Walking from his office on the Christ Cathedral campus one morning, Bishop Kevin Vann, the head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange County, wore his traditional black frock and, to protect his bald head from the scorching California sun, a black-and-white, zigzag-patterned fedora.
“I call this my Carlos Santana hat,” the bishop said, referring to the legendary guitarist.
In his ecclesiastical work for the Orange diocese, Vann is a man of many hats: overseeing the multimillion-dollar Christ Cathedral renovations, representing the county’s Catholics during Pope Francis’ upcoming trip to the United States and generally being the spiritual leader of his flock.
In his personal life, the bishop is also a man of many hats.
Vann has had two Basal cell carcinomas – benign skin cancer – on his face, the last of which was removed in 2010 while he was the bishop of Fort Worth, Texas. The doctors gave him a stern rebuke: Cover your head or else.
So he got a hat.
And another. And another. And a new-found hobby that has seen his collection rise to upwards of 50 hats.
He has two 10-gallon cowboy hats. He has a beret with the Order of Malta insignia and a Shady Oak Hat – a type of fedora made out of beaver fur popularized by Fort-Worth Star Telegram publisher Amon Carter. Then there are his favorite fedoras: the “Carlos Santana,” a red Christmas fedora and a green St. Patrick’s Day fedora, among others.
And, of course, the obligatory Angels hat (even though he was raised a St. Louis Cardinals fan).
“I never really wore hats until the doctors told me I had to,” Vann said. “But now I like them. I wear hats and get known for them. People are good-natured about it.”
THE HAT CLUB
As impressive as Vann’s collection is, it is downright microscopic compared with the man who joins him in a two-person hat club: Vann’s close Texas friend, Christopher Hull, an orthopedic surgeon known around Fort Worth as the “hat doc.”
Hull has 2,125 hats, everything from an Indian headdress and Afghan chieftain’s turban to an old-time milkman’s hat and viking’s horns. Hull says he wears a different hat to the office each day to “break the ice and get patients to forget their pain.”
The doctor wants to soon open Hats of the World, a nonprofit hat museum for which Vann is a board member and has promised to donate some of his liturgical hats.
The two met shortly after Vann became Fort Worth’s bishop in 2005, when the pair traveled with a group to Jerusalem and Rome – becoming such good friends that the bishop would have dinner with Hull’s family every Dec. 23.
After Vann was told by doctors to cover his noggin, the two began trading hats.
“We have the same size head,” Hull said. “So when I travel, if I buy a hat, I’ll buy two and send him one.”
The hat trading has evolved into a friendly interstate game of one-upmanship that keeps the postal service busy.
“He will be at a hat shop and send me a picture of one with a text that says, ‘Do you have this one?’” Hull said. “If I don’t, a few days later it will arrive in the mail.”
THE STETSONS
The bishop’s hat collection is an inevitably public one.
The California sun would torture his pale, bare head. (He also never goes out without applying sunblock.)
His hats seem to endear him to his followers, giving him an air of approachability and a rare down-to-Earth quality.
In March, for example, Vann attended the Portola horseback ride in San Juan Capistrano. After sporting his official bishop’s miter to bless the ride, he switched to his 10-gallon cowboy hat – which, on the inside, boasts a portrait of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
“It’s hard to be inauthentic when you’re involved in that kind of activity,” Rob Neal, a member of the diocese’s laity, said about the bishop’s hat wearing. Neal has gotten to know Vann better through his work on the Christ Cathedral Capital Campaign. “And it’s a great reflection of the many hats he has to wear as bishop. I find his accessibility lovely.”
Vann’s two stetsons also represent another responsibility Vann cares deeply about: respecting and take part in the cultural quirks of the communities he represents.
In Texas, cowboy hats are culturally sacrosanct and with them comes a certain etiquette.
“You’re supposed to wear felt hats before Memorial Day and straw hats before Labor Day,” Vann said, as he showed off both versions in the sitting room of his Santa Ana home. “So when I went out in Texas, especially to dinner, I would follow that rule.”
Taking on a community’s culture is also why he rooted for the Texas Rangers while in Forth Worth and now sports an Angels hat in Southern California.
“You have to support the community you represent,” Vann said.
PERSONAL MEMENTOS
At the sitting-room table in his house, Vann picked up the black beret with a recently stitched-on red patch bearing a Maltese Cross – the symbol of the Order of Malta, a religious missionary and humanitarian organization.
The bishop bought the beret as a memento a few years ago in Lourdes, in southwest France.
“When I went back with the knights and dames of Malta,” Vann said, referring to the order’s annual pilgrimage to Lourdes, “I had this cross put on it.”
Many of the bishops’ hats have personal stories attached to them.
There is the Roman galero, a flat-brimmed hat common among the clergy in Europe, that he got in the Italian capital as a souvenir.
Father Agustin Escobar of St. Norbert Catholic Church in Orange, once returned from a visit to his native country of Colombia with a sombrero vueltiao – a sombrero made of cane that is traditional to the South American nation.
Vann has also received as gifts a bicycle cap with a portrait of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Orange County’s patron saint, a bishop’s purple biretta and an Orange ball cap Hull gave him ahead of the trip to Lourdes. (The Orange County delegation wore orange hats so they wouldn’t get separated.)
Sometimes, though, he picks up hats while wandering around Long Beach or other local cities. That’s where he bought the red fedora.
The bishop has has some trouble growing his collection, he explained in another down-to-Earth moment of candor, because of two challenges.
“I have a big head so it can be hard to find a hat that fits,” Vann said of the first obstacle.
The second challenge?
“I have to remember not to set them down and leave them behind,” he said. “I’ve lost a few hats over the years.”
Contact the writer: 714-704-3707 or chaire@ocregister.com
