Rev. Edward Sorin, CSC, Notre Dame’s founding father, christened in his native French a University that would become inextricably associated with the Irish. In the early years, Sorin wanted to demonstrate Notre Dame’s national loyalty to his American neighbors. Hosting a celebration for South Bend residents on July 4, 1845, he sought to assuage suspicions about the school’s foreign and Catholic origins on his adopted nation’s defining holiday. Successful in his immediate objective, Sorin also established an institutional ethos that persists today.
Notre Dame’s service to the nation has taken many forms, from Rev. Theodore Hesburgh’s presidential appointments to the countless alumni who serve today at every level of public life. To name a few: Justice Amy Coney Barrett ’97J.D. of the United States Supreme Court, CIA Director John Ratcliffe ’86, Solicitor General
D. John Sauer ’02M.A., Admiral William Houston ’90, retired Admiral Christopher Grady ’84 and retired U.S. Army General Bryan Fenton ’87, plus local leaders like mayors James Mueller ’04 in South Bend and Lauren McLean ’97 in Boise, Idaho. Graduates working on nuclear deterrence and the bipartisan engagement of the University’s federal affairs office in Washington, D.C., have also received recent coverage in our pages.
Here we look back at Sorin’s initial act of patriotic outreach and accounts of military service and sacrifice from the Civil War to Iraq and Afghanistan. They are just a few stories of the many people who enshrined and reinforced that aspect of the University’s character etched in stone above the basilica’s eastern door: “God, Country, Notre Dame.”
July 4, 1845
The doors of the University were opened to the public, and the students and faculty presented an evening of entertainment, commencing with a reading of the Declaration of Independence.
Read the full story at magazine.nd.edu/1845.
Corby and his compatriots
Hundreds fell within minutes and Rev. William Corby, CSC, dismounted to hear the confessions of the dying men. “I shall never forget,” he wrote, “how wicked the whiz of the enemy’s bullets seemed as we advanced into that battle.”
Read about Chaplain Corby and others who contributed to “Notre Dame’s rich and multifaceted involvement in the Civil War” at magazine.nd.edu/civilwar.
Soldiers of the Great War
After the United States entered World War I in April 1917, some 350 members of that year’s graduating class enlisted. In total, about 2,500 Notre Dame men — students, faculty, alumni and priests — performed military service during the war.
Read about the sacrifices that inspired the World War I Memorial Door and the mysteries it holds at magazine.nd.edu/greatwar.
Barry at Bloody Ridge
The petrified soldiers of the 45th Infantry Division knew they could count on one man to be there for them through their peril: their unit chaplain, Father Joseph D. Barry, CSC, ’29, who crawled down a dry creek bed during the fighting on Sicily to reach the injured. The Army soon awarded Barry the Silver Star.
Read the full story at magazine.nd.edu/barry.
Father Boland in the Pacific
Shortly after noon on February 19, 1945, the troop transport USS Highlands moved within two miles of Iwo Jima to begin receiving the first casualties from the fighting on that South Pacific island. Until then, Rev. Francis J. Boland, CSC, Class of 1918, who had left his post as dean of Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters at age 47 to serve as a Navy chaplain, had been an observer. Now his work took on a grimmer reality.
Read about Boland’s World War II service at magazine.nd.edu/boland.
Colonel Kelly Cook ’47
Many other fliers were shot down in Vietnam, but few could lay the same claim as Cook — he had jumped into American aircraft to fight for his country in three separate wars.
Read about Air Force pilot Kelly Cook ’47 at magazine.nd.edu/cook.
Fallen, not forgotten
A heartbreaking story may be told about each Notre Dame man who died during the Vietnam War. Darrell Katovsich, who researched these stories, doesn’t want them or their sacrifices to be forgotten.
Read about Katovsich’s efforts at magazine.nd.edu/vietnam.
‘What can I do for my country?’
“September 11, 2001, was the end of the ‘peacetime Army’ we knew. Terrorists had declared war on our country. I prayed for peace. In General Douglas MacArthur’s words, ‘The soldier above all other people prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.’”
Read the account of Amanda (Dodd) Miller ’99 deploying — alongside her twin sister, Lacy (Dodd) Miske ’99 — to the Middle East in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks at magazine.nd.edu/dodd.
Tending to the dead
“I routinely assisted my mortuary affairs personnel when they were handling casualties. After all, these soldiers worked for me. If they had to expose themselves to the gruesome things that can happen when a person is killed in a war, I needed to stand at their side, leading by example.”
Read Andrew DeKever’s story of his service as a support operations officer for a brigade of 3,500 soldiers in Afghanistan at magazine.nd.edu/dekever.