San Francisco County CA Archives Biographies.....LeBihan, Rev. Louis  1884 - 
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Source: California and Californians, Vol. IV, Published 1932, Pages  83 - 84
Author: The Lewis Publishing Company

     ECOLE NOTRE DAME DES VICTOIRES, known as the French School, administered 
by the Marist Fathers in San Francisco, is located at 659 Pine Street. It is a 
school in which French is an obligatory course from the kindergarten to the 
highest grade. At the present time the instruction is complete throughout the 
grammar school for boys and the four years of high school work for girls with 
classic and commercial courses.

     In an address delivered December 18, 1921, Archbishop Edward J. Hanna 
voiced an aspiration that for a long time had been in the minds of the clergy 
of San Francisco's historic French church, when he said : "We should have a 
French school here, a school where English would be taught, of course, but 
where the children might also learn French. Let us establish here a center of 
French culture." With that encouragement Ecole Notre Dame des Victoires was 
opened January 14, 1924, and for the past five years has been in reality a 
center of Catholic and French culture in San Francisco. The school itself is 
an architectural triumph in which form and function are united, constituting 
an ideal environment for the splendid work done there. Buses carry the 
children to and from their homes, and adequate provision has been made to 
safeguard the health of the children in every way, the facilities of a well 
equipped gymnasium being at their disposal. The teachers of the school are the 
Sisters of St. Joseph, whose mother-house is located at Orange, California. A 
group of these Sisters first came to California in 1912, opening the Nazareth 
Academy and Conservatory of Music at Eureka, and they are also teachers of the 
St. Jeanne d'Arc School at San Francisco, another institution administered by 
the Marist Fathers, and also the Chinese school of six hundred pupils directed 
by the Paulist Fathers and the parochial school of Corpus Christi Church.

     The Marist Fathers in charge of the French School are the clergy of Our 
Lady of Victory: Rev. L. LeBihan, Rev. H. L. Gerard and Rev. J. Bouvy, and 
Rev. F. Georgelin, acting Pastor of St. Joan of Arc's Church and School.

     The founder of the school is Father Henri Gerard, one of the best known 
French priests in the state, who in 1929 was made a chevalier of the Legion of 
Honor in recognition of his services in founding the French schools Notre Dame 
des Victoires and St. Jeanne d'Arc.

     The pastor of Ecole Notre Dame des Victoires, Rev. Louis LeBihan, was 
born in France, in 1884. He attended school in Brittany, and after preparatory 
work with the Marist Fathers entered college at Montlucon, France. He also 
spent a year of novitiate in Italy and in 1903 came to Washington, D. C., 
where he completed his studies for the priesthood.  He was teacher of Latin 
and for three years engaged in missionary work at Atlanta, Georgia. In 1910 he 
was promoted to assistant pastor.

     Father LeBihan became pastor of the old French church on Bush Street, in 
San Francisco in 1927. He is a man of wide principles, exceptional 
scholarship, and one of the ablest members of the group of Marist Fathers in 
California.

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