10-Aug-15 – She was “one of the pioneers,” moving into a new apartment at Marina City in 1963 and, not counting a year in Arizona, living there for 52 years.

Betty J. Hogeorges died on July 27. She leaves just five members of a very elite club, people who were the first to occupy one of 896 apartments at Marina City after the world watched it being built.

Born Betty McFarlane on March 18, 1926, her mother was Anna McFarlane and her father, John B. McFarlane, was a Chicago police officer. On July 24, 1915, he was one of the first police officers on the scene of the S.S. Eastland after it rolled over on the Chicago River, killing 844 people.

At the brand new Executive House on Wacker Drive, Betty was executive secretary to the hotel’s general manager, Albert M. Quarles. Starting in late 1960, she watched the construction of Marina City, one block west and across the Chicago River, and knew she wanted to live there.

“I was watching…the two structures moving up, the center core first,” she recalled in 2009. “And I was intrigued by it. Then of course I learned what it was and I was intrigued by the idea of living so close to work. I lived on the South Side, in South Shore, and you might say my life was ruled by train schedules. I just loved the idea of being able to walk to and from work.”

(Above) On November 5, 1960 – 17 days before the groundbreaking ceremony for Marina City – the Chicago Daily News published this photo from a balcony at the new Executive House hotel. Betty McFarlane posed for this photo most likely in July or August 1960. She recalls the photographer, from Terry’s Photography, had her remove her high-heel shoes so that her arms would be level with the balcony railing. When Executive House opened on January 1, 1959, all of the rooms had recessed balconies. In the 1980s, the recessed spaces were enclosed and made flush with the building wall.

While Marina City had a waiting list for new residents, McFarlane had a connection to its management. Morris R. DeWoskin (1903-1970) was president of Condado Caribbean Hotels, Inc., the operator of Executive House, and he was a friend of Charles Swibel, president of Marina Management Corporation.

“Next thing I knew,” says Betty, “I had a phone call from Morrie Swibel.”

Morris Swibel was Charles Swibel’s brother and vice president of Marina City’s property management company.

“Working with Morrie Swibel was a pleasure. ‘What floor would you like to have? What exposure? What view?’ I wanted a south exposure so I could take the sun, for sunbathing on the balcony.” (Left) Betty with broadcasting legend Harry Caray.

Young and single, “full of vim and vigor,” she moved in to an apartment on the 24th floor of Marina City’s east tower on January 31, 1963. Her monthly rent was $155, the equivalent of $1,208 today.

“The day I moved in,” said Betty, “I received a dozen red roses from William McFetridge,” president of the union that financed Marina City, “and the Chicago Tribune was at my door every morning for a year.”

To get to her apartment, she had to walk through a lobby that was covered with wooden planks over mud and lit with bare light bulbs. Cold and damp residential hallways were covered with newspaper. There was no laundry room. Mail was delivered to her door because the residents had no mailboxes. She says in the winter, the lobby was heated using butane tanks.

For Thanksgiving that first year, she received a frozen turkey. For Christmas, the building management sent up a set of silverware.

Marina City was a coveted place to live, says Betty. “Very prominent, wealthy people wanted to be here, although Marina City was intended for a middle income, working class. Yet because it was so new, and the idea of living downtown and having a downtown apartment, it must have appealed to so many people who wanted in and wanted to be here.”

One of her fondest memories of Marina City was when the towers were covered with decorative lights in December 1966, a photo of which appeared on the cover of National Geographic the following January.

“I remember standing on Wacker Drive across the river, looking up at the towers, and I felt a true sense of pride. That’s where I live.”

After Executive House, Betty was catering director and assistant general manager of Olympia Fields Country Club. In 1986, she married William Hogeorges (1928-2011), who had one son, Michael, from a previous marriage. They tried moving to Arizona but heat and homesickness drove them back a year later.

(Right) Newly married Betty and William Hogeorges in mid-1980s.

In 2010, Betty was a vocal critic of a particularly steep curb in River North, the southwest corner of North Clark Street and West Kinzie Street. After she and another Marina City resident wrote to 42nd Ward Alderman Brendan Reilly, the curb was rebuilt.

She had suffered a hiatal hernia and pneumonia. A private service was held at Elmwood Cemetery and a public memorial is planned, athough a date has not yet been announced. (Left) Betty at the Marina City location of Smith & Wollensky in 2013.

There are now five remaining original Marina City residents – people who were the first to occupy a unit there. They comprise Yolanda Flader, partner of the Chicago law firm Flader and Haces, Sylvia Linta, who served in World War II and later worked for Trans World Airlines, Lidia Preble, Robert Preble, Jr., an insurance broker, and Dr. M. Theresa Southgate, a senior contributing editor to Journal of the American Medical Association.