On Oct. 2, a new sculpture of ND coaching legend Knute Rockne was unveiled on the east side of Notre Dame Stadium, taking its rightful place alongside statues of Notre Dame greats Frank Leahy, Ara Parseghian, Lou Holtz, and Ed “Moose” Krause. The sculpture was underwritten by Notre Dame benefactors Joe and Barbara Mendelson.

Joe says the idea of commissioning the sculpture came to him while he was running along the beach near his Santa Barbara, Calif., home a couple of years ago. “It would be sort of like having a Republican museum without Abraham Lincoln, or a Democrat museum without Franklin Roosevelt,” explains Mendelson. “It’s a necessity that Knute Rockne, the man who made Notre Dame Stadium possible in the first place, have his rightful place as well. You’d see other sculptures around there and think, ‘something’s missing.’”

Jerry McKenna ’62, who created the Leahy, Parseghian, Holtz, and Krause statues, sculpted the Rockne likeness. The sculpture contains materials representative of Rockne’s life and death: steel parts from a carriage made by his father, Lars, in 1888, the year of Rockne’s birth; gold leaf from the Dome, a gift from Chuck Lennon ’61, ’62 M.A., executive director of the Notre Dame Alumni Association; and scraps of aluminum from the airplane in which Rockne died, acquired from the Cottonwood Falls (Kansas) Museum.

Mendelson is a lifelong Notre Dame devotee who grew up watching Notre Dame football during the 1940s, when the Irish won four national championships and commenced a 39-game winning streak. An independent oil producer, Mendelson was a charter member of the Institute for Church Life Advisory Council, which he chaired from 1980 to 1986. He also has served on the advisory council for the Snite Museum of Art. In 2006, he and Barbara established the Joseph T. Mendelson Endowment for Athletics Excellence to provide incremental and non-budgeted funding for Notre Dame’s sports programs beyond football and men’s and women’s basketball.

The endowment hits close to Mendelson’s heart because of his own participation as a competitive international runner and from his work as a coach of high school track and cross-country—including a state championship in California. At Holy Cross College, across the road from Notre Dame, Mendelson formed and coached the first varsity sport at the school.

“I’m an athlete and a coach, so I know how having the right resources are so important to development,” said Mendelson, still an avid runner at 71.

During the 2008-09 academic year, the Mendelson endowment provided more than $124,000 for Notre Dame’s other Olympic sports, funding everything from speed analysis and communication systems to digital video editing.