Br. Bertrand Leo

Robert Kirby was born the son of William and Jane Kerr Kirby on May 1, 1916, in Harlem, New York. In 1928, at the insistence of his mother, the family moved to the Bronx so Robert could attend Sacred Heart Elementary School and be taught there by the Christian Brothers. After only two years Robert sought his parents' permission to enter Barrytown, but his mother thought him too young and he waited two more years before entering. He received the habit and religious name of Brother Bertrand Leo in the Novitiate and spent the next three years at De La Salle College Scholasticate, receiving his B.A. from Catholic University in 1937. That same year he was assigned to Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School in Brooklyn, New York where he remained until 1941 when he was transferred to De La Salle Institute in New York City. Brother Leo joined the faculty of the Junior Novitiate in Barrytown in 1943 and after his Second Novitiate in Rome in 1948, he joined the faculty of the Senior Novitiate. After teaching at St. Bernard's Grade School, St. Thomas the Apostle Grammar School in Harlem, he was Principal of Cardinal Hayes High School, all in New York City. Brother Leo was named Director of first year scholastics in Troy in 1954 and of the scholastics at De La Salle College in Washington, D.C. in 1955. In 1963 he was appointed Visitor of the New York District and in 1966 he was appointed Assistant to the Superior General, a post he filled until 1976. He was assigned in 1976 to La Salle School in Albany, New York, to work with troubled teens and he remained there until 1988 when he moved to De La Salle Hall at Lincroft, New Jersey. He suffered a stroke in 1991 and died at age 77 on July 30, 1993, having been a De La Salle Christian Brother for sixty-three years.