What a gift!

In a previous post about Notre Dame football, I used an image of a football poster. I was contacted by Dick Hughes, a Phi Delt from the class of 1965 and living in Muncie Indiana. Dick had an original copy of this poster. Was the Archives interested he asked – as interested as can be was my answer!!

Dick drove the poster over one beautiful day and told me the story of both his poster and the image that I had used for the previous post. As I mentioned before, Dick lives in Muncie where a Ball Department Store was closing. In their cafeteria they had a number of pieces of memorabilia, including this fabulous poster. Dick was to be out of town on the day of the auction, so he sent a friend to buy this piece. The winning bid was $75 and Dick was the new owner of a true treasure. King Lumpkin, a Phi Delt from the class of 1988 took a really good picture of Dick’s poster and a copy of that photo was reproduced in poster size. This was the image that I had used in the earlier blog posting.

The poster is now on display in the Archives and is really just wonderful. A great bonus of this poster is the letter written by a Notre Dame student to his parents on the back. Dated Nov. 17^th 1894 the letter talks about Thursday’s game against Wabash and how our team was much larger than the ND team. The final score was 30-0 in Notre Dame’s favor with part of the second half unfinished due to darkness. We lost and lost big, but the poster is still just a delightful piece to have for our collection and many thanks to Dick for spotting it and securing it all those years ago.

Here is a picture of Dick’s treasure – now in the Archives…

This poster is another great example of Wabash men preserving their history. Thanks Dick for saving this treasure and a huge thank you for personally bringing it to the Archives!!