Br. Humphrey Pius

Robert Eugene Kamphefner was born one of five children of Betty Seuell and Raymond Kamphefner on December 22, 1929. He attended primary schools in Platte City and Kansas City before entering De La Salle Military Academy in Kansas City in 1942. In January of 1946 Robert entered the Juniorate at Glencoe, Missouri and in June of that same year he was admitted to the Novitiate. A year later he moved to St. Mary’s College in Winona where he completed his B.S. degree in 1950. His first teaching assignment took him to St. George High School in Evanston and a year later he was sent to St. Mel High School in Chicago where he spent the next seven years. In 1957 he transferred to St. Francis High School in Wheaton, Illinois, and in 1962 he was assigned to Notre Dame High School in Wichita, Kansas. From 1964 to 1966 he taught at Christian Brothers High School in Quincy, Illinois, and then moved to his alma mater, De La Salle High School in Kansas City. He returned to Quincy in 1969 and a year later he moved to Vaugirard-Darrow Hall, at Ceder Hill, Missouri where he spent the next eight years. In 1978 he taught at Providence High School in St. Louis but moved to Mercy Boys Home in Chicago in 1979. Twelve years later he was assigned to St. Joseph high School in Greenville, Mississippi, and a year later began his work in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, at St. Gabriel School and parish. He remained there for ten years when health reasons caused him to move to Memphis and The Highlands, a nursing care facility. Brother Pius died on October 8, 2012 and after a funeral Mass in the De La Salle Chapel on the campus of Christian Brothers University, his body was taken to St. Gabriel’s Cemetery in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, where he requested to be buried among the people he loved and served for so many years. He had been a De La Salle Christian Brother for sixty-six years.