George Quill, 80, a former executive with Catholic Charities, a businessman and a lifetime Chicagoan, died of heart failure Tuesday, June 18, at Glenbrook Hospital in Glenview. Mr. Quill graduated from Austin High School and three years later enlisted in the Army Air Forces during World War II. After the war, he studied theology at Loyola University with plans of becoming a priest. After five years as a seminarian with the Congregation of St. Viator, though, he decided it wasn’t his calling. “He was so hard on himself,” said his son George Jr. “He convinced himself that he wasn’t good enough to be a priest, that he didn’t deserve it.” Mr. Quill’s love of the church and his desire to help led him to become a social worker, and later an executive in charge of maintenance and engineering, with Catholic Charities and the Archdiocese of Chicago. When he took over his father-in-law’s steel fabrication business in 1970 and later started his own pipefitting business, he continued his relationship with the church by contracting with the Archdiocese of Chicago. In addition to his son, he is survived by his wife, Phyllis; three other sons, Timothy, Michael and Brian; a brother, Walter Quill; a sister, Lois Anderson; and 11 grandchildren. Visitation will be held Friday from 4 to 8 p.m. at N.H. Scott & Hebblethwaite Funeral Home, 1240 Waukegan Rd., Glenview. A mass will be said at 10 a.m. Saturday at St. Catherine Laboure Catholic Church, 3535 Thornwood Ave., Glenview.
