Br. Leonard William

Daniel O'Meara was born on May 7, 1875, in West Bend, Washington County, Wisconsin, the son of, and oldest of ten children of Patrick and Louisa Reck O'Meara. His father was a prominent Judge who practiced law for sixty-three years. Young Daniel completed high school and entered the University of Wisconsin Normal School where he became a star runner and where he received a teaching certificate. He secured a teaching position but at age twenty-three, already an accomplished teacher and athlete, he entered the Novitiate at Glencoe on January 19, 1898, where he received the habit and religious name of Brother Leonard William on March 25, 1898. His first teaching assignment took him to St. Vincent's in St. Louis in 1899 and then to Memphis in 1900, to Feehanville in 1905, to St. Paul in 1906, to Glencoe in 1907 as Sub-Director to St. Paul in 1908, Minneapolis in 1909, and to Duluth in 1910. He retired to St. Paul in 1911, was transferred to Kansas City in 1912 and to St. Joseph in 1913. Brother Leonard was assigned to the Juniorate in 1917, eventually becoming the Sub-Director there as well later in the Novitiate. With the exception of a short period in Kansas City he remained in Glencoe and in 1935 be became a member of the Community of Ancients. In 1925 when the St. De La Salle Auxiliary was revived, it was Brother Leonard who was chosen to become editor of the quarterly Bulletin. He died at age sixty-one, having been a De La Salle Christian Brother for thirty-eight years.