(For George and Dorothy Ogle, with Rev. Kil‑Sang Yoon’s Commemoration)

Opening Invocation

I have known the Ogles’ Urban Industrial Mission in Korea, their courage beneath the dictatorship, their solidarity with the condemned of the In Hyuk Dang, their voices raised against torture and false trials. In those years, we Korean American colleagues petitioned, declared protests before Congress and the State Department, bearing witness that truth must not be silenced.

Poetic Meditation

Between the sirens of Incheon and the hush of the chapel,
two voices entered—
George, with the prophet’s cry,
Dorothy, with the healer’s touch.

They met in Chicago,
a nurse and a pastor,
drawn together by the poor,
by the cries of children,
by the call of faith.

Together they crossed the Pacific,
to dwell among laborers,
to cradle children in two languages,
to weave hope in the shadow of machines.

Exile came, as exile comes to prophets—
he deported, she uprooted,
yet both turned absence into testimony,
both carried Korea in their lives,
and their lives in Korea.

Later years brought illness,
and Dorothy’s hands became
the hands of mercy,
holding George through tremors,
until love itself became the last liturgy.

– TaeHun Yoon

Personal Remembrance

I met them once, in 2010, at UCLA— George a panelist at a Korea Peace Conference, Dorothy at his side, desiring Korean food. We shared a meal, and though it was the first and last time, the memory lingers.

In retirement, I called them seasonally, especially on Dorothy’s birthday, December 28. After George passed, Dorothy said to me: “Kil Sang, I am your older sister. I was born in 1935, you in 1938. Now address me Noonym.” And so I did, with filial love.

Closing Confession

Reading their memoir Our Lives in Korea and Korea in Our Lives, I am assured: the guiding love of the Triune God moved them, to form a family, to share God’s will, to assist Koreans in rebuilding life after war and division.

Their footsteps linger still— like a rhythm beneath the noise, like a flame beneath the ash, like a whisper of eternity in the language of the poor, in the language of the faithful, in the language of those who wait.