Br. Hermes Joseph

James  John Lynch was born on June 5, 1918, in Chicago, where he was to meet the  Brothers when he attended St. Mel's High School.  In February of 1934 he entered the  Juniorate and graduated to the Novitiate in 1937 where he received the habit  and the religious name of Brother Hermes Joseph.  He received his B.S. in business from St.  Mary's College in Winona, Minnesota, in 1941, where he also studied and  mastered Spanish.  Brother Hermes began  his teaching career at De La Salle High School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in  1941 and eventually his tour of duty in the United States would take him to  Helias High School in Jefferson City, and Christian Brothers High School in  Memphis, Tennessee.  Because of his  fluency in Spanish his tour of duty took him also to Bluefields in Nicaragua,  to Mexico and to Guatemala.  At the  close of WW II, Brother Hermes was loaned to Cuba for two years where he  taught English in the upper secondary school, Vedado.  After retirement from the classroom he  taught adults in Tijuana and Los Angeles.   A quiet and gentle man with a passion for tennis,  "Jose" or  "Juan", as he came to be called by his  Brothers and former students, he was always sensitive to the economically  poor Spanish speaking peoples and was most at home when he was teaching them  English.  He died of cancer at age of  seventy-two, having been a De La Salle Christian Brother for fifty-six years.