Br. Laurentian Peter

Joseph Lawrence Walther was born the second son of six children of Peter A. and Anna Schaefer on October 31, 1919, in Chicago, Illinois. He attended St. Martin Grade School and De La Salle High School in Chicago, Illinois. After several years of college he entered the Novitiate at Glencoe in 1940 where he received the habit and the religious name of Brother Laurentian Peter. He completed his B.A. in English at St. Mary's College in 1944 and was assigned to teach at Price College High School in Amarillo, Texas. Five years later he was transferred to La Salle Institute in Glencoe where he spent the next ten years as teacher and music director in the Juniorate and later in the Novitiate. In 1959 he received his M.A. in Administration from St. Louis University and was assigned as Principal at Xavier High School in Appleton, Wisconsin. In 1965 he was assigned as Principal at De La Salle High School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and three years later was sent to CIL in Rome, Italy, for study. The second half of the year he studied at Manhattan College in New York, where he received his M.A. in Religious Studies in 1970. He returned to his alma mater, St. Mary's College, in Winona and this same year (1970) teamed up with Brother Vincent Malham to form the "Brothers In Concert" partnership, one that lasted for hundreds of performances around the world over the next thirty years. In 1973 Brother Laurentian Peter was once again a student, this time at Indiana University in Bloomington where he received his M.M. in Piano Performance in 1975. He returned to St. Mary's College in 1975 where he taught for the next ten years. In 1985 he answered the request of the Brother Visitor to take the Directorship of Dunrovin Retreat Center where he served for eight years. He was granted a sabbatical in 1993 and spent the year at St. John's University Seminary in Collegeville, Minnesota. Brother Lawrence returned to his beloved St. Mary College, now University, in 1994 and remained there until his death on August 21 at age 83, having been a De La Salle Christian Brother for sixty two years.