DATE: Saturday, November 29, 1997           TAG: 9711300131

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Guy Friddell 

                                            LENGTH:   52 lines

A JUST TRIBUTE FOR A LIFE FILLED WITH LAUGHTER, FRIENDS, LOVE

The late Hunter A. Hogan Jr. was remembered Friday in a way he would have loved mightily - amid the laughter of kin and a host of friends.

In a eulogy at Sacred Heart Church in Norfolk, Hogan's nephew, Josh Darden, focused on his joy in life rather than his triumphs as a towering figure in real estate, First Citizen of Norfolk, ``and unflagging advocate of worthy causes.''

He lived life under full sail, Darden said: ``still surfing in his 60s, skiing in his 70s, working out at the Y three days a week in his 80s.

``My only surprise in his passing away is that it didn't happen coming down a Black Diamond slope at Aspen. His daughters used to say it wasn't a matter of when Hunter would die, but if. It's hard to believe it's really happened.''

Darden said he aimed to get through without tears the ``celebration of a life well lived.''

He told how Hogan and his three younger brothers, who lived next door to another Irish family, decided ``the best way to celebrate St. Patrick's Day was to paint the neighbor's dog green.

``Fortunately for them, it was a water-based paint and the dog was rinsed off and survived.''

He teased everybody, said Darden, even his saintly mother, Cecilia.

``Hunter always told her his brother Jack was her favorite son.

``So in her final days, when he would come by to see her, his mother would look up dimly, and he would say, `Mother, it's your favorite son, Jack' and she would say `Hunter, stop that - I know it's you!' ''

He loved to travel, always on the go for business, and when he wasn't on the road he was on the phone long distance, making a deal.

His partners accused him of eating up most of the company's profits with his travel expenses.

On one trip, he and a friend, Billy Dickson, took Darden's wife-to-be, Betty, and her five roommates to dinner at the Stork Club in New York.

``We had broken up just before that, and he got us on the phone that night and got us back together, and we were married four months later,'' Darden noted.

At the rehearsal dinner in Concord, N.C., Betty's home, ``Hunter stood up in front of a room full of distinguished North Carolinians and told them he had advised my mother, when sending out the invitations, not only to put `black tie' down but to add `shoes.'

``He said he was convinced most North Carolinians didn't wear shoes and it would be embarrassing to see them arrive in black tie and bare feet.

``The marriage went forward anyway.''

Darden needn't have feared that he might lose his composure. Most of the tears were those of mirth as laughter, again and again, swept the crowded church.

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