IHerb's birthday was December 14. Please say a prayer for him in rememberance this Christmas.

Here are a couple excerpts on Christmas from his book Notre Dame Odyssey...

"I can only hope that what I am learning about life here at Notre Dame will prepare me for death. Another Christmas season is upon us. The snow falls. The trees, the sidewalks, the old brick buildings, the cinder paths around the lakes are heavily laden with the white blanket."

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The Notre Dame campus in the rain and the snow - the reflected brilliance of a rising sun on the golden dome - the rotting wood on the stations of the cross spaced along an old cinder path that winds between the lakes and up to Calvary Hill. It is the spirit of men and women, both religious and lay, who trod these paths and inhabited these old brick buildings in the pursuit of God's work. It is an old log cabin, hewn from timber that richly covered a spacious plain along the St. Joseph River. It is the living legend of dedicated religious whose bones are resting in this hallowed ground.

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Christmas Day 1974. 1 am the only person in the ACC, except for a few hours when the Irish basketball team practiced. Following the end of practice, four Irish players - Bill Patemo, Pete Crotty, Toby Knight and Dave Batten - stayed on court to play an improvised version of football, using a basketball, and called "Diggerball." The game was replete with long passes and "spiking." 'The boys had great fun playing, as I had watching. I suppose it took away some of the pressures brought on by the upcoming gwne against Kentucky at Louisville, just two days away.