Harwood Heights, Ill.

"Sometimes we'd ask for something he didn't know, so we'd whistle a few bars and he would start playing it--just like that," he said.

Selections from Mozart, Mahler and the like were generally not on the Quigley boys' request lists. But if they had been, their classmate could have obliged.

"The classical stuff, he knew well," Father Ehrens said.

Born on April 2, 1932, the archbishop was the third of four children of Thomas and Genevieve Costello Egan, a sales manager and schoolteacher-turned-homemaker from well-educated backgrounds. Thomas Egan, one of nine children, had two brothers who became doctors. "They took turns being chief of staff of Oak Park Hospital," the archbishop said recently.

His mother, a lifelong Oak Park resident, also had a brother who was a doctor and was herself schooled in a manner unusual for women of her day. She studied at De Paul University in Chicago and did graduate work at the University of Wisconsin. "She spoke French, was well traveled and was very, very well educated," the archbishop said.

The Egans raised their children--Marion, Thomas, Edward and James--in a spacious home in Oak Park, a suburban community just west of Chicago that was the birthplace of Ernest Hemingway, Bob Newhart and McDonald's founder, Ray Kroc. It is also home to the world's largest collection of Frank Lloyd Wright-designed houses and buildings, with 25 structures designed between 1889 and 1913.

The Egan children--of whom all except the archbishop are now deceased--attended their parish school, St. Giles, where they were all taught in first grade by Sister Mary Donatilla Ryan, a Dominican Sister of Sinsinawa, Wis.

"She even taught my 72-year-old brother-in-law," said the archbishop, who invited the 96-year-old nun to his installation ceremonies this week.

In the summer of 1943, with World War II raging in Europe and the home front mobilized, the Egan family faced catastrophe. Their sixth-grader, Thomas, and fourth-grader, Edward, contracted polio, the most feared childhood disease of the time, during an epidemic that was sweeping Chicago.

"My mother and father were willing to sacrifice everything to get their two boys cured," the archbishop said in a recent interview with the Bridgeport diocesan newspaper, Fairfield County Catholic.

He spent three weeks in the Cook County Contagious Disease Hospital in Chicago before medical authorities allowed the family to take him home. He stayed six months in his room convalescing, much of the time wrapped in "Sister Kenny packs" of hot, wet wool, and crying often because, even after three full months, he still could not be pulled up into a sitting position.

His spirits began to lift only after a doctor who visited him weekly lectured him on joining his sufferings to the crucified Christ. The doctor told him to focus his attention on a small plaster altar on his dresser which had six glowing candles and a crucifix.

"Altars are to make us strong," the doctor told his tearful young patient. A year later 11-year-old Edward was up and walking, and making weekly visits to a physiotherapist for exercises in water and on a mat.

Both he and his brother escaped lasting effects from the polio, but they missed two years of school and were tutored at home by their mother. Returning to St. Giles, Edward "still came out first in his class," Father Ehrens recalls.

At St. Giles parish, meanwhile, the pastor, Msgr. Lawrence Frawley, had his eye on the music-loving Egan boy who sang alto in his choir. Sensing a priest-in-the-making, Msgr. Frawley persuaded him to forgo the scholarship he was offered at the highly regarded private Fenwick High School and to enter the preparatory seminary instead.

One summer day, the archbishop recalled, he was mowing a neighbor's lawn when an assistant pastor dispatched by Msgr. Frawley drove up and directed him to get into the car and--without even time for a change of clothes--drove him to Quigley to pick up the application forms.

In his five years at Quigley, he led the class all the way through. "When we got to Mundelein (the major seminary), he led the class there for the first three years and then was chosen to go to Rome," Father Ehrens said.

"He was a very popular guy," he added. "Everybody liked Egan."

The archbishop was president of his class at Quigley, editor of the student newspaper put out by third- and fourth-year students and editor of the fifth-year student yearbook.

He also was the one that other students turned to when they were struggling in a subject and needed help. "He was more than patient," said Father Ehrens.

After graduating from Quigley in 1951, the archbishop entered St. Mary of the Lake Seminary in Mundelein, Ill., with his classmates for the seven-year program that combined a traditional college program and four years of theology for priesthood candidates.

"Ed went through the equivalent of second, third and fourth year of college at Mundelein, then he took his theology in Rome. It was the beginning of several times he was back and forth," said Father John Cain, pastor of St. Rosalie's.

The archbishop's academic and leadership abilities were undoubtedly the reason he was chosen by Chicago archdiocesan officials to complete his seminary studies at the North American College, the seminary residence sponsored by the U.S. bishops in Rome.

"He was a bright, cultured person. With all of his interests and qualities of character, we knew that if someone was going to be picked to go to Rome it would be him," Father Cain said.

In Rome, the archbishop came under the influence of Archbishop Martin J. O'Connor, a strong and demanding leader who was rector of the North American College. Archbishop Egan speaks highly of him still, and recently told CNY he "learned much about life" from the rector.

He was ordained by Archbishop O'Connor on Dec. 15, 1957, in the North American College chapel, and in the spring of 1958 he received a licentiate in sacred theology from Gregorian University. Then he returned to Chicago to begin his life as a priest.