Br. Leonidian Edwin

Leo Burch was born on July 19, 1914, in St. Louis, Missouri. His family moved to Chicago, Illinois, where Leo attended St. George High School in Evanston. After only six months at St. George, he entered the Juniorate on February 15, 1930, and three years later the Novitiate on June 15, 1933. The same year he received the habit and the religious name of Brother Leonidian Edwin. He began his Scholasticate studies at Glencoe and continued them at St. Mary's College in Winona, Minnesota. There he developed tuberculosis and was immediately transferred to Mt. St. Rose Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri, where he remained for two and a half years. It was in August of 1939 when it was thought he was well enough to make a visit with relatives in Louisville, Kentucky. He became too ill while there to return to St. Louis and died on the 18th of August at the age of twenty-five, having been a De La Salle Christian Brother for only nine years.