Br. Leopold Thomas

Howard Vincent Lambert was born on May 7, 1919, in Mexico, Missouri, the son of Howard Patrick and Viola Dennison Lambert. His parents moved to St. Louis, where Howard graduated from Christian Brothers College High School. On September 30, 1936, he entered the Novitiate at Glencoe, Missouri, and received the habit and religious name of Brother Leopold Thomas in November of that same year. His Scholasticate training began in Glencoe but was completed with his B.A. degree from St. Mary's College in Winona, Minnesota, in 1942. He later did graduate work at DePaul University and in Minnesota as well. During his novitiate year he became a victim of tuberculosis and was forced to spend two years at Mt. St. Rose Sanatorium in St. Louis. His first teaching assignment took him to St. Mel's High School in Chicago for six years, 1942-1948, before he was transferred to De La Salle High School in the same city. In 1949 he was assigned to Cretin High School in St. Paul, Minnesota, and remained there until 1955, when he was sent to St. George High School in Evanston, Illinois. Brother Leopold taught and was Assistant Principal and Sub-Director at Lourdes High School in Oshkosh from 1959 to 1962 and was a counselor at De La Salle in Chicago from 1962 to 1965. He worked in the guidance department at St. Francis in Wheaton, Illinois, in 1965 and as a counselor at St. Patrick's High School, as well as the Provincialate in Oak Park in 1966-1967 until his death at age fifty-two, having been a De La Salle Christian Brother for thirty-four years.