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1842 – 2015
The Rev. Edward Sorin (1814–1893): the founder. A French priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross, ordained two years when his superior sent him to the Indiana missions, Sorin was 28 when he reached Vincennes in the fall of 1841. Offered land at the far end of the diocese on condition he found a college on it within two years, he set out north with seven brothers in mid-November 1842 and reached South Bend on 26 November, going first to Alexis Coquillard's house; the party took formal possession of the snow-covered tract on 27 November, with about 370 dollars in cash, and Sorin named it Notre Dame du Lac. He was the university's president from 1842 to 1865 and the congregation's American superior beyond it — the man who held the place through its first fires, its near-failures, and its charter of 15 January 1844, and who wished for the Grotto that his successor built three years after his death. Sorin died on 31 October 1893. The institution's full record lives in the Notre Dame section; the man is the founding fact of both the university and, in no small part, the city beside it.
The Rev. William Corby: the chaplain-president. Corby served twice as Notre Dame's president (1866–72 and 1877–81), and between and around those terms lived the two lives the record keeps: as chaplain of New York's Irish Brigade he gave the general absolution to the troops at Gettysburg in 1863, the Civil War's most famous act of battlefield ministry; and in the spring and summer of 1896, as Sorin's successor in the congregation's American leadership, he built the present Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes — funded by a 2,500-dollar gift from the Rev. Thomas Carroll, built by local contractor John Gill of Indiana fieldstone boulders — fulfilling Sorin's wish, three years after Sorin's death, on ground filled with the charred rubbish of the 1879 fire that had burned the Main Building in his second presidency and that he had rebuilt grander. The record long gave the Grotto to Sorin; a 1953 letter by the Rev. Joseph Maguire to the university archivist corrected it, and the correction stands in the Notre Dame section. Corby is its human center: soldier's priest, president, rebuilder, and the Grotto's actual builder.
The Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh (1917–2015): the 35-year president. Hesburgh presided over Notre Dame from 1952 to 1987 — the longest presidency in its history and the one under which the small Catholic college of Sorin's line became one of the country's large research universities, with an enrollment above 13,000 and an endowment reported in the tens of billions. The institutional record is in the Notre Dame section; his People entry is the scale of the tenure itself: thirty-five years, longer than the combined presidencies of the first six men in the chair, spanning the university's whole modern transformation. He died in 2015.
The line of presidents, at roster size: Patrick Dillon (1865–66); William Corby (1866–72, 1877–81, profiled above); Auguste Lemonnier (1872–74); Patrick Colovin (1874–77); Thomas E. Walsh (1881–93); Andrew Morrissey (1893–1905); John W. Cavanaugh (1905–19); James A. Burns (1919–22), who founded the university's endowment system; Matthew J. Walsh (1922–28); Charles L. O'Donnell (1928–34); John F. O'Hara (1934–40), afterward Archbishop of Philadelphia and a cardinal; John H. O'Donnell (1940–46); John J. Cavanaugh (1946–52); and Theodore Hesburgh (1952–87). The roster follows the University Archives' table of presidents; the presidencies after Hesburgh's belong to the Notre Dame section's current record.
Jake Kline (Clarence Kline): the coach who stayed. Kline coached Notre Dame's baseball team for 42 years and was inducted into the American Baseball Coaches Association's Hall of Fame in 1969 — the same year his South Bend neighbor Stan Coveleski entered Cooperstown. The two men, the coach and the pitcher, lived most of their lives in South Bend and died five years apart, both at 94. Kline's coaching record stands with the sports record; here he is the university's longest-serving sporting life, a fixture of the city's summers for two generations.
Sources:
- Notre Dame section of this history (banked) — Sorin's 1841 arrival and age, the November 1842 journey and the Coquillard house, the 370 dollars, the 1844 charter, the death of 31 October 1893; the Grotto's 1896 construction by Corby with the Carroll gift and John Gill's building, the 1879 debris beneath it, and Maguire's 1953 correction; Hesburgh's 35 years and the university's modern scale.
- University of Notre Dame Archives, table of presidents — the full succession and terms, Dillon through Hesburgh, with Burns's endowment founding and O'Hara's Philadelphia cardinalate.
- Notre Dame Magazine, "Stan and Jake" — Kline's 42 years as head baseball coach, the 1969 ABCA Hall of Fame induction, the shared South Bend life and the deaths at 94, five years apart.