Loras College - Purgold Yearbook (Dubuque, IA)

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PHYSICAL EDUCATION Gailen P. Thomas Assistant Coach of Football Len Winter Instructor of Physical Education Coach of Football l It i ll ) ill II,

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SCIENCE Rev. John A. Theobald Professor of Mathematics Florian J. Stork Assistant in Chemistry ami Biology fhiyr urutx-vijiht

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Jit Hbntortam FATHER JOHN J. BREITBACH One of the most beloved members of the faculty passed away during the past scholastic year. He was the Reverend John J. Breitbach, who had been intimately associated with the college practically all his life. Father Breitbach, who had been in ill health for the last four years, suffered a stroke while riding in an automobile near Elgin, on November 20, 1938 He was accompanied by two c ' ose friends, the Reverend Joseph J Zeyen. pastor of St. Mary ' s Church. Dubuque, and the Reverend Joseph Lonergan, pastor of the Church of the Nativity, Kenosha. Wisconsin. Although Father Breitbach had suffered at least two strokes during the past four years his death was completelv unexpected Father Breitbach. member of a pioneer Dubuque County family, was born near Cascade, January 14, 1880. He attended Calvary College in Wisconsin and Loras (then St Joseph’s ' Col ' ege, from which he was graduated with distinction in 1902 He was ordained a priest in June. 1906, by the late Archbishop Ireland of St Paul in the chapel of the St. Paul Seminary where he made his seminary course After his ordination he took a year of post graduate work at the Catholic University of America and the University of Chicago, returning to teach at the college in 1907. In addition to his heavy college duties he served as pastor of the Annunciation Church, Lattnerville, for about ten years, up to the time of his illness in 193-4, when he suffered an apoplectic stroke He was forced to abandon his college teaching after this stroke due to his increasing ill health ° “The Dean. as he was affectionately called by those who knew him intimately, was active in many other fields, for many years assisting in all archepiscopal func¬ tions at St. Raphael ' s Cathedral, the college, and elsewhere in the archdiocese, as master of chaplains to visiting prelates in which function he served as guide and assistant to the prelates. Father Breitbach was the Dubuque chairman of the Catholic University of America Alumni Association He was a member of the recent Bishop Loras pil¬ grimage to the National Eucharistic Congress at New Orleans, sponsored by the Most Reverend Archbishop Francis J L Beckman, STD. DD Columbia College awarded Father Breitbach the degree of master of arts in 1913. “The Dean was a man of quick intelligence, broad sympathies strong faith, simple piety, strict and tender conscience, and large chanty. ’ The hurt heart and bruised spirit, sorrow and suffering, humiliation and bereavement he could assuage and sooth, comfort and console with all the tenderness and delicacy sympathy and understanding of a woman and a saint. Father Breitbach loved the society of his Allows and rejoiced in them com¬ pany. Sociability was one of his shining virtues, and his reward exceedingly great is union with the Great Society He was cheerful, genial, loyal. But beneath his cheerful and joviaI exterior, beneath the easy and affable manner lay concealed the character of a severely correct and conscientious, pious, faith ' ul, religious priest The memory of the beloved priest of God will bo indelibly stamped upon the minds and the hearts of the students and acuity of Loras College as well as upon the minds and hearts of all those whose life path 1 : crossed his 5 Catholic or non- Catholic. A man of such large charity and priestly virtue cannot soon be forgotten « $ ' ’ thirty