Br. William

William Louis Walz, Sr. and Ruth Annette Klump Walz gave birth to William Louis, Jr. on May 4, 1941 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Young William attended St. Mary’s primary school until the family moved to Davenport, Iowa, where he attended Assumption High School. From 1959 to 1963 he pursued college courses at St. Ambrose College in Davenport. He received a BA there in 1963 and immediately began working on his MA at Purdue University. In 1967 while attending courses at Lewis University he made the decision to enter the novitiate at Glencoe. A year later, after his first profession of vows, Brother William was assigned to Gabriels High School in Lansing, Michigan. In 1971, the same year he completed his MA at Michigan State, he left fulltime teaching forever when he became Assistant Principal at Driscoll Catholic High School in Addison, Illinois. In 1973 he was appointed Superintendent of La Salle Manor Retreat Center in Plano, Illinois, and in 1975 was named Principal of De La Salle Institute in Chicago. He returned to the Retreat Center in Plano in 1977. After a sabbatical year in 1980, Brother William was named Bursar at Lewis University in Romeoville, Illinois. In 1985 he was appointed President of Christian Brothers Services, a position he held for twenty-two years. It was during his time as President of CB Services that he completed his MBA (1987). With acclamations from all and to the regret of many, Brother William found it necessary to retire in 2008 to the La Salle Community at Romeoville where he battled cancer for the next two years. At 11:43 p.m. at Provena Saint Joseph Hospital in Joliet, on October 4, 2010 he lost that battle. He died of pancreatic cancer at the age of sixty-nine, having been a De La Salle Christian Brother for forty-three years.