From numerous visits to Madison Square Garden in New York and Pauley Pavilion in Los Angeles as a coach, to working in the White House and traveling the world as a civilian, Richard “Digger” Phelps spent his lifetime doing and seeing everything there is to do and see, until he had finally done and seen enough.
After forty years of running through crowded airports, trying to get to his next destination for a game or a presidential assignment, Phelps more peacefully now begins each new day with a serene and private 40-minute walk around the beautiful Notre Dame campus, where he can stretch his legs, collect his thoughts and recollect on a fascinating life.
“I said, ‘enough is enough’ and I gave it all up,” Phelps said of first leaving the coaching ranks in 1991 and then trading in his ESPN microphone seven years ago for a paintbrush and walking shoes. “And with that, I put myself in a position to do what I want, when I want to do it. That’s how I live now.”
Phelps will turn 80 on July 4. And in typical boastful fashion, the man who took the Notre Dame coaching job 50 years ago this month joked, “and the entire nation will celebrate my birthday.”
