Sunday Story: Planting the Seed

1987-1990

We were ready to go.  Major Dad had had his promotion ceremony.  The movers had come and packed our house and taken everything away in a huge truck.  Gramps had loaned us his CB radios.  Big Brother and Major Dad rode in the pick-up truck with one radio, Mama A and I were in the brand new Saab with the other (and Mama A was not happy about Major Dad trading in her convertible, but as he'd told her, it wouldn't be practical for our next duty station).  We hit the road, Big Brother and I deciding upon call signs for the entire family to use as we conversed via radio, and frustrated when our parents couldn't keep up as we changed "our names" every hour or so!  It was a long way from Southern California to the middle of the country; we were moving...

...to Notre Dame!  Well, technically, we were moving to Granger, Indiana, where Major Dad and Mama A had purchased a house, but that is neither here nor there.  Major Dad was to be the Marine Officer Instructor (MOI) at the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC) unit at the University!  Mama A would be able to get her Masters Degree, Big Brother would start first grade, and I would attend preschool at St Mary's College's Early Childhood Development Center (ECDC) across the street from Notre Dame.  I was four years old.

When we first arrived in Indiana, the new house wasn't ready, but somehow my parents made arrangements for us to live on campus in one of the dorms that was opened over the summer (Lewis Hall).  Between the four of us, we had two dorm rooms.  Mama A pushed all the beds into one room, and the other was used as a sitting/play room. Without air conditioning, it was a hot summer!  Major Dad started work and Mama A began her Masters program.  Some of the college girls (RAs, maybe?) in the dorm babysat Big Brother and I while Mama A was in morning classes.  We watched Top Gun and played Candy Land every day in the dorm's lobby.  In the afternoons, we'd go for walks around the lakes on campus, take trips to The Huddle and the bookstore for ice cream and storytime.  Sometimes we'd pack a picnic and eat with Major Dad on the quads during his lunch hour.  If it rained, we'd have a picnic inside his office, pretending that the green carpet was grass and the little black flecks were ants.  In those days, the ROTC building was right next to the lakes, in a pink building (now, or at least up until five years ago, the Security Building).  When students began coming back to campus for Fall Semester, we moved from Lewis Hall to a nearby hotel, anxious for our new house to be ready, but excited about the hotel's pool.

There are many more memories from that three year period...football games (and a National Championship!), ROTC events, my first puppy, Mass in the Crypt and at the Basilica, Daisy/Brownie Girl Scouts, learning to swim at The Rock and later my first swim team...the list goes on.  But the most pertinent is of course the moment when I looked up at my dad and said, in my four year old voice, "Daddy, one day I'm going to go to Notre Dame."  

It was the only college/university I knew, but I was destined to be a Domer!