Notre Dame Magazine invites personal essays of no more than 250 words on subjects of nostalgic interest to alumni of all ages. Selected submissions will be published in a future print edition or online at magazine.nd.edu. Please send fun, meaningful or evocative stories from your student days on the topics listed below to associate editor Michelle Cuneo at mmcdani2@nd.edu. New topics to come each issue.
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A Christmas journey
December 1964. My first Notre Dame study-abroad program. Nine of us decided to drive overland from Austria to Bethlehem for Christmas. We initially drove 48 hours straight to Istanbul, staying at the local YMCA. Sleep-deprived, we promptly won the city basketball tournament that the Y hosted.
Unfortunately, our Volkswagen bus later broke down in the middle of the desert, and we spent four days in Hama, Syria, while getting it fixed. We got to Jerusalem on New Year’s Eve, stayed at an Armenian hostel near one of the Stations of the Cross in the Old City, and then paid our respects to the many holy sites nearby.
We were out of money because of car repairs, so we bought bread at the market and stole oranges for the last week. What an adventure!
— Andre Papantonio ’67
Copper Mountain, Colorado
One spring break, a couple of us from Morrissey Manor decided to drive to Colorado in an Oldsmobile Delta 88 that belonged to one of our parents. We began our journey at night and were well-provisioned with food and beverages. We ran into a blizzard in Nebraska, and traffic came to a standstill. Eventually, state troopers closed Interstate 80 and pulled all the vehicles off at North Platte, Nebraska. They routed us to a Holiday Inn Holidome, which turned into a shelter.
Once the road opened up, about 24 hours after we had departed South Bend, we rolled into Regis College and had an impromptu sleepover in the dorm with some of our friends. The next morning, we saw the Rocky Mountains for the first time. After growing up skiing in Wisconsin, it was a breathtaking sight.
We had reservations for a condo at Copper Mountain, which was basically one room with beds and a fridge. We were on a tight budget. The owner of the unit, who lived next door, saw us roll in with our belongings. He notified management that he did not want to rent to us.
Management found us another unit, and we scored! We got a two-bedroom, two-story unit with amenities, including our own hot tub. We had an amazing time skiing. Then, on the last day, as we were getting ready to head out, someone locked the car keys in the trunk.
— Alex Severino ’84
Dear, dear Santa Fe
The rotary CD player seemed to have Bob Dylan’s “Santa Fe” stuck on shuffle a lot that year in our Grace Hall six-man dorm room. One time, as Bobby wailed the refrain, someone blurted out, “We should just go to Santa Fe.” None of us had ever been, and that seemed like a solid-enough spring break plan.
A parent’s borrowed Suburban and a song. That was our itinerary. I think we had an atlas. Certainly no AAA TripTik, as one mother implored.
In Santa Fe, emboldened with our first-ever red sangrias and green chiles, we stumbled into an outfitter up the block. “Where should you camp?” the guy repeated our question. He grabbed a scrap of paper and wrote some vague directions: Go right at top of hill; go past hot springs; hike down to river. At the top it said “Mike’s Secret Spot.” Somehow, we found it.
Some of the most wonderful days and star-drenched nights of our lives were in that canyon. The water was freezing, and the wolves seemed awfully close to those of us sleeping without tents. Every breakfast we ate oatmeal, and dinner’s spaghetti was from blue plastic North Dining Hall bowls, which today sit in a garage bin labeled “Camping.”
Some of us were in a photography class and took haunting, cliffside black-and-whites, which now sit in a different garage bin. Maybe those stark badland photos presaged some of the scarier-than-a-wolf crosses that we’d carry in the years ahead. But not yet.
— Colin Hutt ’98
Animal House Goes to Florida
Right before my freshman year, Animal House hit theaters, and the phrase “road trip” became part of popular culture. Several months later, on a wintry January day, I read on a Keenan Hall bulletin board about a Florida spring break trip.
The price caught my eye, $125, which included bus fare, lodging, home-cooked meals and shuttle transportation. Our rector, Father Rich, organized the trip with the help of his sister and her neighbor, who lived in the Miami area and generously opened their homes to 60 Domers for spring break.
Soon, we boarded a Greyhound bus for 1979 spring break. It became a long overnight journey with intermittent stops and minimal sleeping. By early Saturday morning, we crossed the Florida state line. Once there, I don’t remember taking showers or whether I slept on floors, couches or wherever, but it all worked well.
Our most frequent destinations were the beaches, discos and happy hours of Fort Lauderdale, on vans driven by designated drivers — dorm seniors. We also went nighttime deep-sea fishing, leading to much nausea.
Our hosts were the epitome of Southern hospitality. By the end of the trip, we were even featured in a Miami Herald article.
— Wayne Baer ’82
Harbor light
The invitation letter arrived: the 1974 senior-class-sponsored trip to Los Angeles was for the Southern Cal-Notre Dame game over Thanksgiving break.
My Uncle Eddie lived in San Diego, and my mother suggested I try to meet with him while we were on the West Coast.
Thanksgiving in LA was fun, but we didn’t have anything planned for Friday, so I called Uncle Eddie. He was clearly excited. To my surprise, three of my buddies came, too. We got up early Friday morning and drove 150 miles to San Diego.
Eddie had been battling cancer. No matter — he was committed to making it a great day. He steered us around the harbor in his boat, and we passed the USS Enterprise, the largest aircraft carrier in the entire U.S. fleet.
As we got closer to the Enterprise, Eddie asked: “You guys want a tour?” He took us to a nearby slip, climbed onto the dock, talked to two Marines, then waved us over. Turns out he knew a master chief petty officer on the ship, who gave us an extensive guided tour. Eddie couldn’t stop smiling.
Eddie gave us all great big hugs as we departed his house that afternoon. He thanked us for coming and “making his day.” I don’t cry much — nor did Eddie, I’m sure — but we were both crying as I got in the car for the return to LA.
He died on April 6, 1975. My mother and Eddie’s wife both said he spoke of his “ND Boys” fondly for the rest of his days.
— John Feeney ’76
At the edge of the Atlantic
I was 21 when my parents and I drove around the coast of Ireland. It was my father’s first time outside of the United States, and he agreed to go after a week’s worth of convincing from my mother.
We started in the south. Dad grumbled and hung his head low in a rickety, horse-drawn wagon. Trailed my mother to the ATM so she could buy the CD of the band playing in the pub. Threw up on the side of the lane when she started driving like a local. I wondered if he’d ever leave home again.
In the west, a man told us stories of people who stood cliffside and waved white bedsheets in the air, hoping that their loved ones would see as they sailed toward somewhere new. In small churches, we saw our family name blown into stained glass. Walks home from the pub were quiet, all still except for a cooing baby in a window above and the sound of distant music.
By the time we made it to Giant’s Causeway in the north, even my mother and I had reached our limit. But when my father set foot on the first rock, he took off — dashing toward the horizon, the sun beaming down on him until he came face to face with the edge of the North Atlantic. He stopped, turned around, and threw both arms wide in the air, a childlike grin plastered on his face. I ran to meet him there.
— Kate Ross ’24
Saturday night football
On October 9, 1965, my roommate John Houlihan ’66 and I set out for New York City to attend the Notre Dame-Army football game at Shea Stadium in Queens. We wrangled passage in a 1961 Buick convertible owned and driven by a casual acquaintance, and after an uneventful 14-hour drive, we were rewarded with a 17-0 Irish victory.
After the game, John met up with his soon-to-be wife, while I headed north to visit my parents in Westchester County. The return trip on Sunday, however, proved far more eventful than the drive in.
Somewhere in Pennsylvania, the high-pitched complaints of the Buick’s water pump forced the three of us off the road and into a service plaza. A bottle of some magic elixir was poured into the radiator, the noise subsided, and we continued on, cautiously optimistic.
That only lasted a few hours. In the early hours of Monday morning, the water pump finally gave up the ghost, and the engine seized. We were towed to a Pontiac dealership in Angola, Indiana, where we waited for the service department to open. Their verdict was swift and terminal: The Buick was done.
Undeterred, our driver-acquaintance managed to exchange the Buick for an older Cadillac sitting on the lot, and eventually we made our way back to campus, tired but relieved.
The next time I heard about our driver was four years later, when his name appeared on my television screen. The owner of the doomed Buick was now the first producer of Monday Night Football, Don Ohlmeyer ’66.
— Michael F. Maas ’66
A way forward
When I arrived at Notre Dame in the fall of 1971, I intended to major in math. I really had an interest in engineering, but my father had just been laid off from his aerospace engineering job as government funding dried up. So, math it was, along with its foreign language requirement. By my second semester, the math was becoming abstract and turning into a second foreign language, neither of which was going well. I had no path forward, was depressed and needed a road trip.
I had good friends in Akron, Ohio, where I grew up, and got an invite for a weekend. I only had enough money for a one-way bus ride, so my plan was to hitchhike back. The weekend was great. I still had no path forward, but I was reenergized as my friend Tim dropped me off at the Ohio Turnpike.
I don’t remember the make of the car, but the driver’s name was Vince, and I certainly remember the conversation that followed. Vince was working on his doctorate in biomedical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His undergraduate degree was in chemical engineering from the University of Wisconsin. He was returning home to visit family. We talked about chemical engineering for four hours. It clicked.
The next day, I made the switch, which eventually led to graduate school and a 40-year career in materials engineering. Driving across northern Ohio I got one of the best counseling sessions I ever had.
— Gery Stafford ’75
A road trip for one
I made traditional road trips during college that involved carloads of friends heading off in reckless pursuit of adventure. The destination might be a bowl game, a ski resort or the beach. During fall break of my senior year, however, I tried something different: a solo journey to a friend’s cabin in the woods of northern Michigan.
The plan was to spend a week in isolation pursuing my interest in writing. So inspired, I drove four hours, alone, from Detroit to where the cabin sat on the shores of Mullett Lake, near Indian River. The cabin had no television, and the internet was about a decade away. On my first morning, I paddled the canoe onto the lake. I then sat at a table with pen and paper.
After three days, what I had envisioned as a week alone in the northern woods ended when I drove back to Detroit. The effects of isolation had caught me by surprise. After three days, I needed to see and talk to someone. Despite that experience, I have made occasional, solitary escapes during the decades that have followed — sometimes to a cabin in the woods, sometimes to the beach in winter. I take such trips for a predetermined two or three days, with a scheduled return to friends and family in mind. Of limited duration, a road trip for one is a restorative pleasure.
— John C. Huebl ’86