By Lauren FitzPatrick
Staff writer
The dark and normally silent Nation of Celestial Space most likely is wailing at the passing of one of its founding philosophers and historians, James C. Mangan.
Celestia, as it is also known, is known to most of us as simply outer space. Celestia was founded in 1948 after Mr. Mangan helped form its philosophies with his father, James T. Mangan. The nation’s members numbered in the thousands at its peak.
The ideas that shaped Celestia fueled Mr. Mangan’s charming wit and long, successful career as an entrepreneur.
Mr. Mangan, of Orland Park, died Aug. 29 of cancer.
Though he never had any children, he played often with his nieces and nephews.
Every Christmas Eve, he’d take the kids and his beloved terrier Ted Williams for a walk around their Oak Lawn neighborhood to look for Santa, said nephew Todd Stump, the so-called “Duke of the Milky Way”, who currently is reviving Celestia with his brothers.
“I’m fed up with this waiting, let’s go look for (Santa),” Mr. Mangan would say, rounding up the children.
A few blocks later, he’d announce, “I think I saw him,” and hurry back to the house where presents were waiting under the tree.
Born June 15, 1929, the elder of two children, Mr. Mangan grew up around 93rd and Bishop streets and went to Leo High School. His father was in the ad business and stayed up late at night writing a slew of self-help books with titles like, “The Knack of Selling Yourself,” and “The Secret of Perfect Living.”
The Mangan men matched wits every night at the dinner table of their Evergreen Park home, talking about politics and international affairs, sister Ruth Mangan Stump said.
While Mr. Mangan was at the University of Chicago, where he earned a degree in 1950, his father laid claim to Celestia and looked to his son to help him lay down its laws and philosophies. For example, the nation banned nuclear testing in the atmosphere.
The Nation of Celestial Space was born while the elder Mangan worked from an office on the 43rd floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, Ruth Mangan Stump said.
While her father, James T. Mangan, was looking out his window over the sky, his partner said, “Boy, I wonder who owns all that.”
As the story goes, her father replied, “Nobody does. I think I’ll claim it.”
He filed papers in 1948 with the Cook County Recorder of Deeds and Titles, designating all of outer space as Celestia, as this new nation was called. The nation issued gold coins, stamps and passports to the moon during the space race of the 1960s and banned taxes as its First
Amendment.
“The second amendment was, ‘Never change the first amendment,’ ” Ruth Mangan Stump said.
The Celestian flag was even allowed to fly at the United Nations in 1958.
Mr. Mangan also served in the U.S. Army as combat infantryman in the foxholes of Korea.
Then at age 29, Mr. Mangan suffered a massive stroke, Stump said.
As he lay in his bed, his room at St. George’s Hospital was illuminated by the neon sign of a tavern across the street. He told his sister one night, “I can’t wait to get out of here and buy the house a drink.”
But doctors couldn’t figure out the cause of the cerebral hemorrhage in such a young body, and chalked it up to his boozy nights at the Beverly Bowling Alley. They told him his drinking days were over.
“That settled it,” his sister said. “He looked out the window and said, ‘I can’t get over there, so I might as well get married.’ ” He never had another drink in his life.
Within months, Mr. Mangan was instructed to take his sister to a picnic with the St. Killian’s Young People’s club “to meet someone” and ended up finding the love of his life at a poker table.
Bobbi Rodgers, the future Mrs. Mangan, already was raking in the quarters and nickels when a seat opened up at the card table.
They married May 20, 1961, and since then were inseparable, even running a business together.
His Irish charm and determination to please a customer made him a winning salesman, while she kept count of the money and paid all the bills at Rite-Away Papers in Oak Lawn and later in Thornton.
“We got along very well,” Bobbi Mangan said. “We went overboard to keep a guy happy that wanted to order something.”
Even if that meant making calls at night or driving an hour to make a delivery, she said.
After the wedding, the Mangans moved to a new subdivision at 106th and Laramie in Oak Lawn where they called St. Linus Parish home.
Catholicism was a central facet in Mr. Mangan’s life. For more than 20 years, Mr. Mangan taught adults who wanted to become Catholics or return to the faith. He also served as a Eucharistic minister.
“It was very important to him to go to confession, even when he was very ill,” his sister said. She would joke with his wife when he continued to go, asking, “What has he done?”
After the couple had moved to Orland Park, and Mr. Mangan had given back his keys to St. Linus, they were among the first members of St. Francis of Assisi Parish.
Within three weeks of attending daily mass at the new church, he came home and handed a set of keys to the church to his wife for safekeeping, saying, “That didn’t take very long.”
Memorial gifts may be made to the St. Francis of Assisi Church Building Fund, 15050 S. Wolf Road, Orland Park, IL 60467.
Aside from his wife and sister, Mr. Mangan also is survived by inlaws Dr. Phil and Mary Jo Levoy, Jay and “Bubbles” Sabath, Maureen Rodgers and Don Stump; and many nieces, nephews and cousins.
Arrangements were by Lawn Funeral Home, (708) 429-3200.
Lauren FitzPatrick may be reached at lfitzpatrick@dailysouthtown.com or (708) 633-5964.
