Br. Joseph Clarence

Richard was born on December 8, 1933, the son of Vern Dale House and Marjorie A. Benton, in Chicago, Illinois. There he attended De La Salle High School and entered the Novitiate at Glencoe, Missouri, in 1951, where he received the habit and the religious name of Brother Joseph Clarence. He graduated from St. Mary's College with his B.A. in history in 1955, later earning his M.A. from St. Mary's in 1959, his M. Ed. in 1966 from DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois and his Ph.D. from Michigan State in 1969. His teaching career began at De La Salle High School in Kansas City where he taught from 1955 to 1958, when he was transferred to St. George High School in Evanston, Illinois. Here he was named assistant principal in 1963. He was transferred to O'Rafferty High School in Lansing, Michigan, in 1966 as principal. He returned in 1968 to his alma mater, De La Salle High School in Chicago, as assistant principal and was named Principal of Bishop Gallagher High School in Harper Woods, Michigan, in 1972. After serving there for six years he was assigned as bursar at Lewis University in Romeoville, Illinois, in 1978 and as Executive Assistant to the President in 1981. He was named superintendent at De La Salle High School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and served there from 1984 to 1987 when he accepted an appointment as Assistant Director of Education at St. Bonaventure (Navajo) Indian Mission in Thoreau, New Mexico, where he died suddenly of a heart attack. Brother Richard was fifty-four years old and had been a De La Salle Christian Brother for thirty-six years.