This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Hugh Hollister Hogle was a champion for life, saving patients as a doctor and protecting the wild as a conservationist.
But Hogle's life ended Feb. 25, dying at the age of 76 in Holladay. But what a life: one of the challenges his family faced when writing his obituary — which, even at more than 1,600 words — was encompassing everything, his daughter Erin Taylor said, from his pioneering medical accomplishments to his award-winning conservation leadership.
At the heart of all those great feats, Hogle was a people person.
"He was one of those people who loved life and he loved people and he didn't care if you were rich or poor," his daughter Erin Taylor said. He forged long-lasting friendships at gas stations. He became friends with patients. He bonded with his duck-hunting buddies. Hogle "was one of those people [who] people were drawn to."
Born in Salt Lake City in 1939 to James and Bonnie Hogle (who donated the land for Hogle Zoo), he later married the love of his life, Carol Bernstrom, in 1960, and "treated her like gold," Taylor said. After graduating from the University of Utah School of Medicine in 1967, Hogle became the first surgeon to successfully graft a pancreas from one person to another. He later pioneered methods for post-mastectomy reconstruction surgery and became dedicated to breast cancer treatments.
In that spirit, he founded the Holy Cross Hospital Breast Care Center and led the Women's Center at St. Marks Hospital Breast Care services. Together, Hogle and some of his patients also wrote "Our Gift of Love," a book guiding women through breast cancer treatment that sold clsoe to 450 copies at the first signing. Hogle even offered his expertise on local and national television, and the Susan G. Komen Foundation would go on to honor his contributions to breast cancer awareness.
But while medicine was certainly a passion, Hogle's church was "the Great Outdoors," where he felt closest to God, according to his obituary. He loved photographing wildlife and landscapes, and took up duck hunting, fishing and bow hunting as opportunities to venture into the wild and, true to his nature, bond with people.
"It was in nature that he forged his deepest friendships, and where he taught life lessons to his children," his obituary reads. "It was in the pursuit of fish and game that Hugh developed his deep spirituality and his great love of life."
Family vacations always became a journey to the outdoors: the beach, Lake Powell, Flaming Gorge. His passion was so infectious, his five children share it today. He shared that passion with others, too, cofounding Anglers' Inn fishing tackle stores and, in 1971, wrote and helped produce the movie "Toklat," starring Leon Ames as an outdoorsman searching for the eponymous grizzly bear.
Hogle sat on the board of directors of many conservation and wildlife groups, too. At the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, for instance, he spent years protecting habitat for elk. In 1994, then-Pres. Bill Clinton appointed Hogle to the Utah Reclamation Mitigation and Conservation Commission, where he oversaw the use of public funds for habitat protection, according to his obituary.
But a year later, in 1995, a massive stroke in the jungle changed everything.
Hogle, 55 years old then, was fishing deep in the Brazilian Amazon when it hit. The damage was huge: he could no longer speak, he lost the use of his right arm, and his right leg was damaged. In an instant, "the great orator was silenced; the scalpel retired, and the skill to save lives lost," his obit reads.
Taylor is thankful that the stroke didn't change her father's personality, as happens with others. Before and after, he was a jokester and a magnetic people person. And although he never fully recovered his speech or full use of his limbs, Hogle managed to walk again and regained a rich, if different, quality of life.
Nothing came between him and the outdoors. After learning to cast a fishing rod with one hand, Hogle usually out-fished everyone in his boat. He had to retire his rifle, but he learned to shoot a bow by pulling the string with his teeth, "to the demise of many deer, antelope and even a bear," according to his obit.
Always an avid photographer of wildlife and landscapes, Hogle kept busy late into his life with his lens, too, capturing scenes from Africa, to the Cook Islands of the South Pacific, to the frontier beauty of Wyoming.
"My dad worked so hard to regain so much," Taylor said. "… He lived."
He lived for his family, too. No one had a bigger supporter than Hogle.
"He was always our biggest cheerleader for anything we did in life: a job, a vacation we wanted to take, a trip we wanted to do," Taylor said, adding that "he was also my mom's fiercest fan."
And he continued to make friends and treated people well. He was happy to see people, even if he wasn't feeling his best, and continued to make them feel like the most important person in a room, Taylor said.
She recalled a popular saying about living your life so that if somebody talked bad about you, no one would believe it. "That's who my dad was," she said.
Hogle is survived by his two brothers and his wife, Carol Bernstrom, their five children, 16 grandchildren and 20 great-grandchildren. His family is planning a celebration of his life, but details have not been firmed up yet. Anyone interested should email HHHCelebration@gmail.com.
"The legacy of the life of Hugh Hollister Hogle is a living one," his obituary reads near its conclusion. "It can be viewed in the human lives he made better, it can be heard in the bugle of a bull elk or the whistling wings of pintail ducks high overhead, it can be felt in the memories of those who knew and loved him, for 'It is in giving that we receive and in loving that we are loved."
Twitter: @MikeyPanda