Hynes, Emerson Papers

Emerson Hynes was born in 1915, the youngest of nine (living) children of Muerton and Mary Hynes in Winnebago, Minnesota. He attended St. John’s University, where he befriended the future senator Eugene McCarthy, and graduated in 1937. He then went on to the University of Notre Dame, where he earned his master’s degree in apologetics in 1939.

After graduate school, Hynes returned to St. John’s to teach. There, he taught sociology and philosophy from 1939 to 1959.

He married Arleen McCarty in 1941, and over the next several years, the couple had ten children, and established their five-acre Collegeville homestead, named Kilfenora.

During these years he and Arleen became active in the rural life movement. They worked closely with the National Catholic Rural Life Conference and published numerous articles and pamphlets on the themes of rural and Catholic life, as well as traveled to attend workshops and give presentations.

In 1959, Hynes left St. John’s to become a legislative aide to Senator Eugene McCarthy. He remained in Washington, D.C. through McCarthy’s 1968 presidential campaign, and left along with Senator McCarthy in 1971. He died in D.C. on July 29 of the same year.

Arleen returned to Minnesota, where in 1979, she entered Saint Benedict’s Monastery. She passed away on September 5, 2006.

In 2014, Jeanne Cofell completed her Ed.D. dissertation on Hynes and his life, titled "Closest to the Heart—The Life of Emerson Hynes: A Biographical Study of Human Goodness with a Focus on the College Years."