Br. Martin Spellman

Michael was born on June 5, 193, one of five children of Michael Spellman (d. 1942) and Anne (Gilmore) Spellman (d. 1964). He had two brothers, John and William and two sisters, Colette and Marguerite. His early education took place at St. Angela Primary School in Chicago before he entered St. Mel High School. He only spent one semester at St. Mel before he entered the Juniorate on February 2, 1947, in Glencoe, Missorui. He entered the Novitiate on August 30, 1950, where he received the habit and the religious name of Brother Hector Martin. One year later he traveled north to St. Mary's College (now university) in Winona where he completed his BA degree in 1954. His educational career took his far and wide in diversity. He began teaching in 1954 at De La Salle High School in Chicago where he remained for two years before moving to Central Catholic in Vincennes, Indiana. In 1959 he was assigned to Colegio San Jose in Bluefields, Nicaragua, where he remained until 1963 when he was assigned to Colegio De La Salle in Santiago, Chile. He remained there only one year before his next assignment at Liceo La Salle in Chiquimula, Guatemala, in 1964. in 1968 he moved to Huehuetenango, Guatemala, where he taught at Colegio De La Salle for two years and Casa Indigena until 1983 when he was Director at Residencia Universitario in Guatemala City. In 1984 he was assigned to Instituto La Salle in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, and a year later at Escuela Fe y Alegria in Guatemala City. He returned briefly as Director of the Tri-District Residency in Chicago in 1989 but in November of that year he was named Director of De La Salle Postulancy in Rongai, Kenya. The following year the postulancy moved to Nairobi. In 1991 he was named Delegation President of the East African Delegation and resided in Nairobi. He returned to the postulancy program in 1994 in Rongai and the novitiate program in Nairobi in 1994. Brother Martin was named Headmaster at St. Paul Second School in Marsabit, Kenya, in 1995 and served there for two years before moving to Rome, Italy, where he served on the SIEL-CIL staff. He returned to the United States in 2001 to become Director of Senior Brothrs for the Midwest District. After seven years in that position, he was assigned to the Instituti Fliippin in Paderno dal Grappa, Itlay, as an English teacher and liaison with students. His last journey home was to Resurrection Community as Director in Chicago, Illinois, where he volunteered as a language tutor at St. Ptrick High School. He died at age eighty-nine on June 12, 2021, at Resurrection Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, and had been a De La Salle Christian Brother for seventy-one years. He is buried at Resurrection Cemetery in Romeoville, Illinois.