It’s a charming image frozen in time: A female student at a picnic in May 1977, dancing with Father Theodore M. Hesburgh, CSC, as the campus community celebrated his 25th year as Notre Dame’s president.
They had smiles on their faces, and so did the onlookers. The photograph has become a familiar image, published and shared countless times in the decades since.
That carefree dance was unscripted, says Dr. Mary Blazek Buckingham ’80, the young woman in the photo and a freshman living in Lewis Hall at the time. “I was shy. I was not the lead dancer in my group of friends. I was not someone confident in my dancing, but somehow the situation was right,” she recalled during a visit to campus in May — her first trip to Notre Dame in 25 years.
The picnic on South Quad near the Rockne Memorial featured live music. Some in the joyful crowd called for dancing. Blazek Buckingham can’t remember whether she approached Hesburgh or the priest approached her, but soon they were dancing, hands clasped, amid a circle of delighted bystanders. She didn’t learn until later that a photographer was snapping pictures of the celebration.
Blazek Buckingham has a few sharp memories of that dance, but the rest is a blur. “I recall a young man coming up to me, telling me he’d taken a photo and I could contact [him] for a copy. Sad to say I never did,” she says.
The photograph was first published in the June 1977 issue of Notre Dame Magazine, and that’s where Blazek Buckingham and her family saw it. “I would run into people at different places, and they’d say, ‘She’s the girl who danced with Father Hesburgh!’” she recalls.
The dance lasted minutes, but the memory — and the photo — have reverberated through the years. At her home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Blazek Buckingham keeps a framed copy, signed “In memory of a wonderful 25th anniversary party. Devotedly in N.D., Father Ted Hesburgh.” A friend obtained the signature and gifted her the memento.
The image took on a life of its own as an illustration of Hesburgh’s career and of the early years of coeducation. It’s usually published without credit or attributed to a University employee, but the photo was snapped by Paul Joyce ’77, ’79M.S., a student photographer for The Observer, The Dome and Notre Dame Magazine.
Reflecting now on his photos from the picnic and the outdoor Mass that preceded it, Joyce notes how different the scene looks and feels from today: The students appear entirely immersed in the event and their surroundings. “It feels more innocent and relaxed,” he says.
After Notre Dame, Joyce earned a doctorate in oceanography and retired four years ago at the end of a long career in marine science. He now works as a photographer for the Falmouth (Massachusetts) Enterprise.
Blazek Buckingham thinks Joyce’s photo is memorable because images of female students in the 1970s — particularly photographs with University administrators — were not plentiful.
She was on campus in May as a guest presenter during a Virtues & Vocations conference hosted by the Institute for Social Concerns — a forum for scholars and practitioners across the disciplines to consider how to cultivate character in preprofessional and professional education.
Blazek Buckingham is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Michigan Medical School, where she directs the Geriatric Psychiatry Clinic. She also directs the Medical Humanities Path of Excellence, which encourages physicians in training to explore the intersection of medicine and the humanities, and leads an elective course, Visual Arts and Medicine, at the University of Michigan Museum of Art.
During the May conference, she led a session at Notre Dame’s Raclin Murphy Museum of Art aimed at helping attendees engage the arts in professional education settings.
An English major at Notre Dame, Blazek Buckingham earned her medical degree at the University of Illinois and a master’s degree in education in the health professions program at Johns Hopkins University.
She and her husband, Dr. Martin Buckingham, have three children: William, Carolyn and Daniel, who died in 2021.
While she doesn’t return to Notre Dame often, Blazek Buckingham says the experiences she had on campus and several close, lasting undergraduate friendships formed a foundation for her life and career. Those friends have provided invaluable support, especially after her son’s death. “The outpouring from my classmates through a prayer network and everything was so supportive and powerful, it’s overwhelming,” she says.
She has fond memories of her student years, including the dance with Hesburgh. “Notre Dame was more than I expected,” she says. “It exceeded my expectations of what college was, to be part of my circle of friends and my community.”
Margaret Fosmoe is an associate editor of this magazine.