Ambrose Burke

Monsignor Ambrose J. Burke was an English professor and Catholic priest who served as the eighth president of Saint Ambrose University from 1940 through 1956. A native of Iowa, he attended the colleges high school program, and then the college itself, but was expelled from the seminary for a year and a half by the schools administrator for planning an evening of carousing. He eventually acquired a masters degree and a doctorate in English from Yale University and returned to St. Ambrose in 1921 as an instructor. He was appointed the schools president in 1940 and served for sixteen years, then the longest tenure of any St. Ambrose president. He worked as a pastor and a chaplain for many decades after and remained active until shortly before his death in October 1998, at the age of 102.

Burke was born November 27, 1895 in Sigourney, Iowa. At the age ofhe attended St. Ambrose Academy in Davenport, Iowa, which was then the high school program for Saint Ambrose University and has now been merged into Assumption High School. He then moved on to St. Ambrose College, but was expelled in his second year when his plans to go carousing were discovered by the school authorities. He was not permitted to return to the seminary for a year and a half. He was eventually ordained a priest of the Catholic Church in 1921 in Baltimore, Maryland.

Source: Wikipedia