SirJohn
11-25-2005, 02:22 AM
from dunklin democrat
Good news from Notre Dame
Kenneth Kinchen
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
My favorite "Thanksgiving Day" football game was played a couple of Saturdays ago. Notre Dame won the game, but Navy gave the Irish a couple of shocks during the last half. Navy fought hard to the very end, but the game is not the real story. What happened next on Notre Dame's about to be enhanced field of honor was incredibly inspiring. Navy and Notre Dame's scholar-athletes, all of whom are young men destined to lead our nation in a hundred different ways, stunned 80,000 roaring fans into silence, and rendered the jabbering media mute.
Immediately after the traditional singing of Notre Dame's Alma Mater, the entire Notre Dame football team, along with their coaches and staff, and the Notre Dame band, moved en masse to Navy's side of that already monumental field. The splendid United States Naval Academy band began to play Navy's Alma Mater. That was an astounding moment. Both Navy and Notre Dame, along with their fans, were singing the Navy Alma Mater. It was a celebration of American brotherhood, reminding us of those founding words, "We the People, in order to form a more perfect union . . . "
Notre Dame's new coach had said at the beginning of the season, "Football at Notre Dame is about respect." Many in the nation already knew that Charlie Weis was a man of his word, and a man of quiet personal charity, but still, one was stirred with renewed admiration for him and his team, and overwhelmed with Notre Dame's display of esteem for Navy.
As he was walking off the field, a "Fighting Irish" player was asked by a sports commentator why the Notre Dame team removed their helmets, and raised them in a show of special respect, for Navy during the singing of Navy's Alma Mater. He replied that he knew how hard it is to make good grades and play football, and how tough it must be at the Academy. Suddenly, the young man gave his heart permission to speak. The brawny scholar-athlete humbly confided these solemn words, "I guess it's really because we know what they'll be doing [for us] when they graduate."
On this day before Thanksgiving, one might profitably reflect on where we got such intelligent and successful student athletes as those at Navy and Notre Dame. Indeed, from whom did they inherit such American brawn and brain and stubborn determination? The answer lies with those earliest Christian adventurers who became colonists, who became citizen revolutionaries, who became the founders of our great Christian nation.
On this day before Thanksgiving, the story of the Pilgrim Fathers is too familiar to be belabored here: how James I of England threatened to "harry [pillage and plunder] them out of the land," how they went first to Holland, in 1607-8, and a decade later decided to take the near suicidal voyage to the New World. Why would they risk their lives with such a trip? Hear one of their leaders, William Bradford, tell us: "...for the propagating and advancing the gospel of the kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of the world; yea, though they should be but even as stepping-stones unto others for the performing of so great a work."
We can't linger in this Thanksgiving column in the colonial period. It's enough to write here that the early English settlers were joined in the late seventeenth and in the eighteenth century by colonists from every part of the British Isles and most parts of Western Europe. After the English, it was the Scots-Irish and the Germans and the African slaves who were to become the most numerous of the forefathers of those brilliant young, cream of the crop, American black and white scholar-athletes in the Navy/Notre Dame game.
By the end of the colonial period the population of the thirteen colonies was about two and a quarter million people. One wishes that we could be aware, somehow, of the feelings and thoughts which must have distressed, and surely thrilled, those of our forefathers who came here after the pilgrims and colonists. Those who came from England or Germany in the middle 1700's left a country where the great lords of the manor owned everything. The common future American of the time was from a herd of people in Germany and England who had nothing. They must have marveled at middle 18th century America. Here there were no aristocratic families, no grand royal courts, no kings, no all-powerful bishops, no state established church using religion to "keep the peasants in their place," and no invisible power taking from them and giving to the lords of the land, their princely "owners."
There were, of course, rich people in America in the 1700's, but the rich and the poor did not have that huge "master and serf" separation that they had in England and Germany. The poor had no princes for whom they had to toil, starve and bleed in princely disputes. To those early future Americans, they had truly arrived in a land that must have seemed a perfect society. In this land, a common man could keep the fruits of his labor, and accumulate rewards from his work. It was the beginning of the "upward mobility" phenomenon. Meaning, in America, then, and now, one can, by working with the brain and body God has given him, earn his ticket out of poverty. Today, a child of a day laborer can climb to the middle class, and higher. However, it still takes ambition, hard work, and most of all education, to succeed: witness the young men of Navy and Notre Dame. That's the good new from Notre Dame.
Finally, we thank men like Charlie Weis for reminding us that, like football at Notre Dame, being an American "is about respect." Happy Thanksgiving!
Kenneth Kinchen is an independent writer with a background in international business and foreign service contracting.
Good news from Notre Dame
Kenneth Kinchen
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
My favorite "Thanksgiving Day" football game was played a couple of Saturdays ago. Notre Dame won the game, but Navy gave the Irish a couple of shocks during the last half. Navy fought hard to the very end, but the game is not the real story. What happened next on Notre Dame's about to be enhanced field of honor was incredibly inspiring. Navy and Notre Dame's scholar-athletes, all of whom are young men destined to lead our nation in a hundred different ways, stunned 80,000 roaring fans into silence, and rendered the jabbering media mute.
Immediately after the traditional singing of Notre Dame's Alma Mater, the entire Notre Dame football team, along with their coaches and staff, and the Notre Dame band, moved en masse to Navy's side of that already monumental field. The splendid United States Naval Academy band began to play Navy's Alma Mater. That was an astounding moment. Both Navy and Notre Dame, along with their fans, were singing the Navy Alma Mater. It was a celebration of American brotherhood, reminding us of those founding words, "We the People, in order to form a more perfect union . . . "
Notre Dame's new coach had said at the beginning of the season, "Football at Notre Dame is about respect." Many in the nation already knew that Charlie Weis was a man of his word, and a man of quiet personal charity, but still, one was stirred with renewed admiration for him and his team, and overwhelmed with Notre Dame's display of esteem for Navy.
As he was walking off the field, a "Fighting Irish" player was asked by a sports commentator why the Notre Dame team removed their helmets, and raised them in a show of special respect, for Navy during the singing of Navy's Alma Mater. He replied that he knew how hard it is to make good grades and play football, and how tough it must be at the Academy. Suddenly, the young man gave his heart permission to speak. The brawny scholar-athlete humbly confided these solemn words, "I guess it's really because we know what they'll be doing [for us] when they graduate."
On this day before Thanksgiving, one might profitably reflect on where we got such intelligent and successful student athletes as those at Navy and Notre Dame. Indeed, from whom did they inherit such American brawn and brain and stubborn determination? The answer lies with those earliest Christian adventurers who became colonists, who became citizen revolutionaries, who became the founders of our great Christian nation.
On this day before Thanksgiving, the story of the Pilgrim Fathers is too familiar to be belabored here: how James I of England threatened to "harry [pillage and plunder] them out of the land," how they went first to Holland, in 1607-8, and a decade later decided to take the near suicidal voyage to the New World. Why would they risk their lives with such a trip? Hear one of their leaders, William Bradford, tell us: "...for the propagating and advancing the gospel of the kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of the world; yea, though they should be but even as stepping-stones unto others for the performing of so great a work."
We can't linger in this Thanksgiving column in the colonial period. It's enough to write here that the early English settlers were joined in the late seventeenth and in the eighteenth century by colonists from every part of the British Isles and most parts of Western Europe. After the English, it was the Scots-Irish and the Germans and the African slaves who were to become the most numerous of the forefathers of those brilliant young, cream of the crop, American black and white scholar-athletes in the Navy/Notre Dame game.
By the end of the colonial period the population of the thirteen colonies was about two and a quarter million people. One wishes that we could be aware, somehow, of the feelings and thoughts which must have distressed, and surely thrilled, those of our forefathers who came here after the pilgrims and colonists. Those who came from England or Germany in the middle 1700's left a country where the great lords of the manor owned everything. The common future American of the time was from a herd of people in Germany and England who had nothing. They must have marveled at middle 18th century America. Here there were no aristocratic families, no grand royal courts, no kings, no all-powerful bishops, no state established church using religion to "keep the peasants in their place," and no invisible power taking from them and giving to the lords of the land, their princely "owners."
There were, of course, rich people in America in the 1700's, but the rich and the poor did not have that huge "master and serf" separation that they had in England and Germany. The poor had no princes for whom they had to toil, starve and bleed in princely disputes. To those early future Americans, they had truly arrived in a land that must have seemed a perfect society. In this land, a common man could keep the fruits of his labor, and accumulate rewards from his work. It was the beginning of the "upward mobility" phenomenon. Meaning, in America, then, and now, one can, by working with the brain and body God has given him, earn his ticket out of poverty. Today, a child of a day laborer can climb to the middle class, and higher. However, it still takes ambition, hard work, and most of all education, to succeed: witness the young men of Navy and Notre Dame. That's the good new from Notre Dame.
Finally, we thank men like Charlie Weis for reminding us that, like football at Notre Dame, being an American "is about respect." Happy Thanksgiving!
Kenneth Kinchen is an independent writer with a background in international business and foreign service contracting.