Marcel Gerard Hogue

Generation

Hogue family generation number 11.32

Born

16 October 1947, Blackstone, RI

Living

78 years old

Relationships

Parents

10.27 Damase A. Hogue (1923–1990)

Lucille Marcotte

Partners

Denise Laferriere

Parents

daughter of Lionel Laferriere and Mirza Beaudoin

Born

1948-09-13, Woonsocket, Rhode Island

About

I have been asked to say a few things about myself and my brothers and sisters. I thought this would be easy, but I’m finding it more difficult than I first thought.

I’m hard pressed to relate anything to you about my early childhood years because I do not have strong recollections. I was all caught up in my own little world of play time, I guess, and was not really aware of the real world outside of Rathbun Street. When I first came home from the hospital, mom and dad were living in an apartment on Wood Avenue in Woonsocket, a stone’s throw from the hospital. That mental image is from pictures of the three of us sitting in the living room. I’m not sure if my sister Lorraine is brought to that place three years later, but at some point, the new Hogue family moves to Rathbun Street, to the second floor of a three-floor tenement house.

I think the story is that Dad and Uncle Raymond Gingras, who is married to Aurelie (neé Marcotte), my mom’s sister, buy the house from Uncle Andre Marcotte, brother to Lucille and Aurelie, and begin their lives, raising children and making a life. Cousins Jeanine and Leo live on the first floor, the Hogues live on the second, and the third floor is rented out at various times to other people to help with the mortgage payments. (Andre Gingras I think was born in Worcester.)

Most of my early and teen years were spent at the Rathbun Street house. I remember building model cars from plastic kits that I would buy from a hole-in-the-wall hobby shop on Clinton Street. The guy who ran the place was a bandmate of my dad, the building long gone with the development of the Social Street rehab. My dad played trombone and this guy played the drums. I loved putting these kits together, painting them, and tweaking them with decals and “fuzz” that simulated upholstery on the interiors. I had my own little spot in the basement that I made for myself where I could lay out my stuff and work.

I also had a couple of work tables in that basement where I set up my Army men, which were Civil War Army men. I had the Union North in a pitched battle with the Confederate South with all the required explosions, rocky outcroppings, broken and splintered trees, and men engaged in mortal combat. Since they were all the same color when you bought them, I would paint the uniforms blue or gray with black or brown for the accoutrements and rifles. I tried to make it as realistic as possible.

I don’t know what happened to all of that while I was staying in Worcester with the Gingras family while I attended Quisigamond Community College, but the property was sold to the church so they could construct a new one. I suspect it all got buried when the Rathbun Street house was moved to King Avenue and the hole filled in for the new construction of the new St Theresa’s church, which we were next door neighbors with. The “old” church was sold and moved to the Millerville Mens Club, and the “new” church was built on “our” Rathbun Street property. So all of my memories are from my years at the Rathbun Street address.

My high school years were relatively uneventful, except for CYO (Catholic Youth Organization) activities where I got a taste for the theater with our production of a Minstrel show — some singing and dancing by us teenagers as a CYO fundraiser. My buddy Paul Gauthier was in the show along with other CYO members and some “girl-friends,” and we all had a good time. At some point, another neighborhood buddy, Peter Gurka, and I tried our hand at a Simon-and-Garfunkel-type folk singing duo and had a very limited success. We were a hit with our friends.

As fate would have it, I met my future wife at my cousin Richard Marcotte’s wedding rehearsal. Unknown to me at the time, she had the hots for me and lobbied her sister Lucille to hook us up as a couple in the bridal party. Denise would admit that it was a rocky relationship at best in the beginning, as it was an on again-off again kind of thing for a while.

When I come home from college in 1966, I enlisted in the army. I was afraid to be drafted and given a rifle and sent to Vietnam, so I told myself that if I voluntarily joined, at least I would have a shot at doing something else. I signed up with the guarantee of clerk school, which may have been a little bit naive, but they actually came through. I had some typing skills, so October of 1966 I was off to South Carolina for basic training and then to Georgia for “advanced” training, which meant more crawling through red mud, invigorating “hikes” through the countryside, dodging bullets and explosions, and daily classroom instruction on military procedures and related paperwork. Long story short, I ended up in Vietnam anyway, but with a stroke of luck or divine intervention I ended up at MACV headquarters in (then) Saigon for the duration of 1968, the famous year of the “Tet” offensive. In another stroke of luck, I was issued a weapon but never had to use it. The poor bastards on the perimeter of the compound got most of the action and it was a tense couple of weeks, but eventually things returned to normal, whatever that is in a war zone. My tour of duty ended in October of ‘68 and I was off to Arizona for the last year of my “hitch.”

I got another taste of theater by performing in “Guys and Dolls” at a community theater near or on the base, I don’t remember which. I bought a 1964 Chevy Impala while I was there and drove it home when I got out. I was going to “see the USA in my Chevrolet” but made it back to Blackstone in three days instead of three weeks owning to homesickness. I cruised downtown Woonsocket in my car and happened across Denise, fate having intervened again, as she was walking back to work at just that moment. And the rest is history, as they say.

Suffice it to say, I eventually came to my senses; we were married in 1972 and had two beautiful boys, both of which we are extremely proud.

— Marcel Hogue, written July 2026

Notes

Most of the genealogy found here in this site of the Hogue, Marcotte, Champagne, and Laquerre families comes from research Marcel has pieced together from primary sources and the work of other family amateur genealogists.

Lineage

1. 11.32 Marcel Hogue, child of Damase A. Hogue and Lucille Marcotte
2. 10.27 Damase A. Hogue (1923–1990), child of Albert Joseph Hogue and Juvenile “Juvenie” Champagne
3. 9.24 Albert Joseph Hogue (1880–1974), child of Francois Hogue and Marie Lemere
4. 8.17 Francois Hogue (1846–1904), child of Michel Hogue and Marguerite Latour Ballard
5. 7.7 Michel Hogue (about 1815–1847), child of Jean Marie Hogue and Marie Anne Casavant
6. 6 Jean Marie Hogue (1767–1827), child of Jean Marie Hogue and Marie Amable Brodeur
7. 5.4 Jean Marie Hogue (1740–?), child of Jean Baptiste Hogue and Marie Marguerite Brasseau
8. 4.3 Jean Baptiste Hogue (1709–?), child of Jean Baptiste Hogue and Barbe Coiteux (Coetteux)
9. 3.4 Jean Baptiste Hogue (1680–1750), child of Pierre Hogue dit St. Malo and Jeanne Theodore
10. 2.1 Pierre Hogue dit St. Malo (about 1648–1725), child of Jean Hogue and Nicole Dubus
11. 1.0 Jean Hogue (about 1625–1676)

Last revised/updated 21 December 2016