Every Notre Dame fan knows and loves
the Notre Dame Victory March, but if the brothers who
wrote it had gotten their way, Irish supporters would literally
be singing a different tune today. Different lyrics too.
Inspiration for the fight song came to Michael J. Shea, class
of 1904 and 1905M.A., and John F. Shea, class of 1906 and 1908M.A., of Holyoke, Massachusetts,
near Springfield, when the young alumni returned to campus to
see a football game in 1908. A week later John wrote the lyrics
while Michael worked out the tune.
According to a history being prepared by the marching band, the
Victory March was first performed publicly on campus
on Easter Sunday 1909 as part of the band's traditional Easter
morning concert in the rotunda of the Main Building. For reasons
unknown, it would be another 10 years before the band played the
song at an athletic event.
The rest, as they say, is history.
But history almost took another course. Despite the popularity
of the Victory March, in later years the Sheas came to
regard the song as an "amateurish" effort and set out to write
a better one. In the fall of 1922, Michael, who studied music
in Rome after being ordained a priest and taught ecclesiastical
chants at Saint Joseph's Seminary in New York, wrote to then-President
Matthew Walsh, CSC, discussing band and orchestra arrangements
for their new composition, called "The Fighting Team." The chorus
went:
Here's to you, Fighting Team,
who wear the Gold and Blue.
In victory or defeat, our hearts
are all for you.
Onward to victory then, and
show the world how ND men
Can Fight! Fight! Till we cross
that goal line,
Touchdown for Notre Dame
Walsh wrote back promising that
The Fighting Team would be played the weekend before
homecoming. Michael Shea later wrote that he was shipping about
a thousand copies of the sheet music and lyrics to campus for
sale to students and fans. The lyrics were printed in the homecoming
issue of the Scholastic. But that's the last that was
heard of The Fighting Team. Apparently no one adopted
it.
According to the marching band's
website, the Sheas gave much of the credit for the success
of the Victory March to Joseph Casasanta, band director
from 1923 to 1942, who arranged the piece to sound the way we
hear it today. Casasanta went on to compose the alma mater, Notre
Dame, Our Mother, and several famous ND football songs including
Hike, Notre Dame.
As for the Shea brothers' "better"
fight song, it may be forgotten, but it hasn't been lost. Copies
of the lyrics and sheet music remain in the University Archives.
(October 2002)
