Crossed cannons represent Father Brooks’ artillery service during WWI. The large “B” represents the old Marquette Union that he helped found as a student.

One tile at a time. That was the mantra of the summer while as many as four artists worked side-by-side, week after week in the Alumni Memorial Union to reassemble a mosaic that commemorates the life of Rev. Peter J. Brooks, S.J., Marquette’s 17th president.

Alumni who remember Brooks Memorial Union, which honored Father Brooks, no doubt can picture the mosaic that occupied a full wall at the first-floor northwest entrance. When the union was demolished in 2001 to make room for construction of the Rev. John P. Raynor, S.J., Library, Marquette removed the mosaic and placed it in safe storage at the Haggerty Museum of Art. Late last spring the mosaic-reconstruction project began, and this time the mosaic has been hung on a wall in the central rotunda of the AMU. Edmund Lewandowski created the mosaic and filled it with symbolism depicting Father Brooks’ life, from his birth in 1893 to his death in 1948, just months before Brooks Memorial Union officially opened.