Br. James Albert

Elbert Oelkers was born on May 14, 1916, in St. Louis, Missouri, the only son of Henry and Florence Mohrman Oelkers. He attended St. Alphonsus School in St. Louis and St. Ann's School in Normandy, Missouri. He entered Christian Brothers High School in St. Louis in 1930 but on February 7, 1931, he interrupted his first year there when he entered the Juniorate of the Christian Brothers at Glencoe. In 1934 he entered the Novitiate and upon completion began his Scholasticate training in Glencoe. He completed his graduate work at St. Mary's College in Winona, Minnesota, and received his B.A. in chemistry in 1938. A few months after his graduation, Brother James Albert began his teaching career at Christian Brothers College in Memphis, Tennessee. One year later, in 1939, he moved to De La Salle Institute in Chicago, Illinois, and again in 1940 to St. Mary's College in Winona, Minnesota, where he served until 1946 when he taught at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. He eventually earned his M.A. degree in chemistry from Catholic University in 1949. Over the next twenty years he was to attend graduate courses at Loyola University of Chicago, Creighton University of Omaha, St. Louis University, the University of Mississippi at Oxford, New York University, and Bucknell University in Pennsylvania. He returned to St. Mary's College in Winona in 1947 and remained there for six years moving in 1953 to St. George High School in Evanston, Illinois, for three years. In 1956 he returned to Christian Brothers College in Memphis, Tennessee, where he would spend the next fifteen years. In 1971 he left Memphis and returned for the third and last time in his teaching career to St. Mary's College in Winona, returning for the third and last time in 1974 to Christian Brothers College in Memphis. From 1983 to 1989 he was Director of Stritch Retreat Center in Memphis and volunteered in 1989 to be a member of the first community of Christian Brothers in Greenville, Mississippi. He remained there until 1992 when he retired to La Salle Institute in Glencoe, Missouri, where, when he died on February 6, 1993, he was serving as Director of the community. During his lifetime he spent thirty-nine years teaching on college campuses, fifteen at St. Mary's College of Winona and twenty-five collective years at CBC for a total of thirty-one years in Memphis during which time he received numerous honors and awards. He was seventy-six years of age at the time of his death and was in his fifty-ninth year as a De La Salle Christian Brother.