HARRY HOGLANDER • KOREAN WAR
Harry R. Hoglander, 92
Gloucester, MA
Born: 6/12/1933
Born/Raised: Queens, NY, Long Island &
Staten Island NY
Rank: Lt. Colonel
Unit: US Air Force
Dates of Service: 1951-1955 Taegu/Kimpo, Korea, Yokota Air Base, Japan; 1959-1965 Pease Airbase, NH; Massachusetts Air National Guard 1965-1986
The New York runs deep in Harry R. Hoglander. Born in Queens to Harry L., a “Wall Street guy,” and Erna Hoglander, he grew up in Queens and both Long and Staten Islands along with his brothers Arthur and Edwin. Not a keen scholar as a teenager, Harry quit high school in 1951 and jumped head-first into the US Air Force. Not long after basic training, he found himself as a tail-gunner on B-29 bombers flying 45-50 missions over Korea. He finished his tour as a Staff Sergeant.
Following his first 4-year hitch, Harry took advantage of the GI Bill, first getting his high school diploma and then attending Florida State University where he earned his B.A. in business administration. He also joined the ROTC program. With degree in hand, he went back in the service for another six years as an Air Force pilot stationed at several bases, but primarily Pease Airbase in Portsmouth NH. In 1965 he traded his military cockpit for one in the private sector and became a Captain for TWA, a job he’d have for the next 30 years. He continued his military service in the Massachusetts Air National Guard as a fighter pilot retiring in 1986.
While at TWA he became the head of the TWA Pilots Union and then VP of the National Pilots’ Union. In 1967, with all his extra time, he studied law at night at Suffolk Law School in Boston. Four years later he took the Bar in Florida even though he was living in New Hampshire with his then-wife, Joan, and their four teenage children. In 1974 Harry and his second wife Jane moved to Magnolia. The couple divorced in 1981, but Harry’s connection to Gloucester remained strong.
It was 1984, in Birmingham, Alabama, while attending a training event for rising Air Force colonels, when Harry met Judith, an opera singer from Kansas City with two children of her own. She asked him, “have you ever been to an opera?” The two married on Valentine’s Day four years later. They’ve been married now for 36 years. Between them they have six children, 12 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
Harry hung up his professional wings in 1993 but continued his involvement in the labor and political arena lobbying Congress and running the pilots’ union in NYC. He served as special assistant to Congressman John Tierney from 1996-2002. In 2002 he was appointed by President George W. Bush, with US Senate confirmation to be on the National Mediation Board on the recommendation of Senator Kennedy because of his extensive work with unions. He was re-nominated by President Barak Obama and served in the role, multiple times as Chairman, until 2017.
Both Harry and Judith share a strong connection to civic engagement, Judith currently serves on the Committee for the Arts and Harry sits on the Community Preservation Committee.