Captain Mike Hogg of Company D

         On June 9 Mike wrote to Ima that “About two-thirds of those that came over at first will be sent home in the next week. I hope I have made good and won’t be in the bunch. I think I have.” He already knew how to shoot, from a boyhood of hunting with his father and his two brothers. Now he was aiming to hunt a different kind of game. On May 8, 1917, 3,000 men had begun 3 months of intensive training at Camp Funston; on August 15, 1,846 of them had graduated as second lieutenants. One was Lieutenant Mike Hogg. His older brother, Will, once described him as “not particularly studious,” but “fairly aggressive and industrious.”

         After a two-week leave in Houston, Mike Hogg moved on to Camp Travis, near San Antonio. There he was soon promoted: He was then Captain Mike Hogg, Company D, lst Battalion, 360^th Infantry Regiment, 180^th Brigade, 90^th Division.

         He had four or five lieutenants under his command, and his total company ranged from about 200 to 250.

        

         In the trenches at the Western Front, they would be reduced to 115.

Remembering Memorial Park

I sent this letter to the Houston Chronicle on May 29, and it ran in “Letters” on June 2.

Just in case you missed it.

Regarding Allyn West’s “Master plan aims to bring the memorial back to Memorial Park” (Page A3, May 29), it would be well to remember that the site of Camp Logan, the World War I military training camp, along with additional acreage, was bought in 1923 and 1924 by Houston’s Hogg family to preserve as a park. In an arrangement with the city of Houston, and with a donation of $50,000 by Will, Mike, and Ima Hogg, Memorial Park, named to honor the soldiers who fought in World War I, opened as a public park in 1925.  At 1,500 acres it is one of the largest urban parks in the nation. As we remember the Great War of a hundred years ago, Houstonians can thank the Hoggs for Memorial Park. 

Virginia Bernhard