Br. Justin Declan

Thomas Egan was born in Coolomoney, Ireland, on May 27, 1889. At age seventeen he entered the Novitiate at Castletown on October 18, 1906. There on December 24th of that year he received the habit and religious name of Brother Justin Declan. Brother Justin entered the Scholasticate there but was convinced to volunteer for missionary work in the United States. He emigrated to the United States and entered scholastic studies at Glencoe in 1910. His first teaching assignments came in St. Louis, Missouri, at St. Patrick's School in January of 1911 and at St. Alphonsus Rock Church in September. Two years later he was assigned to De La Salle in Chicago and in 1914 to St. Joseph, Missouri. Brother Justin went to Santa Fe in May of 1915 and was assigned to CBC in Memphis in 1916. He returned to Chicago in 1918 to teach at St. Mel's and in 1919 to Cretin in St. Paul. His teaching areas were English and social studies and in 1920 he used them at Cathedral in Duluth and St. Pat's in Chicago, where after one year at Joliet, he returned to St. Pat's. In 1922 he received his B.A. from DePaul and in 1926 Brother Justin received his master's degree there as well. He taught in Winona in 1924, Duluth in 1926, in St. Paul in 1927, and in Minneapo­lis in 1930. He returned to St. Paul in 1935 and was assigned to Holy Family Community in 1941 after suffering a stroke while at Cretin High School, but one year later he was assigned to CBC, St. Louis. He remained there until he suffered a final stroke ten years later at age sixty-three, having been a De La Salle Christian Brother for forty-six years.