Peter D’Agostino’s colleagues said he had a reputation for pushing other historians to re-evaluate their perspectives. His 2004 book, “Rome In America,” though critical of the Catholic Church, showed such incisive intellect and prodigious research that it received an award from the American Society of Church History.
In sports parlance, the University of Illinois at Chicago professor had hit his stride, colleagues said.
But beyond his academic strengths, D’Agostino, 42, a new father married to another historian, was known for his kindness, which makes the mystery of his murder all the more confounding.
“My God, what a waste,” R. Stephen Warner, sociology professor at UIC, said Thursday.
D’Agostino was found about 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, unconscious and bleeding from a severe head wound, on a front lawn about three blocks from his Oak Park home. Police are discussing only the basic framework of the crime. And they are asking for the public’s help in solving it.
“Such an incident is very unusual for Oak Park,” Police Chief Rick Tanksley said in a seven-paragraph news release. “When tragedies of this kind occur, it is important for us to pull together as a community to get the case solved quickly.”
Oak Park Police Cmdr. Michael Brosnan said late Thursday that more than a dozen police officers were interviewing people as they got off the Blue Line at the three stops in Oak Park and throughout the nearby neighborhood in the southeast part of the village.
Brosnan said officers had copies of two photographs of a man that they were showing, though he declined to say whether the individual was D’Agostino.
“We had officers canvassing the area trying to get some information, just asking people if they heard anything, saw anything unusual at the time,” said Brosnan.
The last homicide in Oak Park occurred Jan. 9, 2004, when a 41-year-old Chicago man was shot in his car on Ontario Street.
Although D’Agostino was found on the grass outside a home in the 1100 block of South Harvey Avenue, the man who lives in that house said the position of D’Agostino’s body was peculiar. He was lying flat on his back, his hands at his side, said resident Blake Hayner.
D’Agostino’s leather bag was on the sidewalk a few feet away, and his glasses were folded neatly atop the bag, said Hayner, and D’Agostino still had his wallet and jewelry.
A large bruise already had formed along almost the entire length of D’Agostino’s right arm, Hayner said.
“He was lying straight, as if in bed,” Hayner said. “It looked as if somebody had laid him down.”
About 15 minutes earlier, Hayner said, he was sitting at the computer in a front section of his home when he heard a car drive down the street.
“I heard a car door open and then I heard a scuffling of some sort and I heard `no,’ and then [an expletive] and then I heard a car door close and then a car take off,” Hayner said.
He said he had thought the noise was nothing extraordinary. A few minutes later, Hayner, his wife and son walked to their car behind their home, drove down the alley and headed along Harvey Avenue, where they saw D’Agostino on their front lawn, Hayner said. D’Agostino had suffered severe wounds to his face, Hayner said.
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Another neighbor was stooped over D’Agostino, using a cell phone to call 911, Hayner said. Police arrived within 30 seconds, he added. D’Agostino was taken to Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, where he was pronounced dead at 6 p.m., police said.
The Cook County medical examiner listed the cause of death as “blunt head trauma” from an assault. The office classified the death as a homicide.
A family spokesman Thursday declined to comment and directed all inquiries to the Oak Park police.
Colleagues at UIC said D’Agostino was a hardworking scholar and charming, passionate man who challenged those in his field to expand their focus. His writing and research played a crucial role in the linking of religious history and immigration history, especially that of Italian-Americans, they said.
“Peter was an independent thinker, pushing the rest of us to rethink the way the story of U.S. Catholicism is told,” said R. Scott Appleby, historian at the University of Notre Dame and a longtime friend of D’Agostino’s.
With the publication of “Rome in America,” D’Agostino had “just hit his stride,” Appleby said. “Everyone who knew Peter recognized that he had a lot of outstanding work ahead of him. … For the historical profession, his death is really a tremendous loss.”
Eric Arnesen, professor and chair of the history department at UIC, praised D’Agostino’s commitment to his subject matter and his students.
“He poured a tremendous amount of thought, time and energy into preparing his classes,” Arnesen said. “He brought a genuine humanity to whatever he was doing.”
D’Agostino had planned to discuss a coming article over lunch with Arnesen on Wednesday but canceled at the last minute to attend a talk downtown. D’Agostino returned to the UIC campus with a colleague about 2:30 p.m., Arnesen said, and the department did not hear from him again.
“This doesn’t happen to us,” he said. “We’re historians, we’re scholars, and Peter was the kindest person. … We’re all in a state of shock and disbelief.”
D’Agostino was too young and too promising to see his life cut short, Warner said.
“Rome in America,” which argued that papal myopia had yielded a compromise with Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, won the Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize of the American Society of Church History and was included in the Tribune’s “Best of 2004” rankings.
D’Agostino also wrote two book reviews for the Tribune and several reviews and articles for various journals.
He had been with UIC for four years, arriving after teaching religious studies and history for six years at Stonehill College in North Easton, Mass. D’Agostino received his PhD in the history of Christianity from the University of Chicago.
At Lake Forest College, where D’Agostino’s wife, Mary Mapes, has worked as an adjunct professor in American history since 2002, department Chairwoman Carol Gayle was preparing an e-mail Thursday afternoon, notifying the college community of D’Agostino’s death.
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