Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/114977
where have you gone? O���Connor, now 86 years old, published a memoir this past fall titled Journey With The Sherpas. The book, available on Amazon, started as a way to set the foundation���s accomplishments in stone, but its ghostwriter soon decided it would be better as a biography of O���Connor. It traces his childhood growing up in the Bronx and his early sports career at Mt. Saint Michael Academy, where he learned to play football from a Knute Rockne pupil. O���Connor went to Notre Dame in 1944 and started right away for the football team, which finished ninth in the nation with an 8-2 record. The war sent him to the Great Lakes Naval Training center in Illinois that spring where he said boot camp felt like a breeze compared to a Frank Leahy practice. O���Connor played for the Great Lakes team, coached by future pros Paul Brown and Weeb Ewbank, for one season before he returned to the Irish. The following August, O���Connor left South Bend temporarily to see about a girl. When he returned, Leahy questioned his loyalty and buried him on the second team, or the ���slaughter squad,��� for the rest of the year. He missed his senior season, too, after a chop block wrenched his knee in a preseason practice. O���Connor sat boiling with frustration while he watched his teammates string together back-to-back undefeated seasons during what many consider Notre Dame���s peak in college football. He left with a slightly bitter taste about how his football ca- reer played out, but he says his threeplus years there were the foundation of the uninterrupted string of success he has had since. ���I think his biggest setback was at Notre Dame,��� Karen O���Connor said. ���But I think everything that my father has accomplished had a lot to do with what he learned at Notre Dame.��� O���Connor has mingled with some of his generation���s most remarkable people. He regularly had dinner with Red Sox star Ted Williams. He was coached by Leahy, Brown and Canadian legend Frank Clair. And through Hillary, he met heads of state from around the world. He���s won a long list of athletic and humanitarian awards and seen many remarkable places. But the one memory that stand outs the most, he said, is his last trip through the tunnel at Notre Dame Stadium. It had been 40 years since he saw the inside of the tunnel when O���Connor returned to campus in 1987 for the Special Olympics. He helped establish Nepal���s first team for the international event hosted in South Bend. He was also involved with the Canadian team and was asked to lead that group into the opening ceremonies. The moment sent the many fascinating strands of the life he has led ��� his career in Canada, the work he did in Nepal and his past at Notre Dame ��� crashing together. ���I had all these things going at the same time. I was in heaven,��� he said. ���I remember thinking I couldn���t ever cap that. And I don���t know whether I ever did.��� ���