Father Francis Hyacinth Eterovich, a member of the Province of Croatia assigned to the Province of St. Albert the Great for thirty years, was found dead of apparent heart failure on the morning of October 29, 1981. Following funeral services at Angel Guardian Church in Chicago, he was buried in the Dominican plot, All Saints Cemetery, Des Plaines, Illinois, on November 2.

Born in Pusisce, on the island Brae, in Croatia, on October 4, 1913, Francis Eterovich attended the public grade school in his home town and pursued secondary studies at the Dominican and Franciscan Classical Schools in Dubrovnik before entering the Dominican Order there on September 30, 1930. Following first profession in 1931, he continued with studies in philosophy and theology at Dubrovnik until 1937 when he was sent to the Dominican House of Studies in Louvain, Belgium, where he was ordained a priest on July 24, 1938, and completed the requirements for the Lectorate degree the following year. Additional graduate studies at the University of Zagreb in Yugoslavia led to a master's degree in classical languages in 1944 and at the University of Olomouc in Czechoslovakia to a Licentiate in Theology and Social Studies in 1947. In 1948, he was granted the doctorate in Sacred Theology from Le Saulchoir, near Paris, France,

After serving in Zagreb as an instructor in classical languages and philosophy, Father Eterovich moved to Spain where he taught philosophy at the Dominican House of studies in Alicante. In 1951, he came to the United States and was assigned to teach philosophy and sociology at the College of St. Joseph (now the University of Albuquerque) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 1957, he was sent to teach philosophy and theology at the College of St. Theresa in Winona, Minnesota. In 1962, he was appointed to the Department of Philosophy at De Paul University in Chicago, a position he maintained until retirement from the University faculty in 1978, when he was honored with De Paul's Distinguished Service Award, the University's highest recognition of meritorious professorial achievement.

Throughout his priestly life, Father Eterovich produced many learned articles and books in both English and Croatian that won the acclaim of academic professionals and learned societies. After he retired from regular teaching duties, he concentrated all his efforts on caring for the spiritual and cultural needs of the growing Croatian community on Chicago's north side and on continuing his devoted work as editor and contributor to a new encyclopedia entitled Croatia -Land, Culture, People, a project he described as "a gift to enslaved Croatia where authors cannot tell the truth and to America where one million Croatians have labored to build this country both by manual and intellectual vocations."