Father DuWayne Brisendine (Courtesy photo)
Hawaii Catholic Herald
Marianist Brother DuWayne Brisendine, whose decades of educational and administrative ministry culminated in a six-year stint at Chaminade University of Honolulu, died Dec. 18 in San Antonio, Texas. He was 89 years old with 71 years of religious profession.
Brother Brisendine was a faculty member at Chaminade from 2006-12. His teaching career began in 1956 at a school in Victoria, Texas, and ultimately spanned a half-dozen states as well as Japan. He also worked outside the classroom in the U.S. as well as in India and in Rome.
Brother Brisendine was born on Dec. 13, 1935, in Addison, Michigan. He had one brother, one half-brother and two half-sisters, and his family moved frequently in his childhood years.
He entered the Catholic Church as a freshman in high school. A year later, he and his mother moved to Illinois where he first encountered the Marianists.
Brother Brisendine entered the postulancy while he was still in high school, in 1951. He professed his first vows in Wisconsin in 1953 and his final vows in Missouri five years later.
After he began teaching in 1956, Brother Brisendine’s assignments took him to Missouri, Illinois, Colorado, Oklahoma and Japan. He also did formation work in the Marianist Scholasticate at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio.
Brother Brisendine served in various Marianist ministries in India, as a health center director and a parish business manager in Texas, and as communications director for the Curia Generalizia Marianisti in Rome.
He came to Chaminade University of Honolulu after spending three years in Rome. Following his time in Hawaii, in 2012 he moved to the Woodlawn Marianist Community and the Marianist Residence in San Antonio.
One of Brother Brisendine’s teaching colleagues, Marianist Father Al McMenamy, recalled Brother Brisendine as “always very gracious, going out of his way at times” to help others.
“He could be stern, but always for the sake of” his students, Father McMenamy recalled in an obituary provided by the Marianists.
