Brother Fulgence (James) Dougherty, CSC �াদার ফু লেজ� ডু েহরিট, িস এস িস May 18, 1922 – December 17, 2017 Brother Fulgence was born on May 18, 1922 in Devil’s Lake, a tiny church-less village in a wheat farming area in the upper east quadrant of North Dakota. Ten days later, he was baptized in the chapel of the local hospital and named James Lamb Dougherty after his parents, James Dougherty, a postal clerk, and Mae Rose Lamb. On most Sundays, the family would kneel in the living room for Mass broadcast over the radio from Winnipeg, Manitoba. On the rare Sundays when a priest could travel to Devil’s Lake, the Catholic community would gather in the Dougherty home to celebrate Mass. In the late 1920s, a prolonged drought and plummeting wheat prices caused the family to lose everything, and they moved to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Despite their calamitous losses, the family felt greatly blessed through their participation in the vibrant parish life of St. Joseph Cathedral. Here, James completed grade school, made his first communion, received the sacrament of confirmation, and served Mass. With his older brother Charles and his younger brother Richard, he attended Cathedral High School. During his sophomore year, when a visiting Christian Brother spoke at a high school assembly, James’ heart was opened to the possibility of a vocation for himself as a lay religious. The next year, when James read in the school library a booklet from Notre Dame titled “The Training of a Brother,” he felt called to religious life in Holy Cross. For a year after his 1940 graduation from high school, James worked in a truck garden and attended classes at Sioux Falls College, all the while trying to anticipate how his parents might react to his calling. But it was a needless worry – they were completely understanding and supportive. In the fall of 1941, James entered the Holy Cross postulancy program at Watertown, Wisconsin. Reflecting on his experience there, he wrote: “The Brothers at Watertown were good teachers and skilled workmen; they were prayerful men, and best of all, they were happy men.” When Father James McGarvey and Father Joseph Voorde, Holy Cross missionaries home from Bengal, shared their stories with the postulants, James responded with serious interest. He was received into St. Joseph Novitiate, Rolling Prairie, Indiana, in February of 1942 and made his first profession of vows on February 2, 1943, taking Fulgence as his religious name. Next came studies at the University of Notre Dame, where he majored in Education and completed his bachelor’s degree in 1945. He was assigned to teach first at Catholic Central High School, Monroe, Michigan (1945-46) and then at Central Catholic High School, South Bend, Indiana (1946-1947).
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