"SAINT THERESA MUSEUM BRIEF" #5 - Our One Religious Brother"

 

BROTHER EDWIN LEONIDIAN BURCH, F.S.C. 

1914-1939

Born Joseph Leo Burch, Brother Edwin Leonidian is the son of Leo Burch and Elizabeth Abbie (Elder) Burch. After their marriage at St. Theresa, the Burch family moved to St. Louis where Joseph Leo was born July 19, 1914. 

Joseph Leo Burch entered the community of the Brothers of the Christian Schools in 1930. In 1933, he was invested with the holy habit of that community and received his religious name Brother Edwin Leonidian. 

While teaching at St. Mary's College in Winona, Minnesota, in 1936, his health began to fail. He was sent back to St. Louis to Mount Saint Rose Sanitorium for treatment for about a year. Feeling that the country air would be more beneficial, with his Superior's per mission, he went to his grandmother's home in Mooleyville near St. Theresa Church. In the summer of 1939, he died at St. Joseph Infirmary in Louisville. His burial services were held at St. Theresa's and he was laid to rest among his family members in the church cemetery.

Sister of Mercy Sister Mary Bernard Warren, Father Joseph Henry Elder, Brother Edwin Leonidian Burch, Father Henry Lee Egart and Dominican Sister Mary Catherine Buren, all from St. Theresa, died from tuberculosis, (the first at age 31, the second at age 39 and the last 3 at age 25), one of the infectious diseases that took the lives of many young people at that time. In those days, many women died during child birth which explains why so many men married two or three times in their lifetimes. 

PROPOSED SAINT THERESA HISTORIC PHOTO GALLERY