Br. Hermeus Michael

Michael Luddy was born on June 12, 1874, in Limweirk, Ireland. His mother died when he was a youth and his father emigrated to the United States. Unable to take care of his family, Michael's father placed the two children in St. Mary's School in Feehanville and there Michael first encountered the Brothers. He sought admission and entered the FIRST JUNIORATE CLASS on June 7, 1888, at Glencoe, at age fourteen. Two years later, in 1890, he entered the Novitiate, received the habit of the Brothers and the religious name of Brother Hermeus Michael. Brother Michael's sister was later to enter the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. His first assignment to community and to school as a prefect, took him to Christian Brothers College in St. Joseph, Missouri, in 1892 and to Christian Brothers College in St. Louis in 1893, where he remained until 1895 when he worked for a short period of time at St. Bridget's in St. Louis. That same year he was assigned to Santa Fe and for the next four years worked there and in Bernalillo and Las Vegas. He returned to St. Louis in 1898 and to Kansas City in 1900. He returned to St. Bridget's in 1900 for four years and was assigned to De La Salle in Chicago in 1904. Brother Michael transferred to Cathedral High School in Duluth in 1907 but returned to Chicago and St. Pat's High School in 1909. In his later assignments he taught religion and history and continued to work towards his master's degree from DePaul University in Chicago. In 1914 he returned to Santa Fe for half a year and then was assigned to CBC in St. Louis, and the Rock Church school until he returned to St. Pat's in Chicago in 1918. In 1927 he was assigned at St. George High School in Evanston and in 1929 he came to Christian Brothers College in Memphis, Tennessee, for his longest assignment. August of 1942 brought him back to St. Louis where he suffered a heart attack in August of 1943 that took his life. He was sixty-nine years old and had been a De La Salle Christian Brother for fifty-five years.