The father is an alumnus.

I know it's been on a couple other boards, but I love this photo.

We are all proud of our success on the fields, courts and classrooms. The Notre Dame experience has helped form us and helped us become the successful individuals we are.

But no matter how great we are as individuals, we are greater as the Notre Dame family.

“Notre Dame is just special. People ask me to describe it. I say if you've been here, no explanation is necessary. If you haven't been,
no explanation will suffice."

It is difficult to explain something that requires living.

Notre Dame has shown me the way. I may fail but I can never claim I do not know the way.

Notre Dame is not just a collection of buildings.

It's not just a university where students learn from professors and move on and harbor a lifelong attachment as graduates.

It's a place of values.

It's a place inhabited not only by current students, professors and religious people of faith, but ghosts who you meet around every corner.

The University of Notre Dame was founded in 1842 and chartered as a university long before it could reasonably be classified as such. Young children, called "minims" lived in places such as St. Ed's Hall and their tuition was paid not in cash, but in "kind" - with hogs, corn, wheat, and chickens.

Ghosts such as Father Sorin roam the campus. His spirit wafts above the two lakes at night and can be felt in the Grotto. A farmer's field, to the west of the small Indiana school, and adjacent to it, was pestilential, causing the students to be felled by malaria. Father Sorin implored the man to drain his fields, but the old farmer refused and Notre Dame students continued to get malaria. Hearing that the farmer was away for a few weeks, Father Sorin sent scores of students and teachers to drain the fields. When the farmer returned, it was a fait accompli, and he later agreed to sell the land to Father Sorin, expanding the campus toward Dixie Highway.

Ghosts of Notre Dame students felled in battle - the Civil War, The Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, the Vietnam War, and the Gulf Wars and other wars - stride alongside current students on their way to class. The ghosts of students past line up and enter the stadium to cheer for the football team or gather outside the southern walls of Breen-Phillips where the old Field House used to be - where Notre Dame students cheered their basketball team and conducted Pep Rallies for Rockne's, Leahy's and Parseghian's teams. Where students sat glued to a screen that showed images of players moving in formation, dots or scribbles as other students marked the progress of the football team at away games, connected by radio to a student with earphones. The old Field House where Notre Dame students stomped in a car that brought George Wallace to campus for a speech that unsettled the young men who could only express their distaste for his racism in a fashion similar to what the Meat Squad did to students who did not make way for the Notre Dame players sufficiently quickly as they walked from the dirt-floored nether regions of the Field House up the stairs to the balcony where they sat, bullnecked and proud, as the Pep Rallies flowed like molten fire below and where student pyramids formed and fell like waves breaking upon a human shore.

Notre Dame is a place of values. While society moves on and leaves broken and discarded babies in trashbins, Notre Dame prays for their eternal souls and for the welfare of those who would remove them from this earth.

In silent protest, Notre Dame stands like a pillar of faith in a mordant sea of ephemeral values. Notre Dame is a lodestone, a true north where students, parents, Americans and citizens of the world of all faiths can come and stand for what Jesus walked the shores of Galilee and preached: Love God and one another, and combine your faith with works.

Notre Dame is summed up in the inscription on the plaque where Jesus stands before the Administration Building, "Venite ad me Omnes" - "Come to me, all of you."

We might leave Notre Dame, but it remains with us always. It is a place of the past, the present, and the future.

... always enjoy your entries. Thanks for the contributions - may your keyboard enjoy a fruitful 2013.

But why would spirits of students past line up to enter the stadium? Why wouldn't they just fly over the wall?

They would be mistaken for the Quiddich team.

That, and because, it the days past, students came out of the stands and extended the tunnel to the team's bench before the game and at half time.

The Spirit of Notre Dame – Notre Dame’s Grotto http://www.nd.edu/~wcawley/corson/grotto.htm

Tom Dooley’s Letter
http://archives.nd.edu/research/texts/dooley.htm

Father Sorin’s Letter (copied below)
http://www.nd.edu/~wcawley/corson/centennial2.htm


From a letter of
THE REVEREND EDWARD SORIN, C.S.C.
Founder of the University of Notre Dame
to the
VERY REVEREND BASIL MOREAU, C.S.C.
Founder of the Congregation of Holy Cross

Notre Dame du Lac
December 5, 1842
Beloved Father,

When we least dreamed of it, we were offered an excellent piece of property, about 640 acres in extent. This land is located in the county of St. Joseph on the banks of the St. Joseph River, not far from the city of St. Joseph, (Michigan). It is a delightfully quiet place, about twenty
minutes from South Bend. This attractive spot has taken from the lake which surrounds it the beautiful name of Notre Dame du Lac.... It is from here that I write you now.

Everything was frozen over. Yet it all seemed so beautiful. The lake, especially, with its broad carpet of dazzling white snow, quite naturally reminded us of the spotless purity of our august Lady whose name it bears, and also of the purity of soul that should mark the new inhabitants of this chosen spot.... We were in a hurry to enjoy all the scenery along the lakeshore of which we had heard so much. Though it was quite cold, we went to the very end of the lake, and like children, came back fascinated with the marvelous beauties of our new home.... Once more, we felt that Providence had been good to us, and we blessed God from the depths of our soul.

Will you permit me, dear Father, to share with you a preoccupation which gives me no rest?

Briefly, it is this: Notre Dame du Lac was given to us by the bishop only on condition that we establish here a college at the earliest opportunity. As there is no other school within more than a hundred miles, this college cannot fail to succeed.... Before long, it will develop on a large
scale.... It will be one of the most powerful means for good in this country.

Finally, dear Father, you cannot help see that this new branch of your amily is destined to grow under the protection of Our Lady of the Lake and of St. Joseph. At least, that is my deep conviction. Time will tell if I am wrong.

-- E. Sorin

Lou Holtz says a lot of stupid things, but the one that sinks in the most is his comment "If you've been to Notre Dame, no explanation is needed. If you haven't, no explanation will suffice."

It's not completely true, because there are plenty of folks who "get" Notre Dame without having ever stepped foot on campus. But to reach the levels of your passion, of the passion held by those on this message board and those we all call friends and family, is next to impossible in a series of Youtube clips. I've tried to do it, but folks who have rooting interests in other universities or teams still think my passion is rooted in the same place theirs is...a matter of geography or genetics or just some dumb luck.

We all know it's much, much more than that.

I'm actually friends with a few of the former students interviewed.

It goes against the grain, but just let it speak for itself.

rate. Not only are we kicking ass on the field, we also aren't using our athletes as mercenaries to net the school a nice buck.