Divine Word Father Dennis Logue, 99, an Army veteran and hospital chaplain, died July 21 in Techny.

Born in coal mining country in Pennsylvania, he went to work in farming, strip mining and milling lumber after finishing grade school. When he turned 18, he was drafted and trained for war in the Pacific. When the war ended, however, his unit was redirected to join the occupation forces in Europe.

Surrounded by bombed-out buildings and the devastation of war, he discovered his vocation.

Shortly after his discharge from military service in 1946, Father Logue began exploring religious life. A visit to a religious goods store confirmed his vocation. He heard a customer remark that rosaries had been made by religious brothers, and he immediately recognized where God was calling him.

He entered the Society of the Divine Word in 1947 and professed vows as Brother Dennis in 1950. As a brother, he worked at O-Neh-Da Vineyards in upstate New York; as an infirmarian for Divine Word communities in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts; director of Health Services at Divine Word Seminary in Girard, Pennsylvania; and ministered to incarcerated young men at the Bordentown Youth Correctional Institution.

In 1975, he became the first permanent deacon ordained for the Diocese of Trenton, New Jersey, a milestone in the history of the diocese.

In 1979, after nearly three decades as a brother, Father Logue entered a program that recognized life experience toward priestly formation. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1983.

Father Logue’s first priestly assignment took him to Presbyterian University Hospitals in Pittsburgh, now part of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, where he became the first Catholic priest in the hospital’s 100-year history to serve as a chaplain.

A decade later, Father Logue accepted an assignment to serve rural Appalachian parishes in West Virginia. During that time, he received an invitation to minister in the Byzantine Catholic Church, in which some of his extended family worshipped.

After extensive preparation, Father Logue petitioned Rome for permission to celebrate the Byzantine Rite. He was granted dual rite faculties, allowing him to celebrate the sacraments in both the Roman and Byzantine Catholic traditions, and he later served as pastor of Byzantine as well as Roman Catholic parishes.

He returned to Techny in 2011, where he served as sacristan and as a hospice volunteer.