President of ND from 1952-1987, civil rights leader, winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal.

He transformed ND football, but more importantly he transformed the university and played a leading role in American and international affairs.

He was 97.









http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/t...story.html


http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/natio...tml#page=1

As a young lad who didn't care for Notre Dame, Hesburgh impressed me.

Locally he was chided for not being at Notre Dame enough, but he was very outward looking and took on many challenging national and international issues.

Sorry for your loss Domers.

(02-27-2015 09:51 AM)SeaBlue Wrote:  As a young lad who didn't care for Notre Dame, Hesburgh impressed me.

Locally he was chided for not being at Notre Dame enough, but he was very outward looking and took on many challenging national and international issues.

Sorry for your loss Domers.

The old joke was:

"What is the difference between Father Ted and God?"

The answer:

"God is everywhere, Father Ted is everywhere but Notre Dame."


Here is his complete bio from ND:



http://hesburgh.nd.edu/

(02-27-2015 09:59 AM)TerryD Wrote:  

(02-27-2015 09:51 AM)SeaBlue Wrote:  As a young lad who didn't care for Notre Dame, Hesburgh impressed me.

Locally he was chided for not being at Notre Dame enough, but he was very outward looking and took on many challenging national and international issues.

Sorry for your loss Domers.

The old joke was:

"What is the difference between Father Ted and God?"

The answer:

"God is everywhere, Father Ted is everywhere but Notre Dame."


Here is his complete bio from ND:



http://hesburgh.nd.edu/

He will be missed... God Bless him. May he RIP

Syracuse's gift to Notre Dame. He was revered over in central NY too.

(02-27-2015 10:20 AM)TexanMark Wrote:  Syracuse's gift to Notre Dame. He was revered over in central NY too.

Good man. May he RIP.

A friend of mine posted this on facebook (He's a Fordham alum)

Quote:In the early 1950s, a well-known magazine for Catholic commentary criticized big-time college football, argued that Catholic universities should be known more for their academics than their football teams, and concluded that Catholic universities should drop football. Within a few years, almost every Catholic university either dropped football or de-emphasized it significantly -- except Notre Dame. At Notre Dame, Fr. Hesburgh plowed forward with football. Eventually, Notre Dame's football team became such a valuable, cash-generating asset that it turned what had once been a small college in the middle of nowhere into the most visible Catholic university in America, and then eventually into one of the most preeminent universities in all the world. Today Notre Dame has nearly a $10 billion endowment, academic programs known throughout the world, and a pretty good football team that does not really compete any longer with the best college football teams in the nation. Looking back, Fr. Hesburgh was correct that football can be an engine for the overall academic growth of a university. I suspect, in hindsight, many of the colleges that dropped football wish they could go back and undo that decision

(02-27-2015 12:06 PM)dbackjon Wrote:  A friend of mine posted this on facebook (He's a Fordham alum)

Quote:In the early 1950s, a well-known magazine for Catholic commentary criticized big-time college football, argued that Catholic universities should be known more for their academics than their football teams, and concluded that Catholic universities should drop football. Within a few years, almost every Catholic university either dropped football or de-emphasized it significantly -- except Notre Dame. At Notre Dame, Fr. Hesburgh plowed forward with football. Eventually, Notre Dame's football team became such a valuable, cash-generating asset that it turned what had once been a small college in the middle of nowhere into the most visible Catholic university in America, and then eventually into one of the most preeminent universities in all the world. Today Notre Dame has nearly a $10 billion endowment, academic programs known throughout the world, and a pretty good football team that does not really compete any longer with the best college football teams in the nation. Looking back, Fr. Hesburgh was correct that football can be an engine for the overall academic growth of a university. I suspect, in hindsight, many of the colleges that dropped football wish they could go back and undo that decision

Some Father Ted quotes about sports and academics co-existing:


---"Notre Dame has football. Texas has oil. Neither should apologize "


---"There is no academic virtue in playing mediocre football and no academic vice in winning a game that by all odds one should lose."

---"There has been a surrender at Notre Dame, but it is a surrender to excellence on all fronts, and in this we hope to rise above ourselves with the help of God."


---"I would insist that we wanted only student-athletes. We expected all the players to be students, and we expected all of them to graduate — not 50 percent of them, not 30 percent of them. All of them.”


---“My primary conviction has been, and is, that whatever else a university may be, it must first of all be a place dedicated to excellence. Most of my waking hours are directed to the achievement of that excellence here in the academic order. As long as we, like most American universities, are engaged in intercollegiate athletics, we will strive for excellence of performance in this area too, but never at the expense of the primary order of academic excellence.”


---He (the ND head coach) understands what we stand for and he has our confidence. Despite any syndicated surmises to the contrary, he is not expected to be Rockne, but only himself; he is not to be measured by any nostalgic calculus of wins, losses and national championships but only by the excellence of his coaching and the spirit of his teams.…."


---“A university could make broad and significant changes in academic personnel to achieve greater excellence, and attract only a ripple of attention. But let the same university make a well-considered change in athletics for the same reason, and it sparks the ill-considered charge that it is no longer a first rate academic institution and must henceforth be considered a football factory. It seems to me a little more thought is in order regarding what makes and institution academically first rate…. What the University does athletically, assuming it to be in the proper framework, neither adds to nor subtracts anything from relevant and all-important academic facts.”

I wish I researched more on Notre Dame's history. I would have loved to correspond with the good Father. He was everything a man of the cloth should be. He was one of those types that will skip purgatory.

God Bless him.

Here is an example of lasting impact.

Jerry Tillery is a newly signed recruit, an early admission this January from Louisiana.

He requested a personal meeting with Father Ted (who would meet any student who asked).

Check out the photo in Jerry Tillery's hand. A good legacy, I think.

(02-27-2015 09:14 AM)TerryD Wrote:  President of ND from 1952-1987, civil rights leader, winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal.

Indeed, an iconic figure. RIP.