Br. Lawrence Philip

Thomas  James Morgan was born in Chicago, Illinois on June 13, 1919.  He was the third son of Thomas M. and Mary  Corrigan Morgan and later was to be followed in the family by John, James,  Monica, Jacquelin, Marilyn, and Lawrence Morgan.  Thomas attended Sacred Heart Grade School  and one semester at De La Salle High School before entering the Juniorate at  Glencoe, Missouri, in February of 1934.   Thomas' older brother had already entered the Christian Brothers and  in 1937 as Thomas was entering the novitiate his older Brother, William  Morgan, now Brother Lawrence Philip, was killed in a truck accident.  Thomas requested that he receive his  brother's religious name and thus be received the habit and the name of  Brother Lawrence Philip on August 30, 1937.   He completed his B.S. degree in Chemistry at St. Mary's College in  Winona in May of 1941 and was assigned to Price College in Amarillo, Texas,  where he remained for eight years.   Brother L. Philip made his final profession of vows in Santa Fe, New  Mexico, in 1944 and in August of 1948 he was reassigned to St. Patrick High  School in his hometown, Chicago.  He  taught math and science and was athletic director at St. Pat's while at the  same time he pursued a M.A. degree in education at De Paul University,  graduating in 1952.  He was recruited  to study electrical engineering and to come to Christian Brothers College in  Memphis and from 1952 to 1954, while living in the De La Salle Community in  Chicago, he studied at the Illinois Institute of Technology receiving his  B.S. from there in 1954.  The following  year he was assigned to teach at C.B.C in Memphis but only one year later,  1955-56, he was sent for further study at the University of Darmstart in  Germany.  In 1956 Brother Philip's  parents were made affiliated members of the Christian Brothers.  Brother Philip returned to CBC in Memphis  in 1956.  Ten years later, in 1966, he  was named Department Chairman of Electrical Engineering and in 1967-68  returned to ITT in Chicago to complete his M.S. in E.E.  Returning to CBC in 1968 he was named Vice  President of Student Affairs and returned full time to the classroom in 1970  where he served the next twenty-five years as a professor until his  retirement in 1995.  He was considered  the "father" of the  School of Engineering at Christian Brothers University and received numerous  awards and honors from CBU and the Engineering profession for his outstanding  achievements and service, among which was the  "Lifetime Service Award" from CBU only  given to four other individuals in the history of the school.  Due to infirmities, he entered St. Peter  Villa in 1999 where he died on December 30, 2002, at the age of eighty-three,  having been a De La Salle Christian Brother for sixty-eight years.