Brother taught my Latin class at St. X my sophomore and junior years. Everyone had to take a foreign language, and since I always wanted to be different I decided to take Latin. Everyone else took Spanish, or French mostly. While the school had Latin listed on the course roster, they must have figured that no one would sign up for it, because they had no one to teach it. Well seven of us signed up, and instead of telling us to choose something else, Brother John Joseph, at age 83, agreed to come out of retirement to teach us Latin for two years. Many stories could be told of that class, and the hijinks of fifteen and sixteen year olds... but suffice it to say that Brother was a tremendous influence. For Brother, Latin was an opportunity to teach us about more than just a foreign language. It was often about much more than that. History, music, language, religion. All these flowed into one subject. Brother was a great collector of holy cards, and would give them to us on a regular basis. One I keep to this day. On it is a quote from Fulton Sheen: "Measure your generosity not by what you give, but by what you have left." It's been a little more than seven years now since he passed away. A truly great man: Brother John Joseph Sterne, CFX. Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord.
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I liked the guy--I remember when I was a junior at Mercy Academy and was getting my senior ring: we had this tradition whereby you get 98 people to turn your ring around your finger and then sign their name to your year book (weird tradition, I know). anyway, I asked him to do it, and the poor guy had no idea what I was talking about, but he did it anyway. Thanks, Br. J!
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