Br. Joseph Finbar

Donald McMullen was born on March 4, 1924, one of eight children to Joseph and Margaret McMullen in Minneapolis Minnesota. His brothers were Eugene, Arthur, Leo and Jerrold and his sisters were Eileen, Margaret, and Rosemary. He entered the Juniorate high school program in Glencoe, Missouri in 1940 and upon completion of his high school course he entered the Novitiate in 1942. When he entered the Novitiate, he changed his name from Donald James McMullen to the religious name of Brother Joseph (after his father) Finbar. In 1943 Brother “Finbar” as he became known, traveled to St. Mary’s College in Winona, Minnesota, to begin his collegiate undergraduate studies. After three years Brother Finbar received his B.S. degree in Biology and given his first teaching assignment at Christian Brothers High School in Memphis, Tennessee. He remained there one year and was assigned from 1947 to 1953 at De La Salle High School in Chicago, Illinois. He resided in Holy Family Residence in Glencoe, Missouri, for a year and a half and was assigned to the Scholasticate in Winona in 1955. In the fall of 1956, Brother Finbar he was assigned to teach at St. Patrick High School in Chicago, Illinois until 1961 when he returned to teach in Winona at the Scholasticate. The next two years, 1963 and 1964, he taught at Cretin High School in St. Paul, Minnesota. In the fall of 1966, he began teaching at De La Salle High School in Minneapolis, Minnesota. One year later he began his fifty-year stay at St. Mary’s College in Winona. From 1967 to 1984 Brother Finbar worked at St. Mary’s as a technician in the Science Department. For the next 27 years he lived at St. Mary’s College Community in retirement. There, his brother, Jerrold McMullen, who entered the Order and became Brother Luperious Arnold, joined him and they lived in the same Community until Finbar moved to Catholic Eldercare Nursing Home in Minneapolis, Minnesota where he died on May 2, 2021. Brother Finbar died at age eighty-eight and after a funeral service at his beloved St. Mary’s University in the Thomas More Chapel he was buried in St. Mary’s Cemetery in Winona, Minnesota, having been a De La Salle Christian Brother for seventy-nine years.