Brother Martin's Alumnus of the Year award is named for Allen J. Ellender (SA '09). He represented Louisiana in the U. S. Senate from 1937-1972.

• The future Senator was born in Montegut in Terrebonne Parish in 1890.
• He was educated in the one-room school on the grounds of his father's plantation, Hardscrabble.

To explain how Allen became a student at St. Aloysius, we pick up the story as told by Thomas A. Becnel in his book Senator Allen Ellender of Louisiana (Louisiana State University Press 1995).

When Allen outgrew Henry's one-room school at Hardscrabble, he received private tutoring from Andrew Bouvier, an outsider who had married a local woman and who ran a small private school for some years in Montegut, just south of the Ellender lands. Bouvier, a native of France, had been in a Catholic order of brothers, which he had left before settling in the bayou country. After teaching Allen as much as he could, Bouvier advised Wally [Allen's father] to send him to a preparatory school in New Orleans before allowing him to enter college. Like many Acadian students, Allen had trouble with English grammar and syntax.

In 1905 Bouvier helped Allen enter St. Aloysius in New Orleans, a private Catholic high school with facilities for boarders ... Allen was fifteen. Ellender brothers' funds paid the tuition for Allen's four years at St. Aloysius. Extant records do not reveal how the short Acadian boy from lower Terrebonne Parish adjusted to life in a New Orleans boarding school. Undoubtedly, he worked hard and tried to please his teachers. During the holiday seasons he rode the train home and participated in the sugar cane grinding chores at the end of the year.

Burdened by short stature and a decided French accent, Ellender nonetheless never became withdrawn, never developed an "Acadian complex." His shortcomings did not limit or diminish his ability to learn when he entered St. Aloysius High School in 1905 ... After a shaky first semester struggling with troublesome English courses, he made respectable grades. He had a good memory for details and learned that he could not translate directly from French to English.

After he graduated from St. Aloysius in 1909, he passed the entrance examination to gain admission to Tulane University the same year.

In the years 1905-9, St. Aloysius was housed in a two-story building at the intersection of Esplanade Avenue and Rampart Street.

• The Ursuline sisters had built the facility after the Civil War.
• The school closed in 1885 when the sisters were transferred to "their convent school down the river" that was growing in enrollment.
• Taxed for space at the original St. Aloysius on Chartres Street in the French Quarter, the Brothers of the Sacred Heart purchased the Esplanade property in 1892 for $23,000.
• "As the building had been divided into cells for cloistered nuns, it required extensive remodeling to fit it for school, and Brothers' quarters. These repairs amounted to $7,000. The Brothers occupied it in August of the same year, and sold their holdings on Chartres Street for $13,100." (A Century of Service for the Sacred Heart in the United States 1847-1947, Brother Macarius, S.C.)

The Aloysian of January 29, 1937, featured a front page article on Ellender's election to the Senate. He took the seat that had been filled by Mrs. Huey Long since her husband's assassination in 1935.

Some information from the Aloysian article:

• Ellender is referred to as "graduate of '09," confirming the information in Becnel's biography and contradicting the date ('08) in the Alumni Directory.
• The article places Ellender's birth in 1891, not 1890, as Becnel lists it.
• The student-author concludes the article thus:

The Faculty and pupils of St. Aloysius College take this opportunity of sending Mr. Ellender their best wishes and congratulations. Proud are we of him who has so nobly lived up to the high ideals of our Alma Mater – St. Aloysius College – the ideals of honesty, loyalty and integrity. We know that the people of Louisiana are indeed fortunate in having as Senator a man whose tireless energy and willful determination will strengthen the enviable record of Louisiana as the great State in the Union.

Senator Ellender, we are sure it will be of great help to you to know that you have the best wishes, the very deep affection, respect and the faith of St. Aloysius College, and of every one who knows you.