Br. Leander Joseph

Born in Crown Point, Indiana, on February 20, 1919, to Raymond and Loretta Russell Brusnahan, Delbert E. Brusnahan made the decision to enter the Christian Brothers. At age eighteen he entered the Novitiate at Glencoe, Missouri, where he received the habit of the Brothers on August 30, 1938, and the religious name of Brother Leander Joseph. One year later he professed his first vows at Glencoe and immediately traveled to St. Mary's University in Winona, Minnesota, to begin his Scholasticate training. In 1942 St. Mary's awarded an A.B. degree and received his first teaching assignment at Christian Brothers High School in St. Joseph, Missouri, where he remained only a year before moving to De La Salle High School in Kansas City, Missouri, from 1943 to 1945. In 1945 he was assigned to teach at La Salle High School in Miramar, Cuba. When he returned to the United States in 1948 he was immediately nicknamed "Cuba Joe." His tour of duty includes St. Patrick's High School in Chicago, Illinois, as Assistant Principal and teacher from 1949 to 1951; Second Novitiate in Rome in 1952; CBHS in Memphis, Tennessee, as Assistant Principal and teacher from 1952 to 1953 and again from 1958 to 1961, and a third time, from 1962 to 1969, but this time as a teacher without any administrative duties; De La Salle High School in Minneapolis from 1953 to 1955; Price College High School in Amarillo, Texas, as Assistant Principal from 1958 to 1961 at CBHS in Memphis; the Brothers' School in Saltillo, Mexico, for one year, 1961-1962; Xavier University in New Orleans from 1972 to 1977. In 1978 to 1980 he lived in the Christian Brothers College Community and taught at CBHS in Memphis. From 1980 to 1985 he taught at CBC, during which time he served as head of the Education Department and Liberal Arts Division. Brother "José" as he was called, earned his M.A. from the University of Havana in Havana, Cuba, in 1948 and his Ph.D. from the Interamerican University in Saltillo, Mexico, in 1962. His second doctorate, an Ed.D. was earned at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Tennessee in 1969. It earned him the nickname among his students as "Doctor-Doctor-Brother." Brother Jose managed the house in Sarasota, Florida, "Come Apart and Rest Awhile", a house for rest and relaxation for the Brothers of the District. In 1993 he was assigned to La Salle Institute and worked there in retirement until 1977 when he was assigned to the Community at Christian Brothers High School in Memphis. He developed Alzheimer's and moved to Ave Maria Home in Memphis in May of 2000, where he died at the age of eighty-two, having been a De La Salle Christian for sixty two years.