Campus Life

Brother Francis J. Gorch, CSC

The following article is from the Notre Dame Magazine

By Courtenay Collins ’98

Acorns from Heaven

Brother Francis J. Gorch, CSC, didn't go to Highland Cemetery in northwest South Bend with the intention of gathering acorns. The acorn idea just hit him over the head.

On a September day some 25 years ago, Gorch was making his annual beginning-of-football-season visit to the grave of legendary Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne, when he stopped to admire the cemetery's famous Council Oak Tree. Once the site of meetings of Indian councils, the tree was believed to be at least 300 years old. Call it standing in the wrong place at the right time, or call it an acorn with a mission, but one of the nuts dropped from the tree and hit the brother on the head. "That one acorn gave me the idea to take some acorns home," recalls Gorch, who was then manager of the LaFortune Student Center (today's Gorch Games Room is named after him).

He selected two acorns from the ground - he isn't sure he got the one that hit him – and planted them in small cups that he kept by his window in his living quarters at the Notre Dame fire station. About two months later the acorns showed signs of growth, so Gorch planted them in back of Corby Hall, near Sacred Heart Basilica.

The Council Oak was finally killed by a storm some years later, but thanks to Gorch two of its acorns are maturing as healthy trees on the Notre Dame campus. A sign on each describes their history and heritage.

And while Brother Gorch, 75, hasn't planted or been hit by any acorns since, he says he continues to make his annual autumn pilgrimage to Rockne's grave.

Back to Irish Reveries