Br. Thomas Dupré

Thomas Dupré's path to the Brothers was not something that happened in an instant. In his senior year of high school — 1960 to 1961 — Brother Kiaran Daniel McMullin came to one of his classes and spoke about the life of a Christian Brother. It planted a seed. For two years after high school, Br. Thomas carried that seed with him through college, thinking it over, sitting with it. Then in 1963, he decided to try it out. He joined, and he has not looked back.

Among those who shaped him in his early years, Br. Thomas recalls a mentor at St. Joseph High School in Westchester, Illinois — Br. Fabian Ryan — who told him during his very first year of teaching that he was "doing a terrific job." Another voice that stayed with him belonged not to a Brother but to a lay teacher, Emmett Holland, who sat in on his classes and told him plainly: "You will be a fine teacher." That kind of affirmation, he reflects, can mark a person for life.

Teaching mathematics and computer science, Br. Thomas gathered his share of classroom stories. Once, in an early lesson on infinite sets, he asked students to name an example. A student suggested all the trees in the world — a wrong answer, but when pressed, the student explained: "Because by the time you get through counting, more trees have grown." Another time, while proving the theorem of Pythagoras to sophomore geometry students, a student suddenly called out: "I get it!" And years later, a former student reached out to say that Br. Thomas had helped him choose his college major — that he was double-majoring in mathematics and computer science, and apparently thriving.

If Br. Thomas could give students one thing, it would be the desire to make the world a better place for their having been in it. He borrows from Albert Schweitzer: "The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve."