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I am a lawyer. Therefore I have opinions on literally everything, and am without reservation quite correct. Therefore off this page is much of my website. Explore. Enjoy. Encroach.

O.K. Here goes. This is a tough one. Did you know that you could be named Ryan and not be Catholic? Me neither. So imagine how surprised I was to learn that I was not Catholic. I still am in the recovery stages.

So, it was 1976. The year of the bicentenial. Did you know that part of that word is Latin? Tenial is a word I use quite often, although I am not sure of the exact meaning of it. But I digress...

My first day at ND was incredible - all the new kids at law school went to Nickie’s Bar together, and I got to see a fight were 1 guy was held by the bouncers, so he used them as leverage and kicked his opponent in the face, knocking said opponent out. Bouncers took the unconscious man and put him outside. I was impressed with the sheer brutality of the people there.

I lived 1st and 2nd year on South Bend Avenue, just across the fields from the ACC, football field, etc. There was a bar across the street. It was a great location and we had quite a few parties there in those 2 years. The biggest hastle was the neighbor’s dog going through our garbage. It was a really nice ranch owned by Mike Kostrezwa. Rob who sold Worldbook Encyclopedias lived there. So did a woman called “Debbie” who was a fellow future purveyor of the legal community. She was from around Detroit; she must have thought our parties were pretty weird. Then 2 older law students, John Robinson and ____ (help here, please!) ____ wore a TENS unit for back problems. In his early 20s. Ouch. Then McNeil, Evinger, myself and “Steve” lived there. “Steve” was a local guy, nice fellow; I have been led to believe that he took a job in Phoenix in ‘80, went there, didn’t like it, returned to SB on a pretense of an illness or death in the family 

My 3rd year, Mike had bought a new house on Corby Ave about 10 houses down from Corby’s. If you never say Corby’s, don’t think it was like in the movie “Rudy” because it was a little dump which was usually packed, lots of underage girls, everyone drunk. That was quite a corner - Bridgette McGuier’s, Corby’s, Nickie’s - all catering to the ND crowd.

Here are some of the folks I lived with on South Bend Avenue (down from Lee’s BBQ) and Corby Ave (just down from Bridgett McGuire’s and Corby’s)
Dan Mcneil;  Dave Evinger;  Tom Ryan; Mark Olive; Debbie Richards; Rob ___; Mike Kostrezwa;  Jon Robinson

At the Corby house, we were the only whites not robbed during the year. Undoubtedly the fact that we vey conspicuously moved out all of our belongings at any vacation helped us there. I used to watch as the neighbor across the street with the Great Dane had about 200 people over per day, but only for about 2 minutes per visit. It has been suggested that he was peddling dope, but who was I to question his movements? As long as that dog stayed in his yard!

Speaking of dogs and robberies, Ollie was backing his old Studebaker out the driveway when he saw the new neighbor kids holding a rope extended over the driveway. Ollie wanted to call their joke, so he continued going backward until he heard a kid scream “My DOG!” and he heard a bark. The next day, the dog was wearing a cast. HAHAHAHAHA. Those same neighbors started moving on on a Friday, and on Saturday they came over to ask if we had seen whoever it was who had cleared out their house overnight. Again., we weren’t robbed.

We lived about a block down from Gallogly and Peggy and Mert and Sheila.

While at ND we had a huge snowstorm in 1978. The entire midwest was swamped. Mayor Bilandic lost his Chicago job because he couldn’t get the snow out fast enough.

We spent hours and hours shovelling out our sidewalk. The following day some )(*&*)(&^f  snowplow had used our cleared-out space to put snow from the public road. There was actually a shooting in South Bend that winter over that exact thing.

During this snowstorm, our house was able to make the trek down to Corby’s, and I attended the nationally televised basketball game, since no one could make it from outside South Bend, and they wanted big crowds, it was a free concert JUST LIKE WOODSTOCK but without the hippies or the loud music or the crowds or the weather. It was the first time in history that ND had been closed because of weather. Now that’s impressive, eh? Here’s a picture of Dan McNeil and THR outside clearing out the snow..