Br. Aubertine of Jesus

Aloysius  John Steckley was born at Merenach, Alsace, France, on June 15, 1854, and  five months later his family emigrated to American and settled in  Warrensburg, Missouri.  There was only  one school in the town which was conducted by a Lutheran minister who heard  the boy's catechism, instructing him in religion.  In 1865, when the Civil War ended, at age  eleven he moved to Pleasant Green, a town between Sedalia and Booneville, Missouri,  and it was here where he attended a tent mission during which he determined  he would enter the service of God.  In  November of 1871, he came to St. Louis and entered the Novitiate at  Carondelet.  He received the habit and  the religious name of Brother Aubertine of Jesus.  In 1872 he was assigned to Cretin High  School in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he served as econome  but was soon to return to Carondelet and to St.  Patrick's School in St. Louis.  He was  transferred to St. John's School in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1878 and to  St. Mary's in New Orleans in 1889, where he survived the yellow fever  epidemic as he acted as a nurse for his fellow Brothers.  Brother Aubertine went to De La Salle  Academy in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1900, and remained there for seven years  before being assigned to St. John's Indian School in Gray Horse, Oklahoma,  for the next six years.  His next  assignment brought him to Rochester, Minnesota, where he remained until 1925  when that school closed.  His final  assignment was at Christian Brothers College in Memphis, Tennessee, where he  served for three years before undergoing an operation from which he never  recovered.  He was seventy-four years  old and had been a De La Salle Christian Brother for fifty-seven years.