Br. Hermes Pius

James Ebner was born on October 19, 1915, in Keewatin, Minnesota, and attended grade school in Nickerson, Minnesota. He attended Cathedral High School in Duluth, Minnesota, under the care of the Brothers in 1928-29. James entered the Juniorate in 1929 and the Novitiate in 1932, where he received the habit of the Brothers and the religious name of Brother Hermes Pius. He entered the Scholasticate at St. Mary's College in Winona in 1933 and graduated there with a B.A. in English in 1936. Brother Hermes Pius' first teaching assignment took him to St. Mel's High School in Chicago, Illinois, in 1936 and a year later in 1937 to Christian Brothers High School in Memphis, Tennessee. After three years there he was transferred to St. George High School in Evanston, Illinois, but in 1944 he moved to De La Salle High School in Chicago. In 1949 he returned to St. George High School for two years before being assigned for a year at De La Salle High School in Kansas City, Missouri, and by the end of 1952 he had completed his M.A. in Latin Literature at DePaul University in Chicago. He served as an exchange teacher to Montreal from 1952 to 1955 and while there received his M.Ph. in Philosophy in 1956 and his Ph.L in Philosophy in 1958, both from the University of Ottawa. Brother Pius returned to St. Mary's College in 1955 as a teacher this time and remained there until 1967 when he studied for a year for his M.A. in Theology at Manhattan College in New York. He returned for a year to St. Mary's but the following three years worked on his doctorate degree at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., completing his Ph.D. in Religious Studies in 1972. He worked in Santa Fe at Sangre de Cristo from 1972-74 and had a sabbatical year in 1974. Brother James returned to St. Mary's College in 1975 but went to La Salle University in Manila in 1976. He came home in 1978 to teach at St. Thomas College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and remained there until 1997. He retired at Lambert Hall Community in Memphis in 1997 and moved to CB Community in St. Paul in 1998. He entered Holy Family, Shalom Care Center in St. Paul in 1999 and died there on November 10, 2001 at the age of eighty-six, having been a De La Salle Christian Brother for seventy-two years.