Fifty Years with Father Hesburgh

On and Off the Record

Robert Schmuhl

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780268100926
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Biographies d'éducation

For over half a century, Robert Schmuhl interviewed and wrote about Reverend Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., who served as the president of the University of Notre Dame from 1952 until 1987. Beginning as an undergraduate student during the 1960s, when he covered Hesburgh and Notre Dame for the Associated Press, to 2014 when he conducted his last visit with the frail ninety-seven-year-old priest, Schmuhl maintained a unique relationship with Father Hesburgh. Over time, Hesburgh's meetings with Schmuhl evolved into a friendship, which is documented in this personal and warmhearted portrait of the man who was for decades considered the most influential priest in America. Fifty Years with Father Hesburgh: On and Off the Record contains excerpts and commentary from various interviews Schmuhl conducted with Father Hesburgh about his service as Notre Dame's president, including the most difficult years of his presidency during the 1960s, when Notre Dame and other college campuses were in turmoil because of student protests against the Vietnam War and other issues. Knowing and working with four popes and nine U.S. presidents, Father Hesburgh was a moral force in virtually all major social issues of his day, including civil rights, peaceful uses of atomic energy, third-world development, and immigration reform. Schmuhl records Hesburgh's candid reflections on the U.S. presidents with whom he worked and his assessment of the years after he left the university's presidency and maintained an active life of service in retirement. Schmuhl expresses his devotion and respect in the chapters about Hesburgh's twilight decades. He describes how Hesburgh dealt with macular degeneration and blindness in his later years, enlisting students to read the New York Times and other publications to him. During the 1990s and the first years of the twenty-first century, Father Ted was, as he liked to say, "everybody's grandfather." His open-door policy extended beyond students to faculty, staff, alumni, and campus visitors, and continued right up until the end of his life. Throughout the book, Schmuhl captures the essence, spirit, and humanity of a great leader.

Father Hesburgh and President Jimmy Carter meet in the White House on August 14, 1979, prior to the United Nations Conference on Science and Technology for Development. Father Hesburgh served as U.S. Ambassador to the conference, the first time a priest ever held the rank of ambassador. Photo taken by White House photographer and courtesy of the University of Notre Dame Archives.

THREE

White House Memories

Father Hesburgh held a deep and abiding civic reverence for the American presidency. Whether the White House occupant was a Democrat or a Republican made no difference to this avowed political independent. If an invitation arrived to serve on a presidential-level board or commission—and it made sense to him as a priest and educator—he almost always answered the call.

His experiences in Washington and elsewhere later became stories that he enjoyed telling to friends, visitors, students, and others. Since I scribbled scores of newspaper columns and magazine articles about the presidency and this country’s politics, I never tired of his reminiscences about Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, or Jimmy Carter.

Incredibly, Father Hesburgh met and, in most cases, worked with every president from Harry Truman through Barack Obama. That translates into a dozen of the seventeen chief executives who led the United States during the priest’s lifetime. From the 1950s through the early 2000s Father Hesburgh held, as already noted, sixteen different appointments originating at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Some were mentioned in the previous chapter, but here, thanks to the Notre Dame Archives, is the complete list:

Member, National Science Board

Member (and later chairman), United States Commission on Civil Rights

Member, United States Advisory Commission on International Educational and Cultural Affairs

Member, President’s General Advisory Committee on Foreign Assistance Programs

Member, President’s Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed Force

Member, Presidential Clemency Board

Member, State Department Policy Planning Council

Board of Consultants, National War College

Member and Chairman, Board of Visitors, United States Naval Academy

United States Ambassador, U.N. Conference on Science and Technology for Development

Member, President’s Commission on the Holocaust

Chairman, Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy

Member, U.S. Official Observer Team for El Salvador Elections

Member, Commission on United States–Latin America Relations

Board of Directors, United States Institute of Peace

Member, Commission on Presidential Scholars

During spring 2008 I taught a course, American Political Life, that focused on the presidency and the nominating contests in the two parties before that fall’s election. By chance, the class met in the auditorium of the Hesburgh Library, and the library’s namesake had agreed earlier that semester to participate in a conversation for the students. Almost ninety-one at the time, he planned to talk about his involvement with presidents and, more broadly, the nature of presidential leadership.

Like the extended interview we had conducted just before his retirement in 1987, this one looked back over his years of service. On this occasion, though, the class would listen in—and then have the opportunity to ask questions.

During the seventy-five-minute session, which was videotaped for NDtv under the direction of Robert Costa, then a senior at Notre Dame and now a Washington Post political correspondent, Father Hesburgh told several stories from an insider’s perspective. For instance, in explaining how Lyndon Johnson single-mindedly pursued the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the “Padre” (LBJ’s favored way of referring to Father Hesburgh) even imitated the president’s thick Texas drawl, mesmerizing many in the audience. Other memories proved just as vivid and engaging.

The passages that follow are Father Hesburgh in his own words: first about the institution that meant so much to him and then on specific experiences with presidents and their staffs. To avoid repetition or the infelicity inherent in off-the-cuff expression, the quotations are edited, here and there, for continuity and coherence.

Do presidents have common characteristics or traits?

I think the presidents are generally not provincial the way that a congressman would be. Most congressmen are interested in their own districts, whether they are going to get a federal factory or some airfield. Presidents have to think not only of the whole country but also its relationship to the whole world. While some presidents are better at this worldview, some are even better at the national view than others. The fact is that it is terribly important that they stay on top of the national and international picture because that is their job. If they don’t do it, there are few other people who can do it. Generally speaking, I think most presidents that I have known have been interested in the world and, of course, interested in their own national problems.

Are presidents intellectual?

You can’t really generalize on that, because I would say they were all very intelligent or they wouldn’t be where they were. But they are intelligent in different ways. Some were very pragmatically intelligent, in the sense that Lyndon Johnson knew how to get things done in Washington, whereas Jimmy Carter had a dream about what the United States should be, what kind of country it ought to be, what kind of humanistic views it might have. And Dwight D. Eisenhower was just like somebody’s grandfather. He oversaw the whole deal nationally and internationally and was just a very nice guy. They are all quite different in their own way, but I didn’t have any of them that I would say I didn’t like. I had a few bad words with some of President Nixon’s associates, but none with him directly. He was always very good to me.

Which presidents impressed you the most?

They impressed me in different ways. I liked Eisenhower because he had a worldview. After all, he had been commanding the greatest army that ever existed, a worldwide army in World War II. He was a broad-gauged sort of fellow. I remember when I invited him to come to Notre Dame to get an honorary degree [in 1960]. I said, “Mr. President, it is great that you can come.”

He said, “Since I was a kid in Kansas, I wanted a degree from Notre Dame, and of course I had no way of getting it because I was a poor kid and my family didn’t have any money so I went to West Point on an appointment. I went the military route to get educated.”

“Well,” I said, “you did pretty well.” But he was a kind of humble guy, even though he knew the world forwards and backwards. On top of that he was like everybody’s grandfather, as I’ve said.

With which president did you have the closest association?

Well, it’s hard to say. I liked them all. I’ve got to say that they are all different. I liked Eisenhower probably best in one way. He was very good. He came here to get an honorary degree and gave a wonderful talk, and he was also interested by the fact that the priest I got on that occasion was the cardinal from Milan [Giovanni Cardinal Montini], who later became Pope Paul VI. When I met Eisenhower in Gettysburg, he mentioned, “I see where my classmate did well in the election.” I answered, “Yeah, he became Pope.”

Jimmy Carter to this day is a very good friend of mine. Lyndon Johnson couldn’t have been nicer. He gave me the highest award of the U.S. government, the Medal of Freedom, which you have to get at the White House. The first recipient was George Washington, so it’s not exactly dog meat.

I have to honestly say I liked them all. I liked some of them a little better, but they were all in their own way guys who had a job to do, and if you helped them do it, they always appreciated it.

Which president asked you to do the most work for him?

I think Carter. He made me U.S. Ambassador for Science and Technology, which is not bad. I ran a three-week international conference in Vienna after three years on that job, and we accomplished some good things for food in the world and building up the underdeveloped countries of the world. I traveled around the world a couple of times at that job. I was one of the first ones into China.

Freedom is a great thing. Working with the federal government, you can be free if they’ve asked you to do something, as they did with civil rights, but I felt that the last thing I wanted to do was to get into a political situation as a priest. Everything I did had something to do with humanity, whether it was food for the world, or better citizenship, or better agriculture, or world peace, or peaceful use of atomic energy, things like that. A priest ought to be interested in those kind of things, and it’s a moral issue.

Did you ever entertain the thought of running for vice president or any other elected office?

No, but I have to honestly tell you I had offers. But when I became a priest, I decided that the one thing I was not going to do was become a political priest. I wasn’t going to be a priest who would run for office, senator or congressman. I knew I could have been elected to either of those jobs. But it seemed to me that, being a priest, you are totally dedicated to the Church and to the people of God, and that gets somewhat mixed up when you are a member of the government and you’ve got civil authority over people. I don’t mind having spiritual authority over people, but you can’t mix that up.

Personally, I don’t really think it’s proper for a priest, especially a priest involved in higher education, to be running for office. I just told people, “Because I am a priest, I think I am making myself ineligible to get involved in a political office.” But I am perfectly free as a priest to take on sixteen presidential jobs in Washington and be chairman of some without any problems at all. I could do that kind of thing as a priest without any problem at all because a priest is always kind of an ambassador for the good. So the answer is no. I had a chance, but I would never take the opportunity.

You served on the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights during four administrations, and President Eisenhower made the original appointment.

Yes, he did. That was 1957. I remember it very well because every September I had to go to Vienna for the International Atomic Energy Agency [as the Vatican’s permanent representative from 1957 to 1970]. I helped establish that. I helped write the charter, and every September I had to go for the general conference. I remember as I came up the street there was a kiosk, and I noticed a new Time magazine. When you are in Europe for several weeks, you really miss what’s going on at home, so when I saw this new magazine I bought it right away. Waiting for the light to change, I started to flip through it. When I was flipping through from back to front, I came across a full-page article on the fact that the week before—after arguing for most of June, July, August, and September and filibustering—they finally passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, which boiled down to the fact that they created a commission to see what the problem was and what the U.S. should do about it: achieving civil rights for all Americans. I said to myself, “It would be just my luck to get on that commission.”

I got back home, and a week later on a Sunday afternoon I got a call from the White House. “President Eisenhower wants to know if you will accept an appointment to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.” I said, “It is a very important subject, and I have been interested in it all my life and, of course I will take the appointment.” Then he called me back about five minutes later and said, “I forgot to ask you if you are a Republican or a Democrat.” And I said, “Neither. I am an independent.” “We will make you a Republican because the commission has to have three of each party, six members, three Republicans and three Democrats. We already have three Democrats, so we will make you a Republican.” I said, “Make me anything you want, but I am still an independent.”

So, as the complexion of the commission changed over the next few years, I became a Democrat or whatever would fit. It struck me that that commission was going to have a very important role to play. But it was really a bugout on the part of the Congress. Civil rights were such a contentious issue, and then of course it involved the South particularly because of slavery.

The blacks in America were emancipated by Lincoln, but the fact is that for all practical purposes they were not equal as American citizens to white citizens. They had lousy education, which was normally segregated from white education. In the South they spent eight times more per student on whites than they did on blacks. You can imagine what that meant in the way of black education. In the North it wasn’t a heck of a lot better, although there was no real differentiation in the budget.

The country had a real problem. We were told to just see what had to be done to solve it. It was almost an insoluble problem because it has been around a long, long time.

I might back up for a moment. When Jefferson, one of our great writers, wrote the Declaration of Independence, it started out, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” When he wrote those words “all men are created equal” and endowed with “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” it happened that we had Americans who were slaves [nearly 700,000, according to one estimate]. He certainly wasn’t writing about them.

Now you fast forward from Jefferson to Lincoln, and Lincoln was a terrific president but really caught up in one of the terrible things a country can be afflicted with, which was the Civil War. It was obvious that as the war cranked up it was about slavery. And at one point, I guess, Lincoln decided it was high time he said something since the fact is that we were not addressing the problem. We were fighting each other, North and South, and it was all about slavery.

Human beings who happened to be white owned other human beings who were black—who had no rights whatever, who worked dawn to dusk, who got no pay for it, who lived in shacks while the whites lived in mansions. They had no civil rights. They couldn’t vote; they got no education whatever. It was a pretty awful thing, but it was a picture of what America was when Lincoln became president, and it took enormous courage on his part. But one day he sat down, and he wrote something he called the Emancipation Proclamation, which was to say what this war was really about because no one had come out and said what it was really about. He published the Emancipation Proclamation, and of course he got killed for it. While slaves were free they were still living in those shacks, they were still working dawn to dusk, they were getting paid pennies. They had no education set up at all, and life went on pretty much the way it had in the past, except they were free. None of them ever voted, none of them ever got educated, with a few exceptions here and there.

By the time I became president of Notre Dame in 1952, we had pretty much the same situation that existed after the Emancipation Proclamation. Blacks in this country were free—but they were uneducated, they were untutored, many of them were unemployed because they were uneducated.

It was a pretty dicey thing. That is why they argued [in Congress] all summer long [in 1957], and of course the Democrats were mostly from the South in those days so they had a terrific filibuster going, and finally it did come to an end because it had been about four months, and they were getting no business done at all. They finally did what they always do when they can’t find a solution in Washington. They established a commission to solve the problem because they couldn’t solve the problem. So, out of the blue, we now have the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and we had only one power. We could subpoena any American citizen, up to and including the president, to show up and testify under oath on how they stood on human rights for all Americans. It sounds like a small power, but it was actually a fantastic power. The day came later on, when I was chairman of the commission, where I had to subpoena the attorney general, Mr. John Mitchell, who was working for Nixon, and I told him to show up and testify on human rights in Washington, where we were having a hearing. His secretary called my secretary and said he [Father Hesburgh] must be out of his mind...