Our brother
Ferdinand DuPont was born in
Rotterdam
,
Holland
in 1899. He and his family
immigrated to the
United States
in 1910 and settled immediately in
Butler,
Montana. In 1918 the family moved
to
Kimberly,
Wisconsin, where Ferdinand worked as a draftsman in the Paper Mill and Real
Estate Company until 1925. That same
year he received his high school diploma, having begun work on it through
correspondence with St.
Norbert High. Ferdinand was vested
as a novice in 1927 and began teaching at the college in 1930, becoming
registrar when he was solemnly professed in 1932, and remained registrar until
1953.
After
ordination in 1934 until 1944, he acted as chaplain at St. Joseph
Academy, the State Reformatory, Hickory Grove Sanatorium, and Our Lady of
Charity Convent, during which time he published a 53 page monograph on youth
counseling.
1932
marked the beginning of summer school programs at the college.
Ferdinand was instrumental, as registrar, in aiding hundred of nuns from
across the country to earn college degrees.
Ferdinand
was appointed associate pastor to St. Willibrord in Chicago in 1953, then pastor
at St. Louis in Dykesville in 1955, and finally pastor of St. Willibrord in
1959. Upon completion of his
pastorship, and after a much-deserved trip to the Holy Land, he was appointed
chaplain of the infirmary and retired sisters at Holy Family Convent at Alverno.
During
Abbot Pennings’s middle years, Ferdinand served as part-time secretary and
translated into English all of the letters Pennings had written to his relatives
in Holland. From the years 1940
until 1965 he was a member of the Board of Supervisors for religious sisters’
communities. He was also the mentor
for the local “Cell Movement,” which met every Tuesday afternoon at St.
Catherine’s Bookshop, to discuss papal encyclicals, liturgy, and the
foundations for good Christian living. Young
Ben Mackin and Brendan McKeough were a part of the movement and discerned their
vocations there.
Ferdinand,
a rigid, faithful, orthodox, and well-informed confrere, retired to the abbey in
1982, at the age of 83, still going strong and writing articles on mysticism or
spirituality.
As
Ferdinand’s health began to fail and with his sincere desire to remain at the
abbey, Xanten Wing was turned into a nursing center to care for the infirm.
He died on
Monday, March 16, 1987 at the age of 87.
