Gov. Blunt and Missouri Notre Dame Clubs Place Gentleman's Wager on Navy-Notre Dame Game
JEFFERSON CITY - Gov. Matt Blunt and presidents of the St. Louis, Kansas City, Ozarks and Mid-Missouri Notre Dame Clubs have placed a gentleman's wager on this weekend's game between Navy and Notre Dame.
Gov. Blunt is hopeful his alma mater Navy (4-4) can break a 44-year losing streak against Notre Dame (1-7).
"I have placed a friendly wager on my alma mater to take home a win this weekend," Gov. Blunt said. "Navy and Notre Dame have a storied history, but recently - as in the last 44 years - history has been kinder to the Fighting Irish football team. I am hopeful the Midshipmen can carry us to victory on Saturday."
"Notre Dame and Navy have a rich tradition of competitive games, and this year will be no different," said Mark Lynch, president of the St. Louis Club. "We look forward to seeing Governor Blunt jogging in his Irish gear."
"There has been a close and special relationship between Notre Dame and the United States Navy going back to World War II when the Navy took over most of the campus for training officers and housing midshipmen in training. Without the Navy's presence, Notre Dame would have largely been a deserted campus as most college-aged men joined the Armed Forces. Today, Notre Dame graduates more Navy officers than any institution other than the Naval Academy. The Notre Dame alums in Missouri are happy to be able to carry on this friendly rivalry between Navy and Notre Dame through this symbolic wager with Governor Blunt, a distinguished Naval Academy graduate," said Charles Weiss, former president of the St. Louis Notre Dame Club and former president of the Notre Dame Law School Alumni.
"We thank Governor Blunt and his staff for this opportunity to bring the Navy and Notre Dame families in Missouri closer together.
The Kansas City Alumni Club hopes that Governor Blunt will enjoy the continuation of Notre Dame's 44-year old win streak over the Midshipmen, as my father, former Governor 'Walkin' Joe Teasdale, did 30 years ago.
Go Irish," said John Teasdale, Kansas City Notre Dame Alumni Chapter.
"As a neighbor of Governor Blunt, I'd gladly up the stakes and offer him a free house painting...blue and gold of course! Neither the Governor nor I were alive the last time Navy won, and I'd like to see that trend continued," said Josh Hartman, Notre Dame Club of the Ozarks.
"I am in complete agreement with Governor Blunt on many, many things, but on this particular matter I believe he will look like the Navy goat," said Barry O'Neill, Mid-Missouri Notre Dame Alumni Chapter.
In the event Navy is defeated, Gov. Blunt will wear a Notre Dame sweatshirt during one of his morning runs. If Navy wins, each of the presidents will wear a Navy hat, tie or shirt to their next Notre Dame Club meeting.
The Navy and Notre Dame rivalry began in 1927. It is the longest intersectional rivalry in college football.
Gov. Blunt graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and served more than 5 years active duty. His active duty service included participation in Operation Support Democracy, involving the United Nations blockade of Haiti, missions to interdict drug traffic off the South American coast, and on duties involved in the interdiction of Cuban migrants in 1994. During his naval career, Gov. Blunt received numerous commendations, including four Navy and Marine Corps Achievement medals.
Gov. Blunt is the only statewide official in Missouri history called to active military duty in wartime, serving for six months in Operation Enduring Freedom, America's response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. He is currently serving as a Lieutenant Commander in the Naval Reserves.
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Go Irish!
Fr. Hesburgh Turns 90
Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., president emeritus of the University of Notre Dame, continues in a quiet but pivotal way to advance the interests of the University he led for 35 years. Considered one of the most influential figures in higher education in the 20th century, he is now 89 years old.
Father Hesburgh stepped down as head of Notre Dame on June 1, 1987, ending the longest tenure at that time among active presidents of American colleges and universities. After a yearlong sabbatical, he returned to a retirement office on the 13th floor of the newly named Hesburgh Library. One of his first projects was completion of an autobiography, "God, Country, Notre Dame," which was published in November 1990 by Doubleday and became a national best seller.
In July 2000, Father Hesburgh's public service career was recognized when he became the first person from higher education to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. Leadership of the Senate and House of Representatives gathered in the rotunda of the Capitol as President Clinton presented the medal. Father Hesburgh has held 16 presidential appointments over the years — most recently to the Commission on Presidential Scholars — and they involved him in virtually all major social issues — civil rights, peaceful uses of atomic energy, campus unrest, treatment of Vietnam offenders, and Third World development and immigration reform, to name only a few. At the same time, he remained a national leader in the field of education, serving on many commissions and study groups. As recently as 1999, he made a fact-finding tour of refugee camps around Kosovo for the United Nations, and he was called on periodically as a member of the Anti-Incitement Committee established by the Wye Plantation Treaty to deal with Palestinian-Israeli tensions in the Middle East.
Within the academy, he served as chairman of the International Federation of Catholic Universities from 1963 to 1970 and led a movement to redefine the nature and mission of the contemporary Catholic university, drawing heavily on the experience of Catholic institutions of higher learning in the United States. His stature as an elder statesman in American higher education is reflected in his 150 honorary degrees (as of May 2004), the most ever awarded to one person. He was the first priest elected to the Board of Overseers at Harvard University and served two years (1994-95) as president of the board. Father Hesburgh also cochaired from 1990 to 1996 the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, an influential advocate for reforms in college sports.
Notre Dame's president emeritus has served four Popes, three as permanent Vatican City representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna from 1956 to 1970. At the request of Pope Paul VI, he built in 1972 the Ecumenical Institute at Tantur, Jerusalem, which Notre Dame continues to operate. Paul VI also appointed him head of the Vatican representatives attending the 20th anniversary of the UN's human rights declaration in Teheran, Iran, in 1968, and six years later a member of the Holy See's United Nations delegation. In 1983 Father Hesburgh was appointed by Pope John Paul II to the Pontifical Council for Culture, charged with finding ways in which the saving message of the Gospel could be preached effectively in the world's variegated cultures.
Justice has been the focus of many of his outside involvements. He was a charter member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, created in 1957, and he chaired the commission from 1969 to 1972, when President Nixon replaced him as chairman because of his criticism of the administration's civil rights record. Father Hesburgh was a member of President Ford's Presidential Clemency Board, charged with deciding the fate of various groups of Vietnam offenders. His work on these commissions led to the creation at Notre Dame Law School of the Center of Civil and Human Rights.
In 1971 he joined the board of the Overseas Development Council, a private organization supporting interests of the underdeveloped world, and chaired it until 1982. During this time, he led fund-raising efforts that averted mass starvation in Cambodia in 1979-80. Between 1979 and 1981 he also chaired the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy, the recommendations of which became the basis of Congressional reform legislation five years later. He was involved during the 1980s in a private initiative which sought to unite internationally known scientists and world religious leaders in condemning nuclear weapons. He helped organize a 1982 meeting in Vatican City of 58 world class scientists, from East as well as West, who called for the elimination of nuclear weapons and subsequently brought together in Vienna leaders of six faith traditions who endorsed the view of these scientists. His global perspective was the impetus for the establishment on campus of the Kellogg Institute for International Studies and the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.
In addition to the Congressional Gold Medal, Father Hesburgh received the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, from President Lyndon Johnson in 1964. He also has received numerous awards from education groups, among them the prestigious Meiklejohn Award of the American Association of University Professors in 1970. This award, which honors those who uphold academic freedom, recognized Father Hesburgh's crucial role in blunting the attempt of the Nixon Administration in 1969 to use federal troops to quell campus disturbances.
On more than one occasion, Father Hesburgh found himself the first Catholic priest to serve in a given position. Such was the case during the years he was a director of the Chase Manhattan Bank and a trustee (later, chairman) of the Rockefeller Foundation. Also, his appointment as ambassador to the 1979 UN Conference on Science and Technology for Development was the first time a priest had served in a formal diplomatic role for the U.S. government.
Notre Dame's president emeritus has written three other books in addition to his autobiography — “The Humane Imperative: A Challenge for the Year 2000,” published in 1974 by the Yale University Press; “The Hesburgh Papers: Higher Values in Higher Education,” published in 1979 by Andrews McMeel, Inc; and "Travels with Ted and Ned," published in 1992 by Doubleday. A consistent theme in these and other writings is a vision of the contemporary Catholic university as touching the moral as well as the intellectual dimensions of scholarly inquiry. "The Catholic University should be a place," he wrote, "where all the great questions are asked, where an exciting conversation is continually in progress, where the mind constantly grows as the values and powers of intelligence and wisdom are cherished and exercised in full freedom."
Father Hesburgh was born May 25, 1917, in Syracuse, N.Y., the son of Anne Murphy Hesburgh and Theodore Bernard Hesburgh, an executive of the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. A brother, James, was graduated from Notre Dame in 1955 and lives in Edwards, Colo. Notre Dame's president emeritus has a sister, Mrs. Robert O'Neill, who resides in Cazenovia, N.Y.
Father Hesburgh was educated at Notre Dame and the Gregorian University in Rome, from which he received a bachelor of philosophy degree in 1939. He was ordained a priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross in Sacred Heart Church (now Basilica) on the Notre Dame campus June 24, 1943, by Bishop John F. Noll of Fort Wayne, Ind. Following his ordination, Father Hesburgh continued his study of sacred theology at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., receiving his doctorate (S.T.D.) in 1945. He joined the Notre Dame faculty the same year and served as chaplain to World War II veterans on campus in addition to his teaching duties in the Religion Department. He was appointed the head of that department in 1948, and the following year was appointed executive vice president in the administration of Rev. John J. Cavanaugh, C.S.C., University president. At the age of 35 in June 1952, he was named the 15th president of Notre Dame.
The accomplishments of the Hesburgh era at Notre Dame are reflected in statistics comparing the Notre Dame of 1952, when Father Hesburgh became president, with the University he left in 1987. The annual operating budget went from $9.7 million to $176.6 million, the endowment from $9 million to $350 million, and research funding from $735,000 to $15 million. Enrollment increased from 4,979 to 9,600, faculty from 389 to 950, and degrees awarded from 1,212 to 2,500. The two major changes during the Hesburgh era were the transfer of governance from the founding religious community, the Congregation of Holy Cross, to a predominantly lay Board of Trustees in 1967 and the admission of women to the undergraduate program in 1972.
Quotes:
"It is easier to exemplify values than teach them."
"The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother. "
“The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet.”
“Anyone who refuses to speak out off campus does not deserve to be listened to on campus.”
Dan Towle (Class of 1977) of Leawood, KS Awarded Dr. Thomas A. Dooley Award!
Notre Dame honored Dan Towle, ’77, of Leawood, Kansas with the Dr. Thomas A. Dooley Award on January 26, 2007. A doctor of pediatric anesthesia, Dan has worked with Catholic charities for 31 years to support families in underdeveloped countries, and has worked with the University’s Department of Anthropology to create summer volunteer opportunities for Notre Dame students in Africa. Congratulations to Dan and his family.
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