William Henry Slavick

Bill met his beloved late wife, Ursula Lukas, in Germany where they married in 1955. His children: Susanne (Andrew Johnson), Elisabeth (Alceu Hiltner), Sarah (Kevin Rainey), Stephen (Lorena Slavick), Madeleine (Ian Saville), John Henry (deceased), and elin (David Richardson). His grandchildren: Ian, André, Lara, Itala, Leon, Cole, Lorena, Lily, Guthrie, and Harper with great-grand-daughter Isadora.

Bill was born in Tennessee to Henry W. Slavick, a Memphis radio pioneer, and Lenore O’Hara. He was the 1945 valedictorian of Bartlett High, Gleaner editor, basketball letterman, Eagle Scout and Red Cross Senior Lifeguard.

He graduated from University of Notre Dame with a Ph.D. and was eternally grateful to his professor Frank O’Malley, renowned for gifting his students with a Christian worldview. Professor Francis Joseph Brown introduced him to Catholic social teaching.

Bill authored a book on DuBose Heyward, author of the novel Porgy. He published on the work of and organized the 1981 Centenary Conference on Kentucky poet and novelist Elizabeth Madox Roberts, whose letters he has been editing.

A passionate advocate of civil rights, social justice, peace and non-violence in and outside of academe, Bill’s stances on racial integration, hiring women and faculty governance led to a nomadic teaching career in Baton Rouge, South Bend, Geneseo and Milwaukee. He traveled further with two Fulbrights to Germany.

Bill taught at University of Southern Maine from 1970 to 1995, chaired the English Department, and played a large role in faculty governance. He served as Chair of the Maine American Association of University Professors Conference. For USM’s 1978 centennial, he presented the Southern Renascence literature conference featuring Eudora Welty. He was invited to address the 2005 USM Honor Students’ Convocation, where his record of community service was praised. Several colleagues regarded Bill as the conscience of the campus.

A fearless champion of justice in the wider world, Bill urged redress of Zionist dispossession and violence in Palestine, and opposed needless wars, war crimes, self-serving sabotage of self-governance in other countries, and policies responsible for the callous loss of so many lives.

Once characterized as a “pugnacious apostle for peace,” Bill was a member of Maine Veterans for Peace and Peace Action Maine and a founder of Maine Haiti Solidarity and Maine Peace and Justice in Israel/Palestine. Coordinator of Pax Christi Maine for 25 years, he organized the 1995 Pax Christi USA Assembly in Gorham and helped bring in Daniel Berrigan, UN General Assembly President Fr. Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, and Joan Chittister. He hosted Haiti President Aristide in Portland for the Oscar Romero award, also awarded to Brazilian Cardinal Arns, the Plowshares, and Kathy Kelly. In 1996, he received the Portland Chapter 174 Amnesty International Human Rights Activist Award. Church World, the nationally recognized Maine Catholic newspaper, published his articles regularly. He and Ursula also initiated Pilgrimage, an interfaith Portland bookstore that closed in 2003. In 2006, Bill ran as an Independent against Senator Susan Collins, winning 5% of the vote.

In 2000, at 73, he worked with his son and son-in-law, building a Sebago Lake house where his family has gathered happily every summer since. About the same time, he proposed twinning Sacred Heart/St. Dominic Church with Christ Roi parish in Haiti. For more that 20 years, he and Ursula were major fundraisers and benefactors in building and supporting the grade school there.

Bill believed in the Catholic Action maxim that your apostolate is where you are. He acted with principle and generosity near and far, launching a Memphis interracial church discussion group in the 50’s, fighting for open housing and against the Vietnam War in Milwaukee in the 70’s (and every war since); and, with Ursula, welcoming and housing immigrants, a nun, and a homeless woman. Along the way he chauffeured Dorothy Day, Cardinal Arns, and School of Americas leader Roy Bourgeois; gave President Johnson five words for a retort; recorded Blessed Thea Bowman’s discussion of black American spiritual singing, attended readings by Dylan Thomas, E.E. Cummings, Eudora Welty and John Crowe Ransom, met Jimmy Carter three times, Bishop Helder Camara, Eugene McCarthy, Glenway Wescott and Roy Acuff. He was the only Bartlett High student with a Willkie button but eventually saw the light.

Bill was an inveterate fixer-upper, rabid recycler, furious op-ed-writer, endless list maker with impossible deadlines, and enjoyed reading, gardening, Corky’s BBQ, iced tea and ice cream, making his mother’s fruitcake, the pontoon, Democracy Now! and Masterpiece Theatre, and Irish music, Gregorian chants and Dixieland Jazz.

A funeral Mass will be celebrated May 10 at 11am at St. Pius X Church, 492 Ocean Ave, Portland ME (live-stream: https://ladyofhopemaine.org). A church hall reception follows.

In lieu of flowers, contributions to the Haiti Project are welcome, payable to Susanne Slavick, 14 Swan Dr, Pittsburgh PA 15237, with ‘For Haiti’ in memory of Bill Slavick’ on the memo line.