The Wilderness

Joseph Rogon, 61, was different from the fuddled old drifters who vanish nightly into the cold stone wildernesses of Chicago. He paid his rent, had a wife, three sons, and a button for 35 years' faithful service to the International Harvester Co. A Polish immigrant, he spoke little English. But he had never gotten lost before.

The night of Feb. 7 he disappeared. His wife and two sons sought him frantically, checked police stations, hospitals, the morgue. There was no word. Finally, they gave up looking.

In April, the third son, John, returned from the Army. The settled hopelessness in his home started him on a new hunt through the hospitals, morgues, missions, flop houses and police stations. He found no trace until he tried the Missing Persons Bureau. A blurred photograph bore his father's name, but no address. A file card said that Joseph Rogon had died of bronchial pneumonia in Chicago's dreary, red-brick Bridewell Prison Hospital on Feb. 20.

In quiet fury, John Rogon set out to recover his father's body. The trail took him through an incredible, criminal maze of official bungling and indifference.

Joseph Rogon had been found, bruised, vacant-eyed and seriously ill, in a North Side gutter the night of Feb. 7. Whether he had been hit by a car or had just fallen down, no one now knew. He mumbled his name & address to police before they threw him into the holdover. Next day he was fined $50 for disorderly conduct. No one had attempted to notify his family. Unable to pay the fine, he was sent to the prison hospital. There he died. Still his family was not notified. What had happened to his body?

Last week, John Rogon's last hope revived when he heard that his father's body still lay at Chicago's Illinois Demonstrators Co., which disposes of unidentified dead. He hurried there. The clerk was polite but firm--the mistake was unfortunate. The body of Joseph Rogon had already been sold to the Northwestern University medical school. There it had been dissected and the parts cremated.

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