By Paul Hogan
In this post, I would like to honor my Irish heritage and the Hogan name. As I have written before my great-grandparents, James and Johanna Hogan, immigrated from Ireland.
I have been raised with the Hogan name in various forms. There was the great golfer Ben Hogan, or the “Hogan” which is a traditional Navajo hut made of logs and dirt. In college, I spent a St. Patrick’s Day drinking green beer at a place called Hogan’s Alley in Omaha. There’s the New York district attorney Frank Hogan who served for over 30 years and was so well-known for his integrity that the street address for the main office of the New York County District Attorney’s Office was named after him at One Hogan Place. That has a nice ring to it. I wonder if I can get the USPS to change my address from 928 S Broadway to 928 Hogan Place?
There’s Hogan’s Heroes, Hulk Hogan and before Crocodile Dundee, (G’day Mate) became famous the Australian actor, Paul Hogan, had a comedy series that was shown locally in Wichita on channel 8 (public broadcasting system). I received several phone calls asking what kind of show I had on television. The show was silly slapstick but always with buxom women in each scene. (Certainly, that’s NOT the reason I watched the show.) I also had a lady that would call every day after a WWE fight to critique the “Hulk’s” performance. No matter how many times I told her I was not Hulk Hogan she continued to call.
Which leads to “Ta Da “your friend, I am the Wichita car accident lawyer, Paul Hogan. My notoriety, if any, is the television advertising I did for 20 years from 1989 to 2011. Do you remember this guy?
I blogged when he passed away recently. He was my Hollywood actor TV spokesperson in my television ads. I can’t tell you how many times at the first appointment new clients would say,“you’re not the guy on television!” It’s obvious they were not around in the 60s and then I would explain that Robert Vaughn had a hit weekly television show called “The Man from Uncle.” It seemed like, besides The Beatles, all the girls were in love with his sidekick the Russian, played by David McCallum who is now Duckie on NCIS. Vaughn was also in the great western movie “The Magnificent Seven” with other stars such as Steve McQueen, Yul Brynner, James Colburn and Charles Bronson. I note the remake has Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke and Peter Sarsgaard. You do remember Steve McQueen from the detective movie “Bullet,” right? It had one of the first famous car chase scenes with the green Ford mustang screaming up and down the hills of San Francisco.
What happened to my honoring the Irish? Gone like those leaving the homeland during the potato famine. Instead, let me wave the flag and honor all our heritages, not just the Irish but all those with determination, fortitude and guts to come to a new place with the dream to better their lives and their families lives. That dream lived in the past and it is upon that which our state was settled. It is alive today with the richness of our multicultural ethnicity. There are very few of us who can claim a 100 % bloodline and that, my friend, makes us all brothers and sisters and if you choose to be Irish for a day, well then, I look forward to celebrating with you on St Patrick’s day! I remain your Irish,German, Swedish, and who knows what else is mixed in, raised in Our Lady of Guadalupe – an 80% Hispanic parish, but above all else an American mutt and proud of it.