Br. Hyacinth Richard

William  P. and Margaret Hechtl Gerlach had four children.  One of two sons, Raymond was born on  Christmas Day in 1913 in St. Paul, Minnesota.   He attended Assumption Catholic Grade School and entered Cretin High  School in 1927.  Upon graduation he  entered the Novitiate at Glencoe, Missouri.   For his BSS degree he took courses through the Manhattan College  extension program, and courses at De Paul University in Chicago and St.  Mary’s College in Winona where he completed his undergraduate work in  1935.  His first teaching assignment  came that year as he was assigned as an instructor at St. Mary’s  College.  A year later he moved to  Christian Brothers College High School in St. Louis.  In 1939 he returned to St. Mary’s College  where he served as Instructor and Registrar from 1940 to 1944.  He arrived at St. Mel’s in Chicago in the  fall of 1944 but returned to CBCHS St. Louis in the fall of 1945.  Richard was named President, Director, and  Principal of Christian Brothers College in Memphis where he served until  1958.  In the fall of that year, he was  named Director and Principal of St. George High School in Evanston, Illinois.  His administrative career continued at Cretin High School in 1961 where he  served as Assistant Principal, Director and then Principal from 1962 to  1965.  Richard moved to Appleton,  Wisconsin, in 1965 to become Principal of Xavier High School.  In 1968 he was named Director of the  Scholasticate in Winona and two years later he returned to his alma mater, St. Mary’s College,  where he remained until his retirement in 1995.  He lived in the La Salle Community in  Winona until 2003 when he entered St. Anne’s Extended Health Care in Winona.  At the time of his death, he was two days short of his 97^th birthday and had been  a De La Salle Christian Brother for seventy-nine years.