Our Cathedral's second organist

by Gary Topping

In a church that prides itself on historical continuity, one of the most remarkable continuities is the occupant of the organ bench at the Cathedral of the Madeleine.

The first one was the remarkable Nora Gleason, a daughter of Irish immigrants who Bishop Scanlan plucked from the mining towns of southern Utah and saw to her education in Salt Lake City and Chicago. She became the organist in the old St. Mary’s Cathedral which preceded the Cathedral of the Madeleine, played and directed the choirs at the dedication of the present Cathedral, and continued to occupy the organ bench until Bishop Scanlan died in 1915, and Bishop Glass had been ordained. She died in 1918. I have written about her previously, and you may find those stories on the Archives web site under "Past Archives."

When Gleason retired, she was replaced by a young protégé, Ethel Hogan, who continued in the position through the tenure of no fewer than five bishops, almost until her death in 1975. Hogan was born in Aspen, Colo., in 1903, but her family moved to Salt Lake City when she was a young girl. She studied music at St. Mary’s Academy and the University of Utah, later doing graduate work at Notre Dame University. She became the cathedral organist in 1917 at the amazing age of 14.

As an adult she was a woman of great physical beauty, which she enhanced by adopting a flamboyant personal style almost like that of a movie star. With red hair and rings on every finger, she cut a striking figure driving about in her Cadillac. Her marital history resembled that of many movie stars as well, for she was married altogether three times, acquiring the unwieldy designation of Ethel Hogan Heinz Hanson Merrill. A dissimilarity with move stars, though, is that she never divorced; she simply had the misfortune of having two husbands die before her (she was survived by her third husband, who she married barely a year before her death).

To have continued that long as Cathedral organist, she must have been a superb musician. (She was long before my time at the Cathedral, and although she recorded an album of organ music in the 1950s, I have not yet located a copy.) Church organists have to be skilled at improvisation to occupy gaps in the liturgy, but apparently she was capable of improvising some very complex pieces. During the 1960s she published two collections of marches that she had improvised at the organ bench and someone had transcribed into notation. One was the "Monsignor March," composed to celebrate the naming of Fr. William McDougall as Monsignor. Don’t expect our current organist, Doug O’Neill, to play it at any Masses soon, but he played it for me recently and I think we were both impressed at its sophistication.

Ethel Hogan Merrill died in California on Feb. 24, 1975, at the age of 71. After a funeral Mass at the Cathedral, she was interred at Mount Calvary Cemetery.