If you heard the church bells tolling around South Bend this morning

The reason was to observe a memorial for the death of Knute Rockne whose plane crashed in Bazaar, Kansas at 10:45 a.m. on March 31, 1931.

Rockne lived about two blocks from our house back in the 1920s. He remains a living figure in South Bend today - not forgotten at all. Masses are still being offered on campus and at local Catholic churches for the repose of his soul.

This picture shows him next to his good friend Babe Ruth who was a huge Notre Dame fan. I just recently learned that the coaching tree of Knute Rockne includes Vince Lombardi, Bear Bryant, Bill Parcells, Bill Belichick, Nick Saban, and yes, Charlie Weis. This means that his philosophy was passed down directly from him to them through a succession of prominent coaches. Very interesting. Rockne, though flawed like the rest of us, remains one of my heroes today.

Mass this Sunday

Will be at 2:00 p.m. at St. Joseph Chapel at Holy Cross College, NOT 1:00 p.m. as previously announced. This is the concluding Mass for the Novena. It will also be the homecoming Mass for the Spes Unica retreat.

Please send a postcard if you can

The Swick children (Center: Brendan; Left to Right: Mary Clare, Catherine, Joseph, Lucy, Nathan, Benjamin, Abraham) The poor high school sophomore doesn't look too enthusiastic - but its good to see him being a good sport about it anyway.

Karen (Kloska) Swick and I were talking the other day and we thought the blog would be helpful to this project. She writes:

"Our children are putting together a photo album of post cards from throughout the United States. We are attempting to collect a post card from every state with little bits of information.

Thanks for helping with this."

Please send a postcard to:
The Swick Family
26864 Pleasant Place
Elkhart, IN 46514

Sorry about the lack of timely posting

Cancer boy has had a difficult week. Technology problems, health problems, time-management problems. Posts should become regular again next week.

Joey, Jen, Mary and I will be running our Spring Spes Unica retreat this weekend for Holy Cross College. Please keep us in our prayers. We have around 50 students attending.

Mary has arrived

Mary painting in Poland.

Mary Delayed

Apparently Mary has been stranded in Dublin due to weather. We here at Na Zdrowie! hope that she was able to leave the airport and tour the city a bit.

Mary will arrive in Chicago later tonight and will be available for coffee and chit chat at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning at Pleasant Place.

Dad loses 17 pounds on the South Beach diet

He is on a roll - halfway to his goal . Go Dad! This is pretty significant. To give you an idea of how much weight this is, I went looking on the internet to find objects that are seventeen pounds. Here is what I found.