North Central mourns loss of advocate for civil rights, students
Naperville's North Central College is mourning the loss of a longtime advocate for civil rights and students. The Rev. George August St. Angelo, Jr., of Naperville, died Sunday at age 90 after a lengthy battle with esophageal cancer.
St. Angelo, described by several former students as the most influential educator on campus between 1955 and 1966, was perhaps best known for initiating the college's required chapel and speaker program.
Rev. Lynn Pries, campus chaplain since 1994 and a 1967 North Central graduate, said St. Angelo's passion for getting students fired up about the topic of the day, especially those pertaining to social justice and civil rights, fueled the speaker program by bringing in journalists Howard K. Smith and Eric Sevareid, “Freedom Ride” organizer and Committee on Racial Equality founder James Farmer, actor Basil Rathbone, Henry Kissinger and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
“For many students, this was exposure to the issues of the world that grabbed our attention and got us involved,” Pries said. “There have been countless educators on campus but perhaps none more influential than George. Everyone had an opinion about him and almost everyone loved him.”
President Hal Wilde said few will forget the campus' first chaplain.
“George is certainly a towering figure in the history of this college,” Wilde said. “Students who passed through North Central during those years would tell you there was no more incandescent figure on campus than George St. Angelo.”
A 1943 North Central graduate with degrees in political science and business administration, St. Angelo joined the Army where he was skilled as a German translator in World War II.
After the war, St. Angelo attended the London School of Economics and returned to Naperville to earn a degree in theology from the Evangelical Theological Seminary and married fellow North Central graduate Betty Jane Gibson.
St. Angelo also wrote and delivered numerous sermons, led several student religious organizations and was active in the civil rights movement.
He gave roughly four sermons a year, Pries said, and his Sunday services were always well attended.
“George just had a way of communicating one message and having it resound with just about everyone in the room,” he said.
He also had a knack for empowering his students. After Bloody Sunday on March 7, 1965, when citizens of Selma, Ala., tried to peaceably march for voters' rights, St. Angelo led dozens of North Central students and community members to participate in a later voter registration rights march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on March 21, 1965.
During his years at North Central College, St. Angelo took students into Chicago to visit homeless shelters and missions, to ride on calls with police officers and to tutor young people who lived in Chicago's African-American communities. He also led educational student tours all around the globe.
In 1968, he retired from active ministry and created Seminars International, an educational travel service that specialized in rich historical and cultural experiences for more than 40 years. Well into his 80s, he remained personally involved in leading tours and served on the board until his death.
He is survived by his wife Betty of Naperville; two daughters, Becky McCabe and Tina Wetzel, and son Bill St. Angelo.
A public memorial service will be at 2 p.m. March 31 at North Central College's Wentz Concert Hall at the Fine Arts Center, 171 E. Chicago Ave., Naperville.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to North Central College, the Nazareth Academic Institute, or Hope United Church of Christ.