Aycock, Father Robert
1977, May 9
Date of Birth: 1891, July 4
Robert Aycock was born in Houma, Louisiana, on July 4, 1891. His schooling began in 1899 on a plantation near Houma. In 1906 he went to Alexandria, Louisiana, to a business college. From 1907 to 1911 he was out of school. In 1911 he went to St. Anthony’s College in San Antonio, Texas. The following year, 1912, he returned to Louisiana to study at St. Joseph’s Seminary in Benedict. In 1915 he came to St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore, Maryland. In his first two years there, in Philosophy, he earned an B.A. and an M.A. In 1917 he began his Theology at St. Mary’s, but in 1918 he went to the Sulpician Seminary (Theological College) at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He returned to St. Mary’s and was ordained to the priesthood on May 26, 1921.
Father Aycock spent 1921-1922 in Solitude at Catonsville, Maryland. He came back to St. Mary’s in 1922 as Father Boyer’s assistant in Biology.
In 1923 he went to St. Patrick’s Seminary in San Francisco, California, as teacher of Biology. He moved to the newly opened St. Joseph’s College in Mountain View, California in 1924 to teach Latin, French, and Elocution; and then moved back to St. Patrick’s to teach Biology until 1930. After a year at St. Mary’s Seminary, Paca Street, as teacher of Biology, he moved to St. Charles College in Catonsville, Maryland, where he remained until 1938, primarily as a Science teacher.
Father Aycock returned to St. Mary’s on Paca Street, where he taught Biology and Genetics up to 1962, when he retired. Father Aycock remained in residence in old St. Mary’s to 1971, when he moved to St. Charles Villa, the newly opened Sulpician Retirement Home in Catonsville. He died in St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore on May 9, 1977.
Adapted from Father Aycock’s “Personal Data” sheet and from The Voice.