Br. Junian Fidelis

Michael Raymon Collins was born the only child of Jacob R. Collins and Georgina Richardson on June 3, 1937 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  He attended Ascension and St. Benedict primary schools before entering De La Salle High School in 1952.  He entered the Novitiate in Glencoe in 1955 where he received the religious name of Brother Junian Fidelis.  He completed his B.A. at St. Mary’s College in Winona in 1959 and returned to his alma mater, De La Salle High School in Minneapolis to begin his  teaching career. It was during his years at De La Salle that he completed his M.Ed. (1964) and his M.A. (1967) degrees. In 1967 he was assigned to Shanley High  School in Fargo, North Dakota, to teach but in 1975 was named principal.  In 1978 he was granted a sabbatical to study at the University of San Francisco.  He was named principal of St. Mary’s College High School in Berkeley, California in 1980 but was drawn back to the Midwest in 1987 as co-principal of Cretin-Derham Hall in St. Paul, Minnesota.  He completed his doctoral dissertation and received his Ed.D. in 1990 from USF.  In 1991 Michael was assigned again to De La Salle High School in Minneapolis.  He served there for twenty-one years until his sudden death on January 8, 2012 of cancer.  He was seventy-four years old and had been a De La Salle Christian Brother for fifty-six years.