Echoes of '58: Recollections of the Notre Dame Class of 1958

By Jack Barthel

It has been over 60 years since the Notre Dame class of 1958 first set foot on the campus. 1249 men were in the graduating group. The fact that almost 2/3 of the number still are alive is a remarkable one considering their ages are at or approaching 80. Perhaps even more remarkable is that 10% of them have contributed recollections of their days at Notre Dame, where life has led them, resulting in somewhat a history of the time.The stories are interesting, funny, touching and reflective. Many of them show their deep affection and influence Notre Dame has had on their lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Apr 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483448923

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ECHOES

of '58

Recollections of the Notre Dame class of 1958

Jack Barthel,

editor

Copyright © 2016 Jack Barthel.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means---whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic---without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-4893-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-4892-3 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 04/08/2016

INTRODUCTION

The idea for this collection first came to me on a day when I had brought my third oldest son for his freshman year and spent a good part of the visit walking the campus, always drawn to the beautiful central focus of the Dome, Sacred Heart and Sorin Hall. And I was reminded of Frank O'Malley's comment about Sorin, Their blood is in the bricks.

When I visited the Book Store I saw some books of reminiscences of Notre Dame written either by someone famous or at least someone known to the Notre Dame community. And I thought that O'Malley was right (he usually was). I thought that we, as a class had left something there and had taken so much more away. Each of us has handled our lives in different ways; some great successes, some more modest, some lives of difficulty and perhaps tragedy, perhaps most with the quiet success of leading a good life and raising a good family. I felt that some of that, the good and the bad, should be shared; to show how this great University had an effect on a group of men from a period in time. What follows is some serious reflection on the times, on what followed, some funny stories and some sad.

In the summer of 2015, it was reported the 884 of the 1249 graduates of the Notre Dame class of 1958 were still alive. It is a remarkable number when you consider the members of that class were in their late 70's at the time. The recollections recorded here reflect the work of 10% of the class, almost 90 submissions.

PROLOGUE

For those who read this collection and are not from that period in the mid-fifties, let me set some of the stage of the time.

Eisenhower was President. JFK made a run at the Presidency at the Democratic convention in 1956. The Korean War had ended just before the class of '58 started college. The Studebaker plant was still open in South Bend. There were five movie theaters in downtown South Bend. No mall, no McDonald's. A bar named Joer's and a soda shop called the Philadelphia was at the bus stop on Michigan. Rocco's had been opened just a few years before.

The campus was very different. The outer boundaries of buildings were the Dome itself, Farley and Breen Phillips Halls with Vetville right behind them. O'Shaughnessy Hall marked the eastern boundary. The Law and Engineering buildings and the string of dorms along the golf course to the Rock marked the southern end. Fisher and Pangborn had just been built. The Morris Inn had been built a year or so before we arrived. The current Architecture building was the library. A Bookstore was built between Walsh and Badin Halls, with three basketball courts that would give rise, after we graduated, to the Bookstore Basketball tournament.

Many of the wide paths through the main campus were unpaved, as was the Grotto area. There was no altar at the Grotto. There was no statue of Dr. Tom Dooley, but we heard him speak, in person. The Huddle was in a small building between Washington Hall and La Fortune. A newer version of the Huddle was opened in LaFortune in 1956. I was the first customer.

The rules were different. Freshman could stay out until midnight only once a week On all other days, they had to be in their rooms at 10:00 PM for a room check conducted either by a hall Prefect, usually a priest, who lived on each of the floors. Sometimes the check was done be a scholarship player, as one of the ways he worked off his scholarship, besides delivering mail to the dorms and checking ID cards at the dining hall.

In the upper classes, unlimited midnights were allowed, but all students had to be in at midnight and room checks took place in all halls. To get in to any hall after 10:00 PM you had to sign in with a guard at the door. If you came in after midnight, it was an infraction and you were likely campused. The spelling of campused is my own. I am not sure the word exists except in the vocabulary of the 40's and 50's at Notre Dame. Being campused meant that you were not to leave the campus at all for the period of the punishment and you had better be in by room check each night.

At least three times a week you had to sign in at the chapel of each dorm by 7:00 or 7:30 AM. This was meant to encourage you to attend Mass. It worked for a few. I was so terrified of flunking out that I went to Mass everyday from the time I arrived freshman year until the Christmas break. After I received the grades for the first semester, which turned out to be the best of my college career, my attendance dropped off dramatically. Like every other time I left God's good graces, my life suffered.

As soon as sophomore year came around, the football players who recorded morning checks soon were good enough to allow a roommate to check in the rest of the room and then, eventually, checked off everyone. The practice of morning checks soon disappeared. So, alas, did any emphasis on daily mass.

All over campus, the lights went out at midnight, except in the hallways and bathrooms. There was no drinking allowed on campus. It was a rule I saw infrequently, but rarely blatantly, broken. Smoking was permitted everywhere except the dining hall.

The Field House was still being used for basketball. The basketball team our senior year still has one of the best records of any Notre Dame team. The basketball court was located on the east side and the west side was dirt, packed tightly to almost a concrete hardness over the years. The Field House had the vague aroma of a florist's hot house. The Field House was also used for track meets and for the weekly pep rallies. The team would climb up to the balcony located at the West end of the building. Jim Crowley, one of the Four Horseman, gave a stirring speech before one of the Michigan State games.

East of the Field House was the Navy Drill Hall, used mostly for dances but also for our graduation on a rainy day in 1958. The Drill Hall was the site of the Victory Dances held after each football game. The East end of the Drill Hall reached almost to where the Library now stands.

After World War II, Notre Dame created Vetville to house the influx of married vets returning as students. It was a little neighborhood located behind Farley Hall. Thirty-nine POW barracks from U.S. military camps were shipped in and set up as housing, with each building divided into three small living units.

Father Hesburgh had just been appointed President of Notre Dame when we arrived. He was only in his late 30's. There were no girls, except for St. Mary's. Over four years my room door was never locked and I never had anything stolen. Cartier Field, south of the Drill Hall was still used for football practice and the baseball field.

In our senior year, a rule was passed that required coats and ties be worn for dinner. The rule failed to mention the shirt, so many showed up with a tie and no shirt, a tie on a sweatshirt and other variations. Each man had a meal tie, worn every night for a year; outlandish and ugly, and proudly stained with mustard, catsup, gravy and other remainders of meals. The rule lasted only that year.

Religious Bulletins were published periodically and inserted under every door. Most of us read every one. The Scholastic was the only news journal, a weekly slick papered magazine.

It was a different world. In many ways, a different place. It has changed dramatically and it has changed not at all. You hear references to Notre Dame as this place and this special place. And there is, for many who have gone there something that cannot be captured in words. The stories that follow come close, but it's only a start.

I arrived at Notre Dame my Freshman Year knowing no one, but after a few days I said to my roommate, I'm gonna like this place. Not quite true....I ended up loving it.

John Reiss

I came to Notre Dame after a year at Stanford to be closer to a woman I wanted to marry and did marry as soon as I could, which was at age twenty-one. So I never felt as much a part of the student body as much as I wanted to be close to a particular woman.

At registration, a dean told me how Notre Dame was often compared to Stanford. I doubted him and doubted even more when he refused to accept most of my courses for good and bad reasons. For no good reason, he made me take College English over again and for no good reason I submitted to his dictate, nonetheless, I decided to major in English.

Although he allowed me to go to Stanford, my father worried about me losing my faith. On my own, I prayed, read the Bible and often went to daily Mass. At Notre Dame, I had no objections about having to get up early a few mornings a week to go to Mass. I did find annoying the minority of students who were reluctant Catholics, apparently because they felt they had been already forced to attend twelve years of parochial school. Taking all those required courses was not a problem for me, though for some reason the theology courses were not especially beneficial. I loved a Sacred Scriptures course taught by Willis Nutting in the General Program. Nutting and John Frederick (of the English Department) were my best teachers. They influenced my later decision to become a teacher and they had a continuing influence on my thinking.

After a year at Stanford, it was annoying to be caged and put in the dark each night at 11:00 PM. Like most others, I did not believe the supposedly ancient wiring would ignite fires if the power remained on all night, but I submitted to the order of things. I was interested in writing so after 11:00 I would put on a record and turn on the record player and at 5:30 AM the power would return and the music would wake me for writing.

I was not very active in student activities and, although I was quite eager to learn from my courses, probably my most important activity was the boxing I did for two years -- the second year I won a Bengal Bouts championship.

But above all, I was in love and then married and in love. We lived a year on Portage Avenue and a year in Vetville. We loved Vetville, and in Vetville we had a baby daughter. I worked part time for the South Bend Tribune. And yet, as intentionally isolated as I was from campus life, I always felt a part of the University. It struck me as a place where people came because they regarded their religion as an important part of their intellectual life.

As much as I like the faculty, there was one characteristic quite different from that of the faculties at Stanford, the University of Denver and Wisconsin and Yale -- other schools I attended. At Notre Dame teachers often tried to evaluate what you did not know or to inform you what your weakness was. I attribute their attitude to their belief in Original Sin. The other places were more encouraging, expecting you to accomplish great things. That seemed an indication of their belief in the perfectibility of human nature. Both of these views of human nature were true enough in their various ways.

There was something special about Notre Dame and it had to do with the people who chose to come there. Many of them were trying to become someone special in the image and likeness of God.

Don McNeill

I have many enjoyable memories of being a member of the ND Class of '58. I remember well my first year at Notre Dame. In Farley Hall I immediately met Kevin and Don Reilly who opened my eyes and heart to friendships as well as challenging some of the rules of the Hall.

My attempts to be part of the Notre Dame Basketball team provided me with the opportunity to face my limits while sitting on the bench for Coach John Jordan and seek other opportunities to share my gifts. I learned to appreciate the talents of Ed Gleason, Bob Devine, John McCarthy and others who played basketball at the Rockne Memorial gym.

Being president of the Class of '58 allowed me to enjoy working with Hoot Walsh and the class officers and being more attentive to the richness of the variety of my classmates and their interests. Spring Break trips to Ft. Lauderdale opened my eyes to many life styles and acting out with classmates.

Living in Walsh Hall with John McCarthy my senior year was a great opportunity to appreciate the ways many of our athletes studied and explored many dimensions of our life, e.g. a course by Professor Frank O'Malley. I am grateful for the encouragement of Al Stepan to explore courses that were more challenging than those in the College of Business Administration.

Our class reunions every five years enabled me to appreciate more the many talents of our classmates and their spouses. I especially appreciated the gift provided by our classmates, which enabled the Center for Social Concerns to continually develop ways of challenging students, faculty and alumni related to social justice and peace.

Currently I have been challenged with many health concerns. I now live at Holy Cross House across the lake from the Notre Dame campus. This Spring I will be celebrating my 80th birthday as well as my 50th anniversary as a Holy Cross Priest. I continue to thank God for you, my classmates, for your witness to what is best at Notre Dame and our many challenges in the world today!

Editor's note: Father Don McNeill, as noted, is the President of the Class of '58, and is also the founder of the Center for Social Concerns at Notre Dame.

Dave Immonen

Two weeks before I was to leave for orientation at Notre Dame, my father came into the kitchen and poured a bag of coins (nickels, dimes, quarters, half dollars) on the table which covered the full cost of my first year of college.

He was born in 1899 in Calumet, MI; in the copper country jutting out into Lake Superior. When he was 12 years old his father died and he was the oldest of five in a family that still spoke the Finnish language at home.

At 12 he worked shoveling clinkers from the school furnace, tap danced between rounds of the boxing matches and later chauffeured, blacksmithed and sold tickets at the ball park where George Gipp roamed the outfield. He got through 11 years of school and played center of an all- star hockey team.

At 17 he had to quit school and move to Milwaukee to find work in order to help feed the ever hungry growing family.

He is my hero.

Dave Immonen

An incident occurred at Fort Eustis, VA when I was in the Army following graduation. I lined up for the opening tip of a basketball game and someone shoved me, almost knocking me over. Upon recovering I turned to find a grinning classmate Ed Gleason, varsity basketball player at Notre Dame. He whispered, Take it to the hoop and I'll pretend to stumble. I got the opening tip, took it in for a lay-up and we had our only lead of the day.

I believe that the many times we all crossed paths with fellow classmates was a product of the dorm system in effect between 1954 and 1958. We had the great pleasure of making and sustaining friendships with many more of our classmates as we moved from dorm to dorm.

May God bless the class of 1958 and keep us healthy in our remaining years.

Tom Erbs

In my freshman year, I lived in Farley Hall. My roommates were Ed Clair and Bob Cushing.

About the third day of the year, I returned to an empty room and there was a note on the floor, under the door. It very succinctly read, Mr. Cushing, please contact Father Hesburgh as soon as possible.

Needless to say, when Bob came back in the room I immediately handed him the note and said that I hoped wasn't in any kind of trouble. He just shook his head and didn't say anything.

About a week later, my curiosity got the better of me and I asked Bob if he had gotten in trouble when he had to see Father Hesburgh and he said, 'Oh no, he just invited be to lunch." He said nothing else.

I said, Why would he invite you to lunch? and he said, Oh, my grandfather gave a building to the University. It's Cushing Hall, you know the engineering building, and he thought it would be nice if he got to know me.

Bob never mentioned that encounter nor his relation with the University in any manner other than that one time. I would suspect that not many of our classmates realized the Cushing Hall had a connection to our class.

In school, I was enrolled in a combined commerce law program which was a six year program offering both a BS and an LLB degree.

In 1958, I married my wife, Mary Anne and she was fortunate enough to become the secretary to Dean Burke and work under the Dome until our first son was born in 1960.

After graduation, we returned to St. Louis and I went into law practice with my father. I still practice law but in 1973 I also began work as a labor arbitrator. I handled labor disputes throughout the United States. I was fortunate to be elected to the national Academy of Arbitrators in 1978 and am still a member.

Bill Hickey

Going to Notre Dame was my first dream come true. To get there was a story in itself.

When I was in the 8th grade, I was living in Nephi, Utah. The high school there did not have a football team yet. The three Catholic high schools that were in the state had football but not boarding facilities. Wasatch Academy in Mount Pleasant, Utah had a football team and was being run by the Presbyterian Missions out of New York City.

It was located about 35 miles east of Nephi. So I ended up there. It was a great place for me; all of my teachers were retired missionaries from all over the world. It offered the foreign language, sciences and a football team that made all that followed happen for me. I got a work scholarship there working in the kitchen early in the morning.

If Notre Dame did not accept me, then Dartmouth was my second choice, followed by Williams.

I walked on the Freshman team at Notre Dame but re-injured my knee playing ball that year. It knocked my body out of football, but not my mind. I dreamed of becoming a football coach

After I graduated from Notre Dame, I knew I had to get my MA if I wanted to coach in college, because in those day that was the norm. So, after a few years of coaching high school I decided on graduate school.

I went to Columbia University in New York on a national Science summer stipend. It enabled me to transfer these graduate hours to Wyoming University where I got a Master's Degree in one year.

I knew I wanted to coach football at the college level. There were no college jobs open so I became head football coach of the Mullen High School football program in the Denver suburbs. We went 24-0 and won two state championships.

Colorado State then contacted me and I accepted an assistant position there. Four years later, the entire coaching staff was let go. I talked it over with my wife and we decided that I would go back to South Bend. My wife Barb, and my three children were still living in Ft. Collins, Co attending school. We waited until school was over and we all moved to South Bend.

In the Spring of 1970, I began substitute teaching in the South Bend school system and at night I was a janitor in the athletic offices in the Joyce Athletic Center at Notre Dame. The job included cleaning Ara Parseghian's office and the other football and basketball offices.

When Spring football started, I stopped substitute teaching and volunteered as a coach with the Irish. When Ara found out I was working in the ACC at night, he called me into his office. It was after Spring ball and he created a position for me called Freshman Program Coordinator. I did that for a year and then became an offensive line coach working with Brian Boulac and Wally Moore.

We never worked out at the opponent's stadium before an away game. Instead we worked out at Notre Dame, then got on the plane and flew to our opponent's site and walked onto their field for about 20 minutes and then went to our hotel.

Ara was a very well read and informed man. By the time we would start our meetings at 7:00 AM, he would have completely read the South Bend Tribune and the Chicago Tribune. And then, before the meeting he would discuss world topics before talking football.

On Mondays he would set the defensive game plan with the defensive coaches and then, on Tuesday, he would set the game plan with the offensive coaches. He was totally on top of everything; Offense, Defense and the kicking game.

Another ritual we had was our Thursday practice. At the end of practice we would gather around Coach Parseghian into three groups; Offense, Defense and special teams. Each group would perform a skit. At the end of the three skits Coach Parseghian would walk around the three groups and them point to the winner. The winners would cheer and the losers would protest.

Some of the skits included songs, poems and were for the most part creative and hilarious. This was the only program that I have been involved in that did anything like this prior to a game.

In 1972, we were undefeated and ranked number 2 behind a Bear Bryant coached Alabama team that was also undefeated. The Sugar Bowl game was set for New Year's Day in 1973.

The lead changed hands several times during the game and Bob Thomas kicked a field goal with about 5 minutes to go to put us up 24-23. We stopped Alabama and got the ball back on our two yard line. We went nowhere for the first two plays and then quarterback Tom Clements surprised everyone by dropping back into the end zone to pass. He found little used tight end Robin Weber for a 36-yard gain that let us run out the clock for the win and the National Championship.

I left Notre Dame after the1975 season. In over 50 years of coaching, I have been associated with The US Military Academy, Head Coach at the US Coast Guard Academy, an Assistant at Yale and Princeton among others. I even had a stint as head coach for the Berlin Bears in Germany.

I am now a volunteer assistant at Boise State.

Gary Cooper

I grew up in segregated Mobile, Alabama and attended elementary and high school in Mobile.

My father had an insurance business and my mother was attempting to raise funds to open a hospital for the black community in Mobile. One night sirens and lights came roaring up to our house disturbing our quiet street.

The visitor was Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, who had somehow gotten wind of the project and came to lend his support. He was accompanied by Clare Boothe Luce.

The Bishop talked to my parents for some time, but before he left, he asked me if I had thought about college. I was young enough that it had not really crossed my mind. He asked me to consider Notre Dame when I was older. I had never heard of Notre Dame, but the good Bishop offered to write a letter of recommendation for me if I wanted to apply.

Later, when I did apply, the Bishop kept his word. I still have the letter and I was accepted to Notre Dame.

In my freshman year, I joined the Navy ROTC. It was the first time a black student had every joined the Navy ROTC program at Notre Dame. I spent the first two years taking naval courses but in my junior year, I decided I wanted to become a US Marine officer. I took Marine courses my last two years and was commissioned upon graduation in 1958.

People have asked me why I wanted to be a Marine because you never saw any black Marine officers. When I was growing up we lived about five blocks from the segregated Harlem movie theater. One say I saw Sands of Iwo Jima with John Wayne as Sergeant Stryker and I decided that I wanted to join an outfit that had anyone as tough as Stryker. So, in a way, Sgt. Stryker recruited me for the Marines because I never knew a black Marine officer.

During the summer of our junior year, the Marine candidates were sent to Quantico, VA, a training base. A boot camp for officers. There were maybe one or two black officers there.

I was not unusual for the Drill Instructor to get me, just me, out of bed in the middle of the night and make me do pushups and call me nigger and when I couldn't do any more he'd get on top of me and say, Nigger, give me 20 more. I'm sure his mission in life was to get me to try to hit him or something so he could put me out of the Corps. I would not let this happen.

We took turns being student commanders at various levels and one day I was the Student Company Commander. We were out in the field about 11:00 in the morning. The DI didn't like something that I did and he said, Come over here Cooper, you shit head. I went over and he bent over a tree sapling...it must have been ten feet high, and he put it under my arm and he said, You hold this tree until I tell you to stop.

They went off for chow and I am left holding the tree. The afternoon passed and it started to become dark. I am still holding the tree. The company went back to the barracks and they found out that Cooper was missing. Some jeeps come my way and I hear, Cooper, where are you? and I said, Here, sir.

The Battalion Commander came over and said, What are you doing?

I said, I'm holding a tree. It was just another example of racism at Quantico.

After graduation, we reported for active duty and were sent to Basic School, a 32 week course that all Marine lieutenants attend that