As my wife and friends marched off to the football game last fall, I elected to skip the four hours of hoopla and noise in the stadium for some quiet wandering about campus. The sounds from the stadium carried over the otherwise tranquil and mostly empty quads. I met a woman playing with her grandson around LaFortune as his alumni parents attended the game, and of course, I wandered a few well-trodden paths and reminisced about my time in the shadow of Our Lady.
Stopping in Sacred Heart for a few minutes of prayer and reflection, I remembered weddings, including my own and my son’s, and funerals I had attended there over the years. After 15 minutes, it seemed that God said, OK, you can go now.
As I exited the church through the main door, I heard a woman’s voice to my left inquiring about the identity of a building. I turned and saw her looking at the Golden Dome. Beside her was a man I assumed to be her husband and two young adults who appeared to be the couple’s grown children.
I stepped up to the confused group and explained the significance of the emblematic building. After a brief pause, the woman asked me if I knew much about “this place.” Her tone indicated that she meant more than the main administration building.
She showed me a black-and-white photograph of a handsome young naval officer standing on a grassy field. He was wearing his long winter uniform coat and a dark cap. She asked where the photograph had been taken. As I examined the photo, I turned it over and saw the handwritten inscription: Notre Dame, 1943.
The photo had been taken on the back side of the Golden Dome. I pointed out Our Lady at the top and explained that dorms and parking lots now stand where the naval officer once stood. Looking at the man next to her, she explained that the man in the photo was her husband’s father. The man beside her seemed unable to speak. A tingle went up my spine.
Then she showed me another photo, taken at the same spot, of a beautiful young woman dressed in a fine winter coat — her husband’s mother. The man smiled, and I felt another tingle. These two young lovers had taken each other’s photos behind the Dome so that each would have something to remember the other during the uncertainty of World War II. Now the next generations had come to retrace the young couple’s steps 80 years later.
During World War II, then-President Rev. Hugh O’Donnell, CSC, had allowed Notre Dame to host a large-scale Midshipmen’s School for men like the one in the photograph. This mini Naval Academy trained recent college graduates through three to four months of intensive preparation before they were commissioned as ensigns in the Naval Reserve. The arrangement was mutually beneficial: over 12,000 midshipmen gained a place to train, while Notre Dame was saved from financial difficulties caused by a sharp decline in student enrollment during the war.
Still standing on the steps of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, the woman showed me yet another photo of the young officer and asked where it had been taken. I offered to take them to the spot, but she politely declined, not wishing to take up a stranger’s time. But I was thoroughly enjoying this unexpected encounter and insisted on accompanying them.
We walked past Washington Hall, then between Zahm and Cavanaugh, until we could see Farley Hall across North Quad. In the photo, the man’s father stood between Farley and Breen-Phillips halls.
For the first time, the man spoke. He explained that his father had graduated from the University of Wisconsin as a civil engineer in 1943. After his time at Notre Dame, he served with the Navy Seabees (the United States Naval Construction Battalions) building airfields and bases on various islands in the Pacific Ocean. When he returned from the war, he married his college sweetheart. Like many veterans, he hadn’t spoken much to his family about this time in his life.
The man smiled at me, proud of his family and happy to have found this special place in his parents’ history. I was also smiling.
Before he left to recreate the photo in front of Farley Hall with his son, I shared one last piece of his father’s Notre Dame history. I explained how the Navy had used the old Fieldhouse for officer physical training, semaphore and signal flag training. I then pointed to the Clarke Memorial Fountain, which now stands where the Fieldhouse once stood, and encouraged them to visit the site and touch the remaining cornerstone from the original building.
They all thanked me profusely and moved quickly to the sidewalk between Farley and Breen-Phillips to recreate that photo from 1943 and the milestone it represented in their family’s history.
As I walked back across campus and continued my solo wandering, I thanked God for his timely message in Sacred Heart — OK, you can go now. His timing was perfect.
Nicholas Matich, ’81, ’82 MS, is a retired commander from the U.S. Naval Reserve. When he was commissioned in July 1982, he was stationed at Notre Dame's N.R.O.T.C. unit for a few weeks before departing for nuclear training. During that time, he completed research on the Navy at Notre Dame during World War II.