Br. Lewis Theodor

Robert Joseph Drahmann was born the second son of six children of Vincent and Louise Speiser Drahmann on June 7, 1926, in Perham, Minnesota. There he attended St. Henry's Grade School and Perham High School. He decided he would join his father in business after a short period in the army. Because of his asthma he was rejected and he went to St. John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota. It was there that he made the decision to enter religious life and in the late fall of 1945 he entered the Novitiate at Glencoe, Missouri, where he received the habit on December 7th and the religious name of Brother Lewis Theodore. He completed his B.S.S. degree at St. Mary's College in Winona in 1949 and was immediately assigned to teach at De La Salle Institute in Chicago, Illinois. There he served for thirteen years as a teacher and as Principal. In 1962 he made the Second Novitiate in Rome, Italy, and upon completion was assigned as Director of the Scholasticate in Winona, Minnesota, serving there from 1963 to 1966. Brother Lewis Theodore was named Principal of Cretin High School in 1966 and remained there until he was appointed Director of Education and Finance for the Winona District in 1970. In 1972 he was appointed Superintendent of Schools for the Archdiocese of St. Paul - Minneapolis and he served in that position for six years. He took the job of Director of the Graduate Program of the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul and remained there for two years before being appointed President of Christian Brothers College in Memphis, Tennessee in 1980. Brother Theodore had earned his M.S.I.R. degree from the Loyola University in Chicago, Illinois, in 1956 and his Ed. Spec. at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul in 1974. In 1983 he was granted an Honorary D.Ed. from his alma mater, St. Mary's College. He served as President of CBC for thirteen years and was president when it became a University in 1993. He was the most honored President in the history of the University. In 1993 he was assigned as Director of Education for the Regional Conference of Christian Brothers and resided in Washington, D.C., until 1998 when he became a Professor of Education at the St. Mary's University of Minnesota, Minneapolis Center. He worked there until a few weeks before his death on September 2, 2002, of a lung ailment. Brother Theodore was 76 years old and had been a De La Salle Christian Brother for fifty-seven years.