Extension magazine - Spring 2024

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Donor Profile
Extension | Spring 2024 45
Since its inception in
1906, Extension magazine
has made a powerful
impact in countless
households across multiple
generations. For
example, 6,000 women passionately
sewed vestments for priests
in the U.S. missions through the
Order of Martha that was started
by Catholic Extension Society in
1911. One of those women was the
mother of the late Cardinal Francis
George of Chicago.
Likewise, more than 700 baby
boomers remember how Catholic
Extension Society recruited
them as young adults in the 1960s
to spend two life-changing years
serving the poor in the U.S. They
were called the Extension Lay
Volunteers.
But one family’s history with
Catholic Extension Society is even
more special.
Lolita Hagio is a supporter of
Catholic Extension Society. Her
late mother’s life was transformed
by a program in Extension magazine
called the “Chaperon Club.”
It began in 1927 after readers had
requested for years that the publication
devise a way to connect
them with other Catholics from
around the country.
Unmarried Catholics over the
age of 17 were eligible to join.
Interested readers mailed in brief
descriptions of themselves and
their hobbies. They were assigned
an anonymous “club number,”
their information was printed in a
bulletin, and they could then start
a letter-writing relationship with
another member.
By 1950, more than 40,000
people had joined since the
Extension’s pen pal
club sparked love
A widow’s second marriage began with
magazine’s pre-tech dating service
program’s inception. A magazine
issue from that year stated,
“While we shout from the housetops
that we are not a matrimonial
bureau, nor do we encourage
such a thing, we cannot stop
certain acquaintances from ripening
into deep friendships, and
some into love, and we must
admit that hundreds of marriages
have resulted.” It can only
be concluded that, for decades,
Extension magazine offered the
pre-technology version of online
dating for Catholics.
It was through this initiative
that Lolita’s widowed mother,
Irene, found love in 1962 at the
age of 65.
Late-in-life love
Irene’s husband had passed
away in 1950 after 31 years of marriage.
He worked for the Rock
Island Railroad in Chicago, where
he and Irene raised seven children,
including a son who served
in World War II. Ten years after
her husband’s death, they had all
moved away, and Irene found herself
living alone.
Lolita recalled visiting her
mother one day.
“What would you think if I got
married again?” Irene asked.
“Mom, that would be great, but
you don’t know anybody,” Lolita
replied. She was surprised
and thought her mother couldn’t
be serious. Her mother was an
intensely shy person and not a
risk taker, she said.
Irene told her daughter about
the gentleman she had been writing
letters back and forth with for
several months through the Chaperon
Club program in Extension
magazine. His name was Albert, a
widower himself, and he lived in
Montana.
“My mom felt it was OK to correspond
with this person. She
sensed that it that was a good
thing that it was in a Catholic magazine,”
Lolita said. “She felt that
someone—of course, Himself—was
guiding her up there.”
To the shock of her friends and
family, Irene cleared out her home,
bought a train ticket, and traveled
by herself to Montana. When she
saw Albert waiting for her at the
train station, “she knew she had
made the right decision,” Lolita
recalled.
They married shortly after Irene
arrived. The wedding took place in
the Extension Society–supported
faith community of Choteau,
Montana.
Lolita reflected that Albert was
different than her father. He was
an outdoorsman, with Chippewa
and French-Canadian heritage. He
had been a cowboy in his youth.
Irene embraced his lifestyle, learning
to fish and trap. They shared a
strong faith and adventurous spirit.
“He was such a good man. Our
family just adored him and accepted
him,” Lolita said.
After several years in Montana,
they moved to Arizona for the
warmer weather. Albert passed
away from cancer in 1972 in the
care of Irene’s family in Chicago.
Irene lived another 10 years before
dying at the age of 85.
Passing on the joy
Catholic Extension Society is
part of Lolita’s family story by
helping her mother discover love
and happiness in life. “Extension
magazine made all this happen. It
provided a whole new life for her,”
she said. “Mom was a woman of
faith, and that drove her to make
the decisions in her life.”
Lolita’s connection to Catholic
Extension Society is even
more personal. In 1950 we helped
build her own parish, St. George,
in a Utah town that shares the
same name. Today the parish is a
vibrant, multicultural faith community
where Lolita serves as a
cantor.
Lolita has made sure to carry
LEFT The Chaperon
Club is advertised
through this
illustration in a 1961
issue of Extension
magazine.
FAR LEFT Irene and
Albert fell in love
and married after
meeting through
Extension magazine’s
Chaperon Club.
on her mother’s support of Catholic
Extension Society. She said
she is “fascinated” by the work of
the Catholic Church in the United
States among the poor in the poorest
regions. She knows that Catholic
Extension Society’s impact is
not unique to her family. It is a mission
that has impacted families all
across the country by building up
vibrant Catholic faith communities.
“It makes sense to me to support a
mission like that,” she said.
As a Legacy Club member, Lolita
is committed to helping ensure
that other families experience the
same joy of faith, the enrichment
of community life, and the transformation
of lives and hearts that
Catholic Extension Society brings.