Br. Gontran Francis

Daniel Russell was born on June 3, 1893 in Bladeberg, Tipperary, Ireland, and at age thirteen entered the Novitiate at Castletown, Ireland, on February 12, 1909. He received the habit of the Brothers and religious name of Brother Gontran Francis on May 15, 1909. He volunteered to come to the United States and arrived in Glencoe in October of 1910. His first teaching assignment was at Santa Fe in 1911 and at St. Nicholas in Bernalillo in 1912. He was assigned to Cathedral High School in Los Angeles in 1916 and was in the founding community of ten Brothers at St. Mel's High School in Chicago, Illinois, in 1918. Brother Gontran Francis was assigned to teach in the Juniorate and Scholasticate at Glencoe, in 1920 and served as Sub-Director there. He was assigned to De La Salle High School in Joliet in 1926 and in Amarillo in the founding community there in 1938. Brother G. Francis received his B.S. from DePaul in 1927 and his M.A. from Manhattan College in 1936. In 1939 he was at De La Salle High School in Chicago and in 1940 he was named Director at CBC in St. Joseph, Missouri. He was assigned to teach at De La Salle in Kansas City in 1943 and became Director there one year later. In 1949 he was named Sub-Director at St. George High School in Evanston, Illinois. In 1951 he was assigned again to Amarillo where he taught, as he did most of his life, Spanish and literature. He died in Amarillo at age sixty-one, having been a De La Salle Christian Brother for forty-five years.