I grew up in a staunchly Catholic family. That means we had a very specific set of values and one of those values was Notre Dame football. My father worked at Notre Dame for most of the time before I went to kindergarten and all 3 of his sons applied to U.N.D. Through a miscarriage of justice, I, the one named after a priest, the one who could (barely) remember the time our family lived in South Bend, the one who bled Blue and Gold during every football season, I was the only one of the 3 to not get accepted to Notre Dame. So, I went to my second choice. But the University of Dayton was a strong choice for me. First, our family had friends at U.D. Second, Notre Dame was still not coed in 1969 and Dayton was. Third, Dayton was about as strong in basketball as Notre Dame was in football. The Flyers were one of the schools that made it to the NCAA championship in the 60’s. The University of Dayton arena was about to open in late 1969, we were the first freshman class to use it. But my high school yearbook said that I was going to major in biology and go to Gannon College in Erie where my father taught biology. In other words, no one at the yearbook even asked me, they made an assumption. So, I was more than thrilled when I got accepted to U.D. and I loved being able to say that I’m not going to be living at home (fulltime) any more. “I’m going to leave home and go to Dayton and I’m going to study Psychology so I can understand why I want to leave home”. I thought it made a good sound bite.
My roommate in Stuart Hall was Mike J. from New York. Mike had never visited the campus before the day we met and he had decided he hated it during the plane ride. He would leave after one semester.
