Parseghian rebuilt Notre Dame football during the 'Era of Ara'

When I called former Notre Dame coach Ara Parseghian at his winter home in Marco Island, Florida, more than five years ago, I told him I was writing a "legacy" article about one of college football's most revered coaches.

Parseghian chuckled, and then said, "You're writing my obituary, aren't you?"

For more than an hour, Parseghian shared intimate details of his life as the son of immigrants, his unlikely journey to becoming one of Notre Dame's most beloved coaches, and his battle with an incurable disease that killed three of his young grandchildren.

Parseghian, 94, died early Wednesday morning at his home in Granger, Indiana, the university announced. He had been battling an infection in his hip. In his final days, his players wrote him letters to tell him what he meant to them.

"He was the right guy at the right time everywhere he went," said former Notre Dame linebacker Jim Lynch, co-captain of the 1966 team. "I think he was the right guy when he went to Miami [Ohio] as an assistant and then head coach. He was the right guy when he went to Northwestern, where he beat Notre Dame four times. And he was certainly the right guy at the right time when he went to Notre Dame. He was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of coach."

The first time Parseghian walked into Notre Dame's football office in 1963, he went straight to a bronze bust of legendary Fighting Irish coach Knute Rockne sitting in a corner of the building.

Parseghian placed his hands on Rockne's head and said, "You are responsible for starting all of this, you know."

Parseghian, who coached Notre Dame back to national prominence in the 1960s and 1970s, might have saved the program.

After inheriting a Notre Dame team going through its worst stretch in school history, Parseghian needed only one season to resurrect the Fighting Irish. He guided them to a 9-1 record in his first season in 1964 and national championships in 1966 and 1973.

Long overlooked as one of the game's iconic coaches, Parseghian had a 170-58-6 record in 24 seasons, including coaching at Miami and Northwestern. He went 95-17-4 in 11 seasons at Notre Dame and his teams never lost more than two games in a season. He worked as a TV analyst after retiring from coaching and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1980.

Parseghian's tenure at Notre Dame is still remembered as the "Era of Ara," when the first non-alumnus since Rockne and first non-Catholic to coach the Fighting Irish guided them back to national prominence.

"You had to remember: The football tradition of Rockne and [Frank] Leahy didn't go away," Parseghian said. "It was a down cycle, and Notre Dame had down cycles before then. People didn't realize it, and I wasn't even aware of it. But the tradition was still there."

Along with his successful coaching career, Parseghian's legacy will be his relentless work to find a cure for a deadly genetic disease that killed three of his young grandchildren. In the last three decades of his life, Parseghian helped raise millions to find a cure for Niemann-Pick Type C, the rare neurological condition that claimed the lives of the three youngest children of his son, Michael.

"He was hit smack in the face with Niemann-Pick, and obviously, losing three grandchildren is doubly devastating," Lynch said. "But it almost had a reverse effect on him. He was used to winning, putting everything into it and whipping an opponent. Instead of it devastating him, you saw him get the fire in his eyes and become competitive again."

Ara Raoul Parseghian was born on May 21, 1923, in Akron, Ohio. His father, Michael Parseghian, had fled what is now Smyrna, Turkey at age 16 after the Ottoman Empire ordered all Armenians out of the country. Parseghian left for Athens on a ship shortly before the Ottoman government began what Armenians called the "Great Crime," a systematic genocide of nearly 1.5 million Armenians during and after World War I. (Turkey has denied that a genocide occurred.)

"My father was very lucky to escape," Ara Parseghian said.

After two years in Greece, Michael Parseghian left for Paris in 1915 and boarded a ship for the United States. He settled in Akron, which had a large Armenian population, and was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1917. He served as a liaison between French and American soldiers during World War I. After returning to Ohio, Parseghian met a French woman who showed him photographs of a girl she knew in Paris. He fell in love with the woman in the pictures and began exchanging letters with her.

She was Amelia Bonneau, whose mother died of typhoid fever when she was 9. Bonneau's father was unable to care for her and her three siblings, so she lived in an orphanage until she was 16, then left to work as a seamstress and nanny for a wealthy family. Shortly after Bonneau began corresponding with Michael Parseghian, she learned her brother was killed during World War I and her two sisters lived far away. Left alone, Bonneau eagerly accepted Parseghian's marriage proposal before meeting him in person. She boarded a ship and met her new husband in New York. They returned to Akron to start their lives together.

"My mother was really courageous," Ara Parseghian said. "She went across the pond and met somebody she'd only seen in pictures. That takes a tremendous amount of courage."

Amelia Parseghian was so protective of her youngest that she dressed him in dresses until he was 6. But it didn't take her long to realize he could protect himself. When Parseghian's older brother, Gerald, came home from school without his beret one day, his father lectured him about defending himself against bullies. Ara, who was 8, listened to their conversation, then left to beat up the 11-year-old bully.

When Parseghian was a teenager, his mother was reluctant to let him play football because the game was so violent. Parseghian didn't play until his junior season at Akron South High School and even then practiced with the team secretly.

"They weren't accustomed to contact sports in France, and she'd never seen football and didn't want me to play," Parseghian said. "My older brother actually signed the permission slip for me to play high school football, and she wasn't even aware of it. I'd come home after practice all cleaned up and showered, and she couldn't figure out why I wasn't dirty like I usually was."

After Parseghian finally mustered the courage to ask his parents for permission to play, his mother reluctantly agreed, then sat in the stands praying for his safety.

Meeting Paul Brown

Parseghian enrolled at Akron University after high school but soon enlisted in the Navy, as World War II was being fought in Europe and the South Pacific. Parseghian was assigned to the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, a waypoint for Navy recruits located north of Chicago. Although Parseghian was there for just one season, in 1945, it was one of the most influential times of his football life. During World War II, teams from military bases played against college squads. Parseghian's coach at Great Lakes was Paul Brown, who guided Ohio State to its first national championship in 1942 and later coached the Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bengals.

Even though Parseghian injured his ankle before the season and never played for the Great Lakes Bluejackets, he still absorbed everything Brown taught him, especially his motivational methods. Brown, who was commissioned as a Navy lieutenant during World War II, has often been called the father of modern football. He was the first coach to call plays to his quarterback from the sideline and use game film to scout opponents. Brown also invented the modern face mask.

"He was a great organizer and had great command of being able to hold a team together, with all the different types of personalities you have," Parseghian said. "That's an important part of a coach's job, and he was able to get all of his players to buy into his program. He was really ahead of his time."

After World War II, Parseghian enrolled at Miami University, which is now known as the "Cradle of Coaches" because it produced so many former players who became successful coaches, including Brown, Woody Hayes, Earl "Red" Blaik and Bo Schembechler. Parseghian's coach at Miami was Sid Gillman, one of football's greatest offensive minds. Paul Dietzel, who coached at LSU, Army and South Carolina, was one of his teammates. Parseghian was named Little All-American as a halfback in 1946. After the 1947 season, he left Miami to play for the Cleveland Browns, who were coached by Brown. Parseghian's pro playing career lasted only two seasons, however, because of a hip injury.

Hayes, the legendary Ohio State coach, was working at Miami while Parseghian played pro football. During his two seasons with the Browns, Parseghian took classes at Miami while working on his master's degree and helped coach during spring practice. After Parseghian retired from playing in 1950, Hayes offered him a job coaching the freshman team. When Hayes left to coach the Buckeyes in 1951, Parseghian was promoted to head coach on Hayes' recommendation. Parseghian had a 39-6-1 record coaching his alma mater from 1951 to 1955, and his teams won two Mid-American Conference championships.

"You've got guys who waited 10 or 15 years, and even Vince Lombardi waited a long time for a head-coaching job," Parseghian said. "I was the freshman coach, and in less than a year I was the head coach. I was 27 years old. I've often looked back and remembered how lucky I was."

At age 32, Parseghian left his alma mater to coach at Northwestern University in 1956. He inherited one of the worst teams in the country. The Wildcats had performed so poorly -- winning only one Big Ten game the previous three seasons -- that the school newspaper, The Daily Northwestern, demanded the school withdraw from the conference so its football team might be more competitive. Parseghian was Northwestern's third coach in 11 months. Bob Voigts, who guided the Wildcats to a 20-14 upset of California in the 1949 Rose Bowl, had resigned in 1954 after three consecutive losing seasons. His assistant and successor, Lou Saban, was fired after compiling a record of 0-8-1 in 1955.

Somehow, Parseghian guided the Wildcats to a 4-4-1 record in 1956 -- with only 23 players. Northwestern went 0-9 the next season, after 33 players missed at least one game with injuries. In 1958, the Wildcats won five of their first six games, including upsets of Michigan 55-24 (after leading 43-0 in the first half) and Ohio State 21-0. Relying on the motivational techniques he learned under Brown, Parseghian was often able to rally his undermanned squads.

"There are strategic upsets, and then there are psychological upsets," Parseghian told Sports Illustrated in 1959. "Ours were psychological upsets."

Parseghian always believed his players' minds were just as important to winning games as their legs and arms.

"In my own opinion, psychology in football is far more important than anyone believes, including the coaches," he told the magazine. "Too many of us -- I don't know that I shouldn't include myself in this -- are all X- and O-conscious. If we have all the Xs and Os in the right spot, then such and such a thing happens. But it's not the Xs and Os. It's the personnel, the people who do the job and how they feel about doing their job. Strategy is very important, I'll grant you. But the ability to put this thing together morale-wise is more important than anything else to me. If you don't control the mind first, you don't control the body, and that is the simplest way of saying it."

Motivational methods

Early in his coaching career, Parseghian was known for unorthodox motivational methods. When Miami played at Indiana in 1954, his team went onto the field for warm-ups wearing tattered and torn practice uniforms. His ragtag bunch upset the Hoosiers 6-0. Before Miami played at Northwestern the next season, Parseghian begged Saban to take it easy on his overmatched team, then upset the Wildcats 25-14.

But Parseghian didn't believe in dramatic pregame speeches and rarely delivered them.

"The game is not won by a pep talk on Saturday," Parseghian told Sports Illustrated in that 1959 article. "It's won by preparation of your club from Monday until game time. If they're not ready on Saturday, you're not going to get them ready by trying to inspire them with a dog-eat-dog sermon on that day."

It didn't take Parseghian's players long to realize he had a temper. Before games, Parseghian methodically paced the locker room while going over the game plan in his head. He would often stop and slam his fist on a table to punctuate a thought. Sometimes, he wouldn't sleep for three days after a difficult loss.

"Before a game, his tension builds up almost to a point of physical suffering," his wife, Kathleen, told SI in 1959. "He has to choke back the tears. I've tried to get him to take tranquilizers, but he won't do it. He thinks this suffering is part of the game."

Parseghian was also somewhat superstitious. He always wore a brown suit to games after his team improved from 7-3 to 8-1 in his second season at Miami. After Parseghian was hired at Northwestern, he believed a new job deserved a new suit, though still brown, of course. But after the Wildcats lost four of their first six games in his first season in 1956, he pulled his worn brown suit out of the trunk of his car. Northwestern won its last three games.

Parseghian's Northwestern teams went 36-35-1 from 1956 to 1963, but his work was widely considered exceptional because the Wildcats usually played teams with more depth and talent. Northwestern still managed to beat Notre Dame in four straight seasons from 1960 to 1963, which probably earned him the Fighting Irish job more than anything else. His 1962 team won its first six games and was ranked No. 1 in the country after blasting Notre Dame 35-6. The Wildcats lost two of their last three games and didn't play in a bowl game because Big Ten rules prevented teams from playing in any postseason games other than the Rose Bowl.

After Northwestern finished 5-4 in 1963, Parseghian became frustrated with the lack of support he was receiving. Notre Dame had been searching for a coach for nearly a year after Joe Kuharich, a former Fighting Irish player and Washington Redskins coach, resigned after a 17-23 record from 1959 to 1962. Hugh Devore, another former Notre Dame player, served as interim coach in 1963, and the Irish finished 2-7.

The Fighting Irish, who went 87-11-9 and won four national championships under Leahy in the 1940s and early 1950s, had fallen on hard times. Notre Dame had a 34-45 record from 1956 to 1963, the worst eight-year stretch in school history. After Kuharich resigned in the spring of 1963, Notre Dame's president, the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, started a national search for a replacement. Growing frustrated at Northwestern, Parseghian contacted Notre Dame Vice President Edmund P. Joyce to inquire whether the school would hire a non-alumnus. Hesburgh and Joyce drove 80 miles through a blinding snowstorm to meet Parseghian at a Chicago motel.

That Northwestern enjoyed so much success against the Fighting Irish didn't hurt Parseghian's chances, either.

"I don't know the exact amount, but there's no question in my mind it was a factor," Parseghian said.

Oddly enough, a news leak almost caused Parseghian to turn down Notre Dame. While Parseghian was negotiating his contract with Hesburgh and Joyce, South Bend (Indiana) Tribune sports editor Joe Doyle published a report that he had accepted the job. Notre Dame officials panicked and scheduled a news conference in South Bend, at which they expected Parseghian to be introduced as coach. But Parseghian told a room full of reporters there were still remaining details to be worked out, then climbed into his car and drove back to his home in Chicago.

"He prematurely released the fact I was going to be the Notre Dame coach, and we hadn't had enough meetings to settle up everything," Parseghian said of Doyle, who would become a close friend and confidant over the years. "We hadn't even decided on the number of assistants, scholarships and all that business."

Coming to Notre Dame

Parseghian was hired as Notre Dame's coach on Dec. 3, 1963. Parseghian's religion (Presbyterian) and alma mater didn't seem to matter. Notre Dame fans only wanted him to resurrect their once-proud football team.

"We resolved that in the first meeting," Parseghian said. "One of the first things I told Father Joyce was, 'Father, I want you to understand that I'm not a Catholic.' He told me they had a lot of people at Notre Dame who were non-Catholic, including professors and other important people."

From the start, Parseghian and his assistants absorbed themselves in Notre Dame's rich history and tradition. When spring practice started in 1964, Parseghian was surprised to learn the Fighting Irish were actually pretty talented.

"They hadn't had a winning season in five years," Parseghian said. "The program, from a win-and-loss standpoint, was really down. But the talent when I got there wasn't. They had a lot of the talent that was simply misplaced. Notre Dame was using the elephant backfield, and the running backs were all big guys. We moved one to the offensive line, one to defensive tackle and one to defensive end. They all made All-American."

Parseghian also found a quarterback in little-used senior John Huarte, who had played 45 minutes in his first two seasons and hadn't even earned a varsity letter. Parseghian moved fullback Jack Snow to receiver, and Nick Rassas, a former walk-on, became an electrifying safety and punt returner. In Parseghian's first season, 17 players changed positions.

The Fighting Irish won 31-7 at Wisconsin in Parseghian's first game, and his players carried him off the field. After finishing 2-7 in 1963, the Irish won their first nine games in 1964, including shutting out three opponents and outscoring their opponents 239-50. After being unranked in the preseason, Notre Dame carried a No. 1 ranking into its finale at Southern California. Huarte, who was named the Heisman Trophy winner the previous week, led the Irish to a 17-0 lead at the half. But the Trojans rallied behind quarterback Craig Fertig, who threw the winning touchdown to Rod Sherman on a fourth-down play with 1:35 to go and earned a 20-17 upset.

Even with the disappointing finish, Parseghian had awakened the echoes.

"I think it was unexpected by a lot of people," Parseghian said. "It was such a dramatic turnaround. We set the basic fundaments and principles of our operation, and the kids were hungry. They were good athletes, but they were just misplaced. They wanted to win. They wanted to be part of a successful program and wanted to make the sacrifices that were necessary to have a winning season. It turned out to be very important because there was a lot of carryover, and we resurrected the Notre Dame spirit."

Two years later, Parseghian had Notre Dame back in the hunt for a national championship. The Irish won their first eight games and outscored their opponents 301-28 heading into an epic showdown at No. 2 Michigan State on Nov. 19, 1966. It wasn't the "Game of the Century," though. The teams combined for five fumbles, four interceptions and 25 incompletions. The Irish rallied from a 10-0 deficit in the first half and had the ball with a chance to win late in the game. But with starting quarterback Terry Hanratty sitting on the bench with a shoulder injury and backup quarterback Coley O'Brien needing two insulin shots to regulate his diabetes, Parseghian called six straight running plays and ran out the clock. The game ended in an anti-climactic 10-10 tie.

Notre Dame blasted USC 51-0 the next week to win a national championship, but for the remainder of his career, Parseghian was criticized for his conservative strategy against Michigan State. Parseghian believed it was unfair criticism. Along with losing Hanratty and O'Brien, Notre Dame played without starting center George Goeddeke and fullback Nick Eddy, who slipped while getting off a train in East Lansing, Michigan.

"Neither [Spartans coach] Duffy Daugherty nor I expected a tie or wanted a tie," Parseghian said. "The game ended in a tie in one of the historic games. Strategically, I knew what I was doing in the game. You have to remember Duffy kicked the ball back to me. My starting quarterback, starting center, starting left tackle and all my top guys were over on the bench with me. We hadn't completed a pass in the last seven or eight attempts."

Several years later, former Notre Dame receiver Jim Seymour defended his coach.

"What people don't realize is that we couldn't throw the ball because they had set up a specific defense to stop the pass," Seymour said. "Our quarterback was so run down because of his diabetic problem that he couldn't throw the ball more than 10 yards. Why throw the ball for an interception and really hang yourself? Ara's been questioned many times about that decision. But there was nothing else he could do under the circumstances."

Behind quarterback Joe Theismann, the Irish opened the 1970 season with a 9-0 record but lost at Southern California 38-28 in their regular-season finale. Notre Dame recovered to defeat Texas 24-11 in the 1971 Cotton Bowl, which ended the Longhorns' 30-game win streak and marked Notre Dame's first bowl win in 46 years.

Parseghian finally achieved a perfect season in 1973, when Notre Dame ended the regular season with a 10-0 record. The No. 3 Fighting Irish played No. 1 Alabama in the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans for the national championship.

"It was the North vs. the South, the Baptists vs. the Catholics and Notre Dame vs. Alabama, which had never played," Parseghian said. "Bear Bryant and I had never coached against each other. Both teams were undefeated, and the national championship was on the line. At the time, it was historic."

Strangely enough, the game was decided not by a last-minute touchdown or field goal but by a first down. Notre Dame rallied from deficits three times, falling behind 23-21 on a halfback-to-quarterback pass. But quarterback Tom Clements led the Irish on a 79-yard scoring drive in which his 30-yard pass to tight end Dave Casper set up a go-ahead field goal.

In the final two minutes, Alabama punted 69 yards to the Notre Dame 1. On third down and still deep in Notre Dame territory, Parseghian called timeout.

"Clements came over, and we called a pass play," Parseghian said. "We put it on a long count because if they jumped offside, we'd get a first down. Two Alabama guys jumped offside, but Casper, our captain and one of the smartest guys we ever had, moved, and they penalized us."

Parseghian signaled to Clements from the sideline to run the same play again.

"I do remember asking him, 'Are you sure?'" Clements said at the time. "He said, 'Yeah.' I said, 'OK, let's go.'"

The Irish substituted a second tight end for a split end and lined up with a full backfield of three running backs. Because of the formation, Alabama had to believe the Irish were going to try to run for a first down. Instead, Clements bootlegged around left end in his own end zone and threw a 36-yard pass to tight end Robin Weber, who hadn't practiced in two days because of a knee injury.

"We set up a run-action pass, and they jumped all over Casper, who was crossing over the middle, and they let Weber go," Parseghian said. "Fortunately, Clements threw it to the right guy."

Even with two national championships under his belt, the pressure and demands that came with the Notre Dame job were beginning to take their toll on Parseghian. In 1973, Notre Dame games were broadcast on 380 radio stations and shown on delayed videotape in 140 cities. The Irish were America's team again, and Parseghian carried the burden with him every day. After Notre Dame finished 10-2 in 1974, Parseghian announced his retirement.

"I wrestled with it for about a year and a half," Parseghian said. "I'd been at Notre Dame for 11 years, and you become a victim of your success. My health was a factor, and I promised my wife I would stay out for at least a year. It was not an easy decision."

The "Era of Ara" was over.

"When Ara Parseghian came to Notre Dame, he was 40 years old," Lynch said. "He looked like he was 30 and acted like he was 20. Ten years after he got there, Ara was 50 but looked like he was 60 and acted like he was 70. That came from the pressure he put on himself coaching at Notre Dame. The pressure at Notre Dame might be a lot more severe than it is at other schools, but the pressure Ara put on himself was intense."

Parseghian couldn't have known at the time that his greatest battle would come much later in life. Parseghian and his wife, Kathleen -- whom he met in 1947 in a restaurant in Oxford, Ohio, and married a year later -- had three children: Karan, Kristan and Mike.

In 1994, Mike and his wife, Cindy, who met while they were students at Notre Dame, learned their three youngest children had a rare, incurable neurological condition. Children with Niemann-Pick Type C usually suffer paralysis and dementia and die during adolescence. The disease typically occurs when both parents carry a recessive gene that causes the absence of an enzyme needed to metabolize cholesterol, which then accumulates in the brain, liver and spleen. Doctors in New York diagnosed Mike and Cindy's son, then his sisters were diagnosed on the same day. At the time, experts estimated 500 children in the U.S. suffered from the disease.

"I can't think of anything that's hit me harder in my life than when I learned that three of our youngest grandchildren were diagnosed with Niemann-Pick C," Parseghian said. "Most of the medical books had a couple of paragraphs about it because very little was known about the disease. But when you've been in athletics your whole life and you've been a competitor your whole life, you don't give up easy."

Parseghian founded the Ara Parseghian Medical Research Foundation to help find a cure for Niemann-Pick Type C. The foundation funds more than 20 laboratories around the country, including one at Notre Dame, and its doctors have identified the gene responsible for the disease and discovered drugs that slow its progress.

Sadly, a cure wasn't found in time to save Parseghian's grandchildren. Michael died in 1997, just months shy of his 10th birthday. Christa, the youngest, died at age 10 in 2001. Marcia died in 2005.

"I was 72 years old [when his grandchildren were diagnosed] and was ready to take some trips with my wife after a long football career," Parseghian said. "It was so stunning. I'd never had anything hit me like that in my life. We decided we weren't going to give up and went about trying to find a cure for the disease."

Parseghian was still fighting to find a cure until his death.

"It's been the most challenging thing by far," Parseghian said in 2012. "We started on our own 1-foot line with the whole field ahead of us to try and find the cure that we were looking for. We pushed the ball out to the 20 and 40 and across midfield, and we're down inside the opponent's 40-yard line. We're optimistic about the future and have done a remarkable job, given how grinding a process research is."

When many of Parseghian's former players gathered in South Bend for his 90th birthday in May 2013, they shared memories and stories about playing for him. Parseghian complained about having only 10 minutes for a rebuttal.

"I just don't have enough time," Parseghian told the crowd. "I'm going to suggest we do this again in 10 years. I know a lot of you guys will be using canes and wheelchairs, but it will be fun."

Lynch, who was sitting in the crowd, told a former teammate, "I wouldn't bet against him."

"By and large, what you see is what you get with Ara Parseghian," Lynch said. "He is a tremendous human being, really intelligent and a great motivator. He definitely had some edge to him, but he always had the best interests of his players and the program at heart."

When Lynch was inducted in 1992 into the College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend, Schembechler, the legendary Michigan coach, pulled him aside.

"Bo told me that despite everything that's been written about Ara Parseghian and everything we've read and heard about him, Ara is the still the most underrated coach in college football history," Lynch said. "I agree with him. He retired at 51 years old. A lot of the guys, like Bear Bryant, Bobby Bowden and Joe Paterno, had their most successful years in their 60s. When Ara decided to retire, he was done."