My parents and I always talked a lot when I was younger. We’d talk over dinner, then talk around the dinner table long after dinner was gone. Then — tired of sitting in straight-back chairs — we’d take the conversation into the den, which we called the caboose because it was a room added on to the back of the house. We disagreed a lot.…
My parents and I always talked a lot when I was younger. We’d talk over dinner, then talk around the dinner table long after dinner was gone. Then — tired of sitting in straight-back chairs — we’d take the conversation into the den, which we called the caboose because it was a room added on to the back of the house. We disagreed a lot.…
The speakers — five Notre Dame faculty and a Catholic journalist — were asked to talk about ways to restore trust in the church in the wake of the priest sex-abuse scandal.
Prepare yourself, gentle Catholic, even as you attempt to recover from the most damaging and traumatic ordeal in the history of the U.S. church.
Two decades ago, cardiologist Jim Muller ’65 helped launch an effort of American and Soviet physicians to oppose nuclear warfare, a movement that resulted in a Nobel Peace Prize. Now he wants to reform the Catholic church.
In October 1987, Russia was still The Evil Empire to most Americans, in spite of Gorbachev’s attempts to reform the country through Perestroika.
In the summer of 1981 when I was posted in Moscow for Newsweek, Solidarity was riding the crest of a euphoric wave in neighboring Poland. The free trade union had been operating openly for a full year, and the country was flooded with Solidarity banners, pins, stickers and other mementos, including those that celebrated the pride of Poland, Pope John Paul II. The communist authorities would abruptly change course a few months later, declaring martial law and outlawing Solidarity. But those fair days were still a period when seemingly everything was possible, everything was permissible.…
My husband, Bob Green, and I closed the familiar doors from our 30 years together in Rhode Island, and stepped onto Scallywag, our 44-foot cutter-rigged sailboat.
The ex-surfer in me relished the adventure: six days straight of dancing with the Colorado River, at times a slow waltz, at times a passionate tango and at times a violent slam dance.
When I first met my husband, that fateful day in June 1994, I learned that one of his favorite retorts was, “Why not?” In his mind, anything is possible, even if it involves swimming 2.4 miles, biking 112 miles, and running 26.2 miles, all in 17 hours or less. There’s no prize money or fame involved when you are a middle-of-the-pack athlete, but there’s definitely plenty of glory in finishing.…
My life at Notre Dame began in the fall of 1962. My parents and I were met by an upperclassman who pointed out a few sites, described what ND was like and explained the undergraduate tradition of not ascending the front steps of the administration building until after graduation. Although it was thoroughly discouraged by the administration, the penalty for being caught on those steps was to be thrown into Saint Mary’s Lake by the rest of the student body. I embraced the tradition immediately. As far as I know, I was the last member of my class to climb those steps.…
Every August I celebrate an anniversary of a day that changed church forever for me.
“The biopsy results were positive; you have cancer.”
“Are you sure you’re a doctor?” The young woman smiled at me as I sat on the floor, a cup of coffee in my hand.
Thanksgiving was past, long past in my and my buddies 9-year-old time sense, and our thoughts had already turned to the coming Christmas holiday. But on a raw December Saturday, the question every child eventually asks was posed in our group.
When I arrived at the TV station for work, the newsroom was abuzz with activity. “You need to change into hiking clothes,” my assignment editor told me. “The wildfire in the mountains is threatening nearby homes.”
Autumn is peak time for forest fires in the Southeast. For several days in October 2000, I had checked on the various fires in the Knoxville, Tennessee, area and written short updates for the newscasts. I craved the excitement of a breaking story. I quickly changed my clothes and met up with Paul, the photographer I would be working with that night.…
The crew of the Coastal Star, a crab-processing ship, was unlike the ones I’d worked with on my summer breaks during college, when I’d head for Alaska to earn money on fishing boats
A surrogate is carrying our child, and the experience has involved more than we ever expected.
While checking one of the cubicles of our officers on the 62nd floor of the World Trade Center’s north tower, I found Rose under her desk. She looked up at me and fearfully whispered: “It’s an earthquake!”
The previous night’s snowfall and dense fog obscured the panorama surrounding our huddled mass.
In the event of an underseas accident in our submersible, we were told, a small leak at the depth at which the Titanic lies would shoot a stream so intense it would cut a person in half. But don’t worry, we were counseled. Before that could happen the capsule would implode with such force that our bodies would instantly incinerate before being crushed. Our fireproof jumpsuits were merely to allow identification of our charred remains.…
After 10 months of simple living, which in my case meant eating everything cooked in mushroom soup, two of my more corruptible roommates and I indulged in the most spectacular sell-out our California home offered: The Price Is Right.
The infinite wilderness of Alaska and the colorful gold rush tales of James Michener, Jack London and Robert Service had long captivated my wife, Maiya, and me. We finally decided the best way to experience Alaska up close would be to accept the daunting challenge of hiking the historic Chilkoot trail, the mountain pass that links Alaska with Canada’s Yukon interior.…
My birth mother, Ann, died on my first birthday.
Like many other Notre Dame students, I had been a reasonably good high school football player with dreams of participating at a higher level. While on campus for placement testing the summer before my freshman year, however, I met Jeff Weston, whom I later found out was the starting defensive tackle. He was 6-foot-5 and weighed 245 pounds, a chiseled inverted pyramid of muscle. Every thought of playing football at ND immediately left my mind. It was a good thing, too, because pre-med studies ended up taking up most of my time in the next four years.…
We are getting the once over. The twice over. Our interrogator leans coolly against the wall of his small office, nudging the brim of his faded ball cap toward the ceiling.
On that typical late August Saturday in suburban Cincinnati — hot and humid with a forecast of evening thunderstorms — I convinced myself that the grass was too damp to cut early in the morning. That meant I could take a five-mile walk with Courtney, who would be leaving for her junior year at Notre Dame the following weekend.…
As a second lieutenant, Charlie W. McCollester was a member of an Army Air Corps bunker crew flying out of England during WWII.
My company had a sponsorship deal with the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers in the 1990s. Clippers owner and Beverly Hills real estate mogul Donald Sterling would every season host a late summer sponsor party at his beach house in Malibu, which had been owned at one time by Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. It was a class operation, right on the beach.…
Candidates vying for eight seats on the Alumni Board are: Region 2—Mark Brooke ‘92, Helena, Montana, and Ceyl Prinster ’76, Denver; Region 5—Keith Kriegshauser ’83, Saint Louis, and Tony Scott ’83, Moline, Illinois; Region 11—Phil Connors ’59, Princeton, Massachusetts, and Kevin Lethbridge ’81, ’83MBA, Rumford, Rhode Island; Region 12—Ernie Buckley ’53, Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, and Jim Kane ’84, Norristown, Pennsylvania; Region 15—Phil Carter ’67, ’71Ph.D., Raleigh, North Carolina, and Eileen O’Connor Doran ‘91, Norcross, Georgia; Region 17—Rich Bollini ’70, Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, and Jerry Kruczek ’71, Orlando; Young Alumni—Mike Brown ’01, West Allis, Wisconsin, and Dan Brosmer ’01, Northville, Michigan; and Senior Alumni—George Harvey ’03Honorary, Decatur, Alabama, and Jim Keegan ’59, Wilmington, Delaware.…