A portrait of Father Hesburgh in the Hesburgh Center for International Studies draped in mourning after his death in 2015. Photography by Matt Cashore ’94
Editor’s Note: February 26 marks the 10th anniversary of Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh’s death in 2015 at age 97. This essay is adapted from remarks George A. Lopez, Hesburgh professor emeritus of peace studies, delivered in March 2015 at a United States Institute of Peace tribute to Father Ted in Washington, D.C.
In 1985, when I was a professor at Earlham College, I spoke on a panel in Washington, D.C., for a national higher education association about what campuses could do to avert nuclear war. Just before the talk, the association director mentioned that one of its board members, Father Ted Hesburgh, would provide some opening remarks.
After the session concluded, Father Ted came up to me, shook my hand, put a hand on my shoulder and said something like, “That was a fine statement, young man. You Quakers at Earlham have put together a great program. Up at Notre Dame we are interested in building both a curricular and research program that will influence policy. Your place is not that far away, so you should come up and give us some advice. I'll be in touch.”
And off he went.
I soon probably had to wash my right hand, but I didn’t ever have to get the jacket dry cleaned again. This 1950s and ’60s Catholic altar boy had met Father Ted Hesburgh. I savored the compliment he paid me — and expected I would not hear from him again.
That was not Father Ted’s way. He delivered on statements and on his big ideas. So, about a dozen times during the rest of 1985, I drove across Indiana to spend a day or two advising a group of faculty and administrators about what a multifaceted peace institute would look like.
When Father Ted gave his resounding speech in November 1985 at the San Diego Council on World Affairs about the dangers of nuclear war and how universities must find inventive ways to prevent it, Joan Kroc emerged from the audience to ask him how she might help to make such a vision possible. She soon sent $6 million of McDonald’s stock to endow the new peace institute. And in February 1986, Father Ted invited me to be one of the founding faculty members.
Between 1985 and 1987 — Father Ted’s last year as Notre Dame president — I had the unique privilege of more one-on-one and small group time with him than 99 percent of the University’s faculty. Though less frequent, those meetings would continue for decades more, close encounters that introduced me to the wisdom, wit, grace and charm of this unusual person and priest.
Watching him in action was a treat beyond measure. In 1987, he invited Kroc to campus to meet the dozen international students her endowment supported in our new peace studies master’s program. He also hoped to convince her to fund a building that would house their growing ambitions, as well as the Kellogg Institute for International Studies.
At least three times when I was present, Kroc said strongly, “I don’t give money for buildings.” Father Ted’s response was always the same: “Well, it’s certainly your money, dear, and you should do with it only what you want.”
Here is where the story gets interesting — as many who knew Father Ted will recognize. His tales tended to have an increasingly embellished quality over time. That noted, this story goes that after being turned down in his request, Father Ted drove Kroc to the South Bend airport to talk more. As they came up to the private hangar, she mentioned that she had a new plane, and he ought to come up the stairs and take a look.
Again, as the story goes, he gave it a looksee, bid her goodbye and just before he left said, “You know, if this is a new plane, I should give it a blessing.” And so he did — I suspect without waiting for an answer from Kroc as to whether that met her wishes.
On the flight back to La Jolla, California, over the Rocky Mountains, the plane experienced a great deal of turbulence — to the point of considerable worry for passengers and the pilot — but they landed safely. The next evening Kroc called Father Ted and said begrudgingly, “It looks like the darn blessing of yours may have saved us.” And then, after a pause, she said she was thinking about giving him the money for that building, with one condition: it had to be called the Hesburgh Center.
Father Ted’s response was that her name should be on the building if her money built it. Kroc said, “Well, then you are not getting the money.”
I cannot specify how long this debate unfolded, nor how heated or clever the exchange. What emerged was that Father Ted agreed to have his name on the building if — and only if — she agreed to let the institute itself be named for her. And, thus, the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and its Hesburgh Center home came to pass.
I was privileged to be part of a number of meetings Father Ted convened to enhance the institute’s work long before our real academic power deserved it. At one such meeting, Father Ted brought together contending analysts and practitioners of conflict resolution, conflict transformation and the emerging field of peacebuilding. Roger Fisher, John Paul Lederach and a cast of peace all-stars attended with the goal of setting an agenda for the future of peace studies.
Throughout this and various meetings like it, I watched with awe as Father Ted spun what I would call the Hesburgh mystique combined with the Father Ted technique.
Father Ted would listen to the differences of opinions and, rather than trying to smooth things over, he would emphasize how lucky Notre Dame was to have them there to share their strong and smart views. Then — a lot like the TV detective Columbo — he would state that we really have a puzzle here, that he didn’t know how hopeful to be, whether we could work our way to a resolution, or accomplish anything at all.
I am certain that, because people did not want to disappoint Father Ted, the tone of the discussions often shifted after his pessimistic speculation. Participants would exhibit more willingness to engage each other’s ideas and work through differences. They had taken the bait of the Father Ted technique and fallen under the Hesburgh mystique.
When he heard the smallest opening toward consensus, Father Ted would find a way of driving a Mack truck through it — articulating for participants an agreement in terms that they all could accept. He would congratulate them for how clever they were to reach such solutions. According to other accounts, this strategy worked on everything from the civil rights commission to immigration reform.
I don’t want to give the impression that it was always perfect between me and Father Ted. In 1991, just as we were getting our sea legs at the Kroc Institute, he received letters and calls about an article I had written criticizing the ethics of some strategies in the recently completed Gulf War. He summoned me to talk without letting me know the subject.
He informed me of the controversy. I soon realized he was not happy, and his displeasure was not about the response — but about me. In one of the worst uses of the phrase, I defensively stated, “Hey Father, I thought we were supposed to speak truth to power.”
Without missing a beat, he said, “Yes we are. But we can’t expect the people with power to understand truth if what we’re doing is continually condemning their action without providing some alternative ideas that they might possibly embrace.”
That experience brought me back to our first meeting on the stage in Washington. It was clear that the good Catholic priest had just eldered me in the best Quaker sense. Lesson learned.
The wisdom, wit and the charm never left him as the years progressed. My colleague, the late Michael Garvey ’74, was assigned to write a story about Father Ted turning 90. Garvey and Father Ted had lunch two or three times every year, with one as the milestone birthday approached. Garvey noticed Father Ted had not ordered his usual glass of white wine.
“Father, is there something wrong?”
“Doctor says I can’t have it anymore.”
Taken aback, and with a brief recognition that he was sitting with an increasingly frail 90-year-old man, Mike asked timidly, “Is there a problem, Father?”
“Yes,” Father Ted said without missing a beat and I suspect with a twinkle in his eye. “Wrong damn doctor.”
Students and friends wrote to me during the week after Father Ted’s death that they felt he would never actually pass away. Many of us felt that way, but at the Kroc Institute we had our own sense of what would happen at the end: a sharp looking chariot would simply come down from the clouds, pull in front of the Hesburgh Center, and he’d get in and take off.
My own personal version holds to that, with a twist: Joan Kroc herself would be at the reins of the chariot, shouting to him, “Hey, Father Ted, jump in! And you don’t have to bless this one!”
George A. Lopez is The Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., Professor Emeritus of Peace Studies and a founding member of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.