Br. Ildephonsus Austin

Francis Delaney was born on August 11, 1879, in St. Paul, the son of Edward and Mary Walsh Delaney. He attended St. James Grammar School and one year of high school at Cretin before entering the Juniorate at Glencoe on June 8, 1896. He entered the Senior Novitiate on September 8, 1897, where he received the habit and the religious name of Ildephonsus Austin. After nine months of scholasticate training he was sent to Feehanville, Illinois, in April of 1899, but in October was assigned to St. Vincent's in St. Louis, Missouri. One year later he moved across town to St. Bridget's until 1902 when he was assigned to St. Patrick's Academy in Chicago, Illinois. In 1905 he was assigned to teach at St. Alphonsus (The Rock Church) in St. Louis and to Christian Brothers College in the same city in 1907. In 1908 he returned to St. Pat's and in 1910 to CBC, St. Louis. Brother I. Austin was assigned as Director at De La Salle in Minneapolis in 1911 but returned to St. Pat's in 1914 and CBC, St. Louis in 1915. He was happy to return to De La Salle in Chicago in 1916, St. Pat's in Chicago in 1917, and to De La Salle in Minneapolis in 1918. He was assigned to De La Salle High School in Joliet, Illinois, in 1919 and to De La Salle in Minneapolis in 1920. From 1920 to 1945 he served as Athletic Director wherever he was assigned. In 1921 he was assigned again to De La Salle in Chicago where he would spend the next thirty-six years teaching and working in developing young athletes. Brother I. Austin returned to his alma mater, Cretin High School, in St. Paul in 1957, where he died in 1964 at the age of eighty-five, having been a De La Salle Christian Brother for sixty-eight years.