To
survive, every major university plays a con game, pretending to
have all the answers to what it is, what it does and what it wants
to be when it knows full well that every response is at best only
a temporary solution to a limitless list of competing expectations.
Such juggling never ends, nor does the institutional introspection
that for better or worse continuously engulfs most campuses, including
Notre Dame's. Are we up in the rankings? Are we down? Too much
research? Too many business majors? Not enough graduate students?
Can football come back? What about endowment growth? Theological
imprimaturs? Too Catholic? Not Catholic enough?
Each university worth its salt asks these or similar questions.
The process is generally a healthy one because universities should
be like the swift waters of a river, constant yet ever changing.
Most are like that, in one way or another, and change comes ever
faster as the academy turns more competitive and commercialized.
But a place like Notre Dame is different, more like a tree than
a river because deep in its heart, down where the rankings never
reach, Notre Dame bears a set of core beliefs that anchors everything.
I know this because of the way these deep truths supported me
and my family when we knew the life of our son, then an incoming
freshman, depended on it. That intensely personal experience shook
me, and made me see that there are parts of Notre Dame that should
never change, not for the sake of rankings, nor research, nor
the recruitment of overachieving undergraduates or stellar faculty
superstars. But living and working here temporarily has made me
realize that unless those core beliefs are recognized as having
worth, they are ultimately in danger of being lost.
I am but a visitor, here for scarcely longer than a football
season, yet I can see the campus from several different perspectives.
In September 2003, I had the good fortune of beginning a fellowship
at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, where I have
been researching a book on how mythmakers shape and steer our
foreign policy. Those mythmakers are journalists, like me, and
as a journalist I have come to know a thing or two about con games.
I have been a newspaperman with The New York Times for
more than 17 years, part of that time as a foreign correspondent
and another part as The Times' national higher education
correspondent. My job then was to explore the souls of our universities,
and I did it for an audience that is among the most demanding
in the country.
But it is as a parent that I think I can speak most authoritatively
about Notre Dame, and it is as a parent that I peered most deeply
into Notre Dame's soul, into the spots that are rarely illuminated
by mission statements or strategic plans but which simply are
and, in being, reflect the truest character of the place.
Our introduction to Notre Dame was a nightmare, the nightmare
that every parent who leaves a child here dreads. It began the
very day we placed our son in the University's hands and asked
Notre Dame to take our place as his parents, the in loco parentis
concept that we'd heard about during our many campus visits
throughout the Northeast.
The horror is ending only now.
They say Notre Dame seeps into you -- it's that kind of a place.
For us, there was no time for anything as subtle as seeping. Notre
Dame engulfed us like a spring thaw on the Saint Joe River. It
did not so much creep into our hearts as sweep over our souls.
We were blitzed by Notre Dame, just in time.
* * *
Our family travail began right after the orientation Mass at
the Joyce Center, a sunny, warm afternoon in late August 1999,
when Notre Dame seemed to be located not in Indiana but at a sweet
spot on the top of the world. My wife, Miriam, and I both hugged
Aahren, our curly headed, Eagle Scout eldest son, and thought
little of it when he complained that his back hurt, probably from
having sat cross-legged on the gym floor during the Mass. We wished
him the best, challenged him to remember that much was expected
of those who had received the most and then drove back the 13
hours to New Jersey.
It was a long, jubilant journey, filled with a persistent mystery.
Neither Miriam, who emigrated from Cuba when she was 10, nor I,
the son of a longshoreman, is an alumnus of Notre Dame. We had
never spent a Saturday watching Notre Dame football on TV. We
had lived outside the United States for much of Aahren's childhood
and had to cross the border when we visited campus for the first
time.
And yet, that one brief stay was enough to convince Aahren that
Notre Dame was the place for him. We were a bit puzzled, but quite
pleased, and during the drive home that Sunday after orientation,
we rejoiced anew.
At 8 the following morning, just a few hours after we'd arrived,
a moving company crew showed up to help us with the hundreds of
boxes lying all over our house. Like Aahren, we had decided to
come back to the United States, and we were busy unpacking when
the phone rang. It was Aahren. He had spent an uneasy night in
his Siegfried Hall dorm room. He took some cold medications, but
when they didn't help he figured he should go to the infirmary.
He didn't know where it was, but his roommate Matthew Briel, a
hard-working and sincere second-generation Domer who knew the
way, took him. They were the first students there.
It was the day before classes started.
Dr. James Moriarity had seen first-day jitters before, and he
knew from years of experience that freshmen often wear themselves
out with tension and anxiety before moving in. Mononucleosis seemed
likely, and he prescribed some antibiotics. As a precaution he
ordered a blood test.
It turned out to be a real blessing for us that Notre Dame's
Student Health Center is able to complete a blood test on site.
If students have to go into town for such tests they may not get
around to going for days. It was after 11 a.m. that same Monday
morning when Dr. Moriarity called with the results. Aahren was
in the room. He had just turned 18, and the University was acting
in loco parentis, but privacy laws meant the doctor could
tell us what was going on only if Aahren gave him permission.
"There's something wrong," Moriarity said. The blood test showed
that Aahren's white blood cell count was extraordinarily high,
and that elevated level might be causing his achiness, and much
more. "We could do more tests here, but we think you might want
to have him home with you."
The movers were downstairs trying to push the piano into place.
One had a leprechaun tattooed on his calf and confessed to being
a die-hard Irish fan but a mediocre student who hadn't even tried
to get in. He was thrilled to hear that Aahren was calling from
Notre Dame.
From the moment Dr. Moriarity told me there was trouble, time
passed in a distorted way. My mind raced ahead as I tried to understand
what he had said. I needed to find a doctor and a hospital and
a way to keep my stomach from flipping over. I had to get Aahren
on a plane, but I couldn't find the phone book. I didn't even
know how to reach Aahren.
At the same time, each syllable of the doctor's message kept
replaying slowly through my mind, over and over again. "There's
something wrong." I tried to picture his face but couldn't.
"We could do more tests here." I couldn't visualize where
Aahren was sitting while the doctor talked on the phone. "But
we think you might want . . ." I didn't have an idea how
to tell Miriam what had happened. ". . . to have him home
with you." I couldn't imagine.
I couldn't.
(I have to stop here. Forgive me. You understand.)
Some things blur. I remember thinking about calling my office
and asking for help. I thought about calling my mother. But before
I could do either, Bill Kirk, associate vice president for student
affairs, called to say Aahren was on his way. I hadn't met Bill
during orientation, and I don't recall his name being mentioned
during any session. He was just another face I couldn't picture,
but he had put Aahren on a plane home for us.
As Aahren landed at Newark Airport, Miriam and I trembled. He
came through the passageway wearing the backpack he had used in
high school. Around his neck was a set of large wooden beads.
A classmate from Siegfried, a student from Hawaii, had slung them
over his neck as he took off. It will help, he had said. And you'll
think of us.
We took him home, to a house still piled high with unpacked
boxes, and we tried to keep from crying.
The next morning a doctor in New York repeated the blood test
Moriarity had done and came up with the same results. With sad
eyes, and a voice rolled in melancholy, he introduced us to our
new enemy and constant companion. Then, on what would have been
Aahren's first day of freshman classes at the University of Notre
Dame, he received the initial dose of cough-medicine-red chemotherapy
to tame the acute leukemia that had shredded our world.
That day, or maybe the next, Father John Conley, CSC, the rector
of Siegfried Hall, called our home again. He had called the first
day, and the second, and every day for the first week or so, offering
his steady hand, relaying information to and from the other guys
at Siegfried. They all are worried and a little bit scared, he
said, and they want to know when Aahren will be back. He told
me they'd put up the pictures of all the freshmen in Siegfried,
and Aahren's photo was right there among them.
Aahren was glad to hear that. He was even happier when, a week
later, he received a package from Notre Dame. It contained the
medal and chain that Father Malloy had blessed for each of the
freshmen during the orientation Mass but which hadn't been distributed
right away. It also contained a personal note from Father Mark
Poorman, CSC, telling Aahren that he was a full member of the
Notre Dame family and that everyone wanted him back soon.
Consider that. We had arrived for orientation on Friday night,
and left Sunday afternoon. Three nights, that's all that Aahren
had spent in Siegfried. Three nights at Notre Dame. Three nights.
Aahren put the medal around his neck as soon as it arrived.
He's worn it since.
That was just the beginning of the way Notre Dame showed its
soul as it responded to our nightmare. There hadn't been time
for anyone to check any manuals, to find out what the regulations
required the institution to do or not do. There hadn't been a
review of procedures or even a chance to find out what had been
done in the past. They all simply did what they did because that
was the only way they knew how to do it. It was a reaction triggered
by something deeper than codes or regulations, a response that
had to have been bred deep in the bones of an institution as big
as Notre Dame. And there would be much, much more.
I could go on for pages about what Kirk, Conley and Poorman
did, and how countless others pitched in to help during those
first frantic weeks. What is extraordinary is not that they responded
positively to our needs, taking care of tuition for the classes
Aahren never attended, safeguarding the things Aahren had left
behind in his room at Siegfried, hoping to return. It was that
they had anticipated so much and did so many things that we hadn't
even thought of asking. As Aahren's treatment dragged on (it would
last two full years plus two more years of painful bone marrow
biopsies) Kirk arranged for him to receive the computer we had
purchased but hadn't had a chance to pick up, and he got the technology
office to provide access to the Notre Dame internet, even though
Aahren wasn't technically a student anymore. The Observer
showed up in the mail one day, and every day after that until
he returned to class. Kirk asked if Aahren wanted to attend a
football game, then got us press box passes and a room for the
weekend in one of the dorms.
It was Aahren's first trip back. His hair was gone, burned away
by chemotherapy, and he was too weak to walk up the stairs. We
had to leave early, without ever setting foot in the stadium.
But his yearning to return to Notre Dame, to take his rightful
place in his class, was strong. I believe it had become so powerful
a force that, along with the superb care of his doctor, Peter
Steinherz, a specialist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
in New York, the constant support of his sister and brother, and,
of course, Miriam's tireless devotion, the spirit of this place
called Notre Dame helped save his life.
He missed a full year of school. With Dr. Steinherz's permission
Aahren returned to Notre Dame as a freshman, again, in 2000, on
the condition that he live in a single room to ward off infections
while his treatment continued. It wasn't possible to do that at
Siegfried, but there was a single room available next door at
Knott Hall. It was only a short time before we realized how truthful
Father John was being when he said that he and Brother Jerome
Meyer, CSC, the quiet, conscientious rector of Knott Hall, were
known as "Frick and Frack." Their devotion is as identical one
to the other as Siegfried is to Knott, and those two buildings
are mirror images of each other.
It was faith that had
helped Aahren, his faith that he belonged to a community like
Notre Dame and that Notre Dame, with all its trophies and traditions,
with all its fame and good fortune, wanted him back. I've thought
about why the University did what it did and went so far beyond
what it was required to do. No one here really knew Aahren or
us. Yet the Notre Dame community reacted to his illness with a
ferocity that seemed almost tribal in the best, most human, sense
of the word. The University stood by us the way a mother would
protect her child, whether the child was 3 days old, 3 years old
or 30 years old. There's no other way to explain it.
* * *
Miriam and I are parents of not one but three students who now
attend top national research universities. Laura Felice is a junior
at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts; Andrés is
a freshman at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina; and of
course Aahren is a senior here at Notre Dame, majoring in political
science and Spanish. Every time a tuition bill or newsletter arrives
in the mail at home, or we visit a campus for parents' weekend,
homecoming or freshman orientation, Miriam and I automatically
initiate a review of Notre Dame and its peer institutions.
Notre Dame stacks up well against the competition in just about
every category, as do they to Notre Dame, at least on the undergraduate
level. I might give Notre Dame extra points for the strength of
the dorm system here, which cements relationships and provides
a natural network of support that the others don't have so readily
available. I'd credit Tufts with an advantage in intellectual
vibrancy, in part because of its location in the Northeast but
also because of the diversity of its students. Duke has the edge
in facilities and in being a younger, more eager institution unburdened
by outdated traditions. Each university is about equal to the
other in the professionalism of its staff, the quality of its
library's undergraduate resources, and the respect its name commands
in the marketplace.
I know that Notre Dame spends an awful lot of time and energy
comparing itself to its peers, picking on its old scars of self-doubt
about its Catholic heritage. Some grief is probably left over
from the days when football was Notre Dame, academics
being something to fill the gaps between games. Clearly that is
no longer the case, just as Duke is no longer just a basketball
program nor Tufts simply a place for those who were wait-listed
at Harvard.
That is the education correspondent in me speaking. From the
point of view of the visiting scholar, it seems to me that Notre
Dame is trying hard to offset the tragedy of its location, making
up for its general isolation by bringing to South Bend some of
the most vibrant minds in the world. Of course, it's long been
possible to tempt the likes of Seamus Heaney and Edna O'Brien
for brief visits, as they did last fall. But the trick is getting
them to stay. At the Hesburgh Center, where I lived and worked
for four months, scholars from Ecuador, England, Nigeria, Spain
and Taiwan as well as a phalanx of academics from the United States
whose research has taken them around the globe, have lightened
the gray South Bend sky with their ideas during extended stays.
More needs to be done. South Bend is not yet as vigorous an academic
setting as Medford, nor will it ever be as appealing a geographic
location as Durham, but Notre Dame's reputation is beginning to
burn through.
* * *
During my semester here everything has been splendid, a real,
unadulterated joy. The library. The lectures. The prevailing sense
of academic adventure. But as great as everything has been, nothing
beat Thursday mornings when Aahren and I had a standing appointment
to meet for breakfast. We talked of everything, and of nothing,
and the sight of him walking into the Hesburgh Center's Greenfield's
restaurant, now healthy and free of the horrid disease, courageous
and confident and enthusiastic, filled me with boundless wonder
and joy.
He's regained his life here. He's made many good friends, like
his roommates Joe, Kevin, Liam, Rob and Scott, who will support
each other for a lifetime. He's met a sweet pre-med student named
Leanne, who helps him see the beauty in life. And he's learned
that even though the world can seem perplexing, an intelligent
man can, with hard work, begin to understand it.
Few parents get to share their child's college experience the
way I have this semester, and that has been both wonderful and
heart breaking. Being here constantly pulls me back to those first
frightening hours and the overwhelming dread we felt. But being
here now also reminds me of how far we've come, of the power of
the spirit to triumph. It took an extraordinary degree of courage
and strength of character to go through what Aahren has gone through
and to do it with the style and grace that have become his trademarks.
I know that those qualities had to have been in him from the start,
and that too awes me. But we also have learned that such feats
are not accomplished alone. Although there are no medals or trophies
for such personal victories and thus no opportunity to thank the
coaches or the pit crew that made such triumphs possible, we know
how important it was for them to be there for us.
* * *
This is all to say that while I admire Notre Dame's aspirations
to be ever greater, I believe that there is a part of the university
-- a truly unique and very fragile part -- that needs to be recognized
and, in the recognition, preserved and protected.
My stake in Notre Dame is rather large, but because I am not
an alum I don't think I fall into the trap of comparing what exists
today to an idealized version of the University that is preserved
in the amber of my own memory. I've studied the University, I've
paid lots of money to the University, and the University has paid
me. All that permits me to see things as they are.
I've been surprised by the degree of introspection that goes
on because the place's identity seems to me to be so firm. But
I guess I shouldn't have expected anything but self-examination,
given the University's goals. I've tried to understand better
what those goals entail. I read Father Malloy's address to the
faculty, and watched him teeter on the hind legs of a straight-backed
chair for several hours as he tried to convince the faculty that
there could be a healthy balance between research and teaching.
I have to say I was surprised, as a parent, to hear him say
that in order to recruit top scholars, Notre Dame sometimes offers
them a sabbatical before a new recruit even starts teaching
here, that getting away from the classroom is now considered an
inducement for some in the academic world.
I think I know what he was trying to say that day, but Father
Malloy seemed to have trouble explaining the specific benefits
that derive from combining research and teaching. I doubt he would
have won over many of the "benefactors" whose own memories of
finding a great professor clash with the frustrations of their
sons and daughters who can't find the classes they want nor understand
the muttering of the professors they get.
Father Malloy pointed out that students seem to be quite satisfied
with their education, but when I talk to my son and his roommates
and to other students on campus, they uniformly distinguish between
the experience of being at Notre Dame, which they treasure, and
their time in the classroom, where their satisfaction is spottier.
It seems possible that the University may have been overly willing
to accept a weakening of the undergraduate experience in order
to advance its academic reputation.
Something else essential
has changed. I'm told that at one time practically everyone who
worked at Notre Dame was Catholic and being so meant they embraced
a certain set of values -- a degree of humility about one's own
accomplishments, a fulsome charity toward the downtrodden and
unlucky; a burning commitment to honor the dreams of every man.
Now that being Catholic is no longer necessarily a qualification
for hiring, that homogeneity is gone and the faculty can be divided
into three groups. First are the old timers, some now long in
the tooth, who still hold those values and cannot separate Notre
Dame from family. Then there are the newcomers, many lured here
to pump up the rankings. Such values are not necessarily part
of the package that brought them here, and they may bolt for someplace
warmer, tonier or more prestigious as soon as the opportunity
arises. And then there's the middle third, who may or may not
treasure these same values. They are the ones on whom the University's
future rests, especially as pressure mounts to minimize Catholic
identity while highlighting scholarly achievement.
This uncertain formula concerns me. I do not think that Catholics
have cornered the market on such values. Taking into account a
prospective faculty member's religion was once considered an easy
way of ensuring those values would be preserved. It didn't always
work out to be that way, of course, but I wonder how such values
can be assessed now. So much of what has astonished me about Notre
Dame derives from the human side of the university that I'd hate
to see that exceptional property diluted or, worse yet, lost.
But if, as Father Poorman told me, such values cannot be mandated
but must be bred in the bones of the people who work here and
love the place, how can it be safeguarded, especially with so
many outside influences to contend with?
I hope Notre Dame always aspires to greatness. I also am convinced
that America's university system is the envy of the Western world
in part because of the great diversity of its 3,000-plus institutions
of higher education. Surely, in so broad a universe, with so many
options and so vast a population to serve, there is room for one
place where the human dimension is considered a priority and is
protected with as least as much passion as the rankings.
As the semester has worn on and Aahren has come ever closer
to graduating, I have spent more time thinking about the future
of this most unusual place that has meant so much to us. Doubt
has started to flicker in me, but I can't be certain whether such
worries are warranted. So I sought out the one man who'd probably
thought more about Notre Dame and its character than anyone since
Father Sorin founded the place.
I thought I'd taken the wrong bank of elevators when I got off
at the 13th floor of the Hesburgh Library and found myself facing
nothing but open stacks of books. I walked from one end of the
floor to the other and was ready to go back down to the lobby
and start again when I spotted the door to the office of Father
Theodore M. Hesburgh, CSC.
I entered an empty office,
but when I heard a woman's voice I knew that Father Ted's assistant
was reading him that day's New York Times because he
can't see well enough any more to read it himself. The old man
was wearing a well-used sweater vest with a small burn hole in
it and tan slacks that had seen their prime many football seasons
ago. His cigar smoldered in the ashtray on his desk, wisps of
smoke curling toward the ceiling. I told him that I had come by
to let him know what Notre Dame meant to me, and to ask him what
Notre Dame meant to him.
He didn't seem surprised when I related how Kirk, Conley and
Poorman had helped Aahren. He used the word fierceness to describe
the University's will to protect its own, and I thought it was
a good word. He didn't quite smile, but he leaned back in the
chair and nodded approvingly, as if what they had done was exactly
what he would have expected and nothing less.
In the end, I didn't ask him what Notre Dame meant to him. I
realized we were sitting in a building that bears his name, looking
out over a campus that bears the indelible stamp of his tenure,
and such a question was silly. Rather, I asked him about the University's
future and what, if anything, caused him worry.
Father Ted's answer was surprising. He said his biggest concern
was that it would be so easy for the University to become more
like other universities where, in the race for ratings, in the
fanatic competition with peer institutions, the human side becomes
little more than a trapping. He wasn't talking just about an institution's
denominational identity. What he feared could be lost is the soul
of Notre Dame itself, the very same fierce familiarity with which
we watched it respond to us when, barely here a few days, we needed
it most.
"At the heart of everything we do here is the faith that anything
is possible if you are willing to go in there and work harder,"
he said. "I would hate it if we ever lost that common touch, that
concern about everyone here as an individual."
He knew it was difficult for the University's president to stay
up late, as he did in the early 1950s when he took over, to wait
for carousing underclassmen to return from town and counsel them
one-on-one about the deeper conflicts in their lives. He also
knew that Notre Dame now attracts students from a different class
than earlier generations. No longer is the campus filled primarily
with the sons of immigrants that Florida State Coach Bobby Bowden
referred to when he said, after the Florida State game in November,
that he first became interested in Notre Dame in the early '40s
"when I started hearing all those foreign-sounding names and wondered
what country Notre Dame was in."
It would be easy to lose the common touch in a University with
11,000 students, and an endowment of $3.1 billion. How is something
as amorphous as the common touch to be measured anyway? Father
Ted said he feared it would be very easy in such a place to "quit
being Catholic," the way so many other religiously affiliated
universities have done, preserving little to identify them as
such except their names.
"You can work at religion here without feeling uncomfortable
or like your fly's open," he said. "I would hate it if this place
lost that." He wanted there always to be room for different faiths
and different approaches, including the Theology on Tap session
I went to out of curiosity one Wednesday evening at Legends, the
new campus pub. I arrived at 10 to find a small clutch of undergraduates
milling around the free food and soft drinks. I thought Father
Kevin Russeau, CSC, had deluded himself into thinking he could
get many more young people out to talk about faith on a Wednesday
night at the end of the semester.
But I realized I was the one who was deluded when, at about
10:25 p.m., the clubroom at Legends filled to capacity with more
than 100 students who started asking thoughtful, serious questions
about faith and religion. One asked for scriptural proof of transubstantiation.
One wanted a technical explanation for the Catholic church's stance
on interfaith marriages.
The most heartfelt question came from an undergraduate who said
he had just returned from a semester abroad in Ireland. He had
found the Irish disillusioned by the banality of the religious
intolerance that is ruining their lives, and their disillusionment
made him think about life here in the United States. While religion
dominated and perverted life in Ireland, he found that at home
"nobody goes to Mass, nobody talks about religion." Faith seemed
too abstract, too flimsy. Which was why he said he was glad to
be back at Notre Dame. He said that living a life of faith here
was easy.
Father Ted would have been reassured to hear that, since it
coincided with his views on the University's most disconcerting
dilemma. But I don't think religion is at the heart of Notre Dame's
crisis of self. It's impossible to imagine a day when the crucifixes
on the walls are pro-forma markings, no more meaningful
than a "Made in" tag on a jacket or a shirt. Notre Dame's Catholic
stripes simply won't change. But Father Ted had it right when
he agonized over survival of the common touch that has characterized
Notre Dame since it was still small enough, isolated enough and
underrated enough to hold compassion as its core value. It remains
so today. I can attest to that the way a veteran can attest to
the true horror of war. I believe there are many people at Notre
Dame who want with all their hearts for that commitment to compassion
to continue. But I can't be certain that the University will be
able to do that, and fight the onslaught of rankings, hirings
and unchecked aspirations that threaten the common touch, unless
enough people here come right out and say it should be so.
* * *
I write these words with just a few days remaining in my stay
here, little more than the brief time Aahren had spent on campus
before we came to see what Notre Dame was really about. We needed
the University then. We treasure it now. There's been a certain
symmetry to our relationship with this place all along, one that
seems to be reflected in the balance and equilibrium inherent
in the layout and beauty of the campus.
As a runner, I celebrated that beauty and balance each time
I observed sunrise slipping in pink and gray behind the dome on
the Main Building or caught a glimpse of the Grotto, especially
at night or in the snow. I've come to appreciate the simplicity
and quiet beauty of the reflecting pool in front of the Hesburgh
Library, and I tried to run down the path from the arbor near
the stadium toward the golf course whenever an orange-red sun
was setting beneath a blazing Midwestern sky.
But now that Aahren has recovered completely and our long nightmare
is over at last it is the memory of the trees of the God Quad
-- the old campus near the Main Building -- that I think will
most pinch my heart when I'm not here. I've come to understand
it better as time has gone on. I see the trees as symbols of the
University, always the same yet always changing, because both
are alive. The biggest of them drop their leaves every year, then
create new ones, a cycle that matches the academic calendar and
the endless rotation of incoming freshmen and outgoing seniors.
The trees themselves, the majestic broad-leafed maples, the whispering
European larches, the huge Ponderosa pines and the copper beeches
that stand guard before the Main Building, grow tall, and broad,
stretching far to grasp the world and touch the sky.
Those are the ambitions of Notre Dame students, and of Notre
Dame itself.
And yet, despite that turmoil of constant change, the trees
of the old quad seem tireless and permanent. They are the tradition
of the place, the soul that remains deep within. For a time, Aahren
has lived within this extraordinary community, and we, his family,
have shared his relationship with Notre Dame under circumstances
I hope no family ever has to repeat.
Every student and every family has the same chance we did to
walk for a while among the giants of the old quad, among the greats
of Notre Dame's past. They, like us, can feel that a part of them
has been grafted onto that never-changing core, like the five
growth rings that have encircled the trunks of these noble trees
since we arrived, each one adding to the assembly of years that
makes them, and those around them, great.
* * *
Anthony DePalma was a visiting scholar at the Helen Kellogg
Institute for International Studies. He has reported for The
New York Times from North and South America and Europe since
1986. He is author of Here: A Biography of the New American
Continent.
(April 2004)
