Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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names in spirituality, athletic lore and academic renown. If there were a "Notre Dame Mount Rushmore," Sorin, Rockne and Hes- burgh would be the first three faces carved, and the fourth could be Rev. Edmund Joyce, C.S.C. — who served as Hesburgh's right-hand man in the 35 years they guided Notre Dame. Rev. Sorin founded the university in the 1840s, and it was his resilience that rebuilt the institution after an 1879 fire had ravaged the campus and all but destroyed the college. He claimed the fire, which took no lives, was nec- essary to show him that he hadn't dreamed big enough. Thus, upon the new, rebuilt ad- ministration building was included a Golden Dome atop which stood a statue of Our Lady, so that future gen- erations would know from whence the school's greatness came. Rockne cultivated a national follow- ing unlike anything seen heretofore in American sports annals during his tenure as the football coach from 1918- 30. Notre Dame went from a small, Catholic school in the Midwest to the original "America's Team." Finally, there is Hesburgh, whose sphere of influence nationally, au- thoritative leadership and dedication combined Sorin's ambitious, unrelent- ing vision with Rockne's powerful charisma. For decades, he was named among the world's top 10 leaders in both the educational and religious sec- tors. GOD, COUNTRY, NOTRE DAME Although Hesburgh was the recipi- ent of more than 150 honorary degrees — the most ever awarded to one per- son, per the Guinness Book of World Records — and countless other pres- tigious awards, he consistently stated the most significant day of his life was June 24, 1943, when he was ordained as a priest at Notre Dame's Sacred Heart Church. He always insisted that if only one word were allowed on his epitaph, he would select "Priest." A self-de- scribed night owl, he always kept his office door open for students in need of counseling or guidance in the mid- night to early morning hours. Taking over as the 15th president of the university in June 1952 at age 35, Hesburgh had an unparalleled 35-year run before retiring on June 1, 1987. During Hesburgh's reign, more than three-dozen new buildings were erected, the annual operating budget grew from $9.7 million to $176.6 mil- lion, the university's endowment rose from $9 million to $350 million, re- search funding from $735,000 to $15 million, enrollment nearly doubled from 4,979 to 9,600, and faculty more than doubled from 389 to 950. All the while, Hesburgh held 16 presidential appointments, starting in 1954 under Dwight Eisenhower; earned in 1964 the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor for his work on Civil Rights legislation; and received a United States Congres- sional Gold Medal in 2000, the first individual from post-secondary edu- cation to do so. His tenure as the school's president was not always smooth. During the 1950s, Hesburgh was of- ten vilified for what was believed to