Fr Mihalic dies in California (Post Courier)

Robin Hide rhide at postbox.anu.edu.au
Tue Dec 11 11:31:48 EST 2001


Sad news,
Robin

Post Courier
News          Tuesday 11th December 2001


Fr Mihalic dies in California

CATHOLIC priest, missionary, newspaper editor, linguist, compiler of the
first Tok Pisin dictionary and educator Fr Frank Mihalic (in the
Post-Courier file photo above) died at the weekend.
Divine Word Missionaries in Mount Hagen said yesterday Fr Mihalic died in
his Californian home of the United States on December 8, 2001 after
suffering from pneumonia and its complications.
Son of a Pennsylvanian farmer and railwayman, Fr Mihalic was born on
November 24, 1916 to a family of 10 — four boys and six girls and raised
among a “missionary magazine reading” family.
Fr Mihalic first came to PNG as a missionary in 1948 and was based in
Alexishafen, Madang.
A few months later he was posted to Marienberg, East Sepik Province as
parish priest where one of his first parishioners was “young” Michael
Somare who later became the country’s first Prime Minister. He worked
mostly in the Mamose region until his return to the States due to “severe
body complications” and after the Italy divine word missionaries recalled
him.
In 1969 Fr Mihalic returned to Wewak to set up the Wantok Newspaper and
remained editor until 1979. During those years Fr Frank published the
Jacaranda dictionary and grammar of Melanesian pidgin, widely used in PNG
in the early days — he also found time to translate the PNG Constitution
into Tok Pisin and in 1981 was awarded the OBE for services rendered to
Pidgin in PNG and an honorary doctorate of linguistics from the University
of PNG.
In 1982 he was asked to head the Communication Arts department at the
Divine Word University until 1997.
Fr Mihalic spent 52 years teaching in PNG and in his term wrote more than
30 books, some of which are now used in many schools.



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