Notre Dame football was not in a good place in the winter of 1963-64.

“We were a poor football team in 1963,” recalled quarterback John Huarte. “And then there was a celebration because Ara Parseghian was coming to coach. It was the dead of winter and we had a beautiful snowfall. Somehow a pep rally fell together and Ara came over to the porch at Sorin Hall and first there were 200, and then 400 and finally maybe 600 students stopping to hear what Ara had to say. There was an absolute vibrant energy across the campus. Ara said we were going to be disciplined and we were going to win some games.

“In spring ball, we had one of our first meetings at O’Shaughnessy Hall. I sat near the door. As we filed out, maybe 70 players, Ara called every one by name. Heck, I was on the team and I didn’t know all those names. You think the man had done his homework and was prepared? It was fantastic.”

Yes, fantastic is a good word to describe the 1964 season, when Ara’s Irish came within 90 seconds of an undefeated season, and Huarte went from a third-stringer to the Heisman Trophy winner. Two seasons later, it all came together with a national championship, a feat repeated by Coach Parseghian’s 1973 team.

In 11 seasons, he compiled an .836 winning percentage, and won two national championships—yet it was his relationships that measure his greatness.

“When you find any successful coach there’s always a portion of the players who didn’t like him,” says former Notre Dame quarterback Terry Hanratty. “From the top All-American to the guy who never got to see the field, everybody loved Ara, That’s a really great human being.”

After his coaching days, winning football games paled in comparison to the fight of his life: combatting Niemann-Pick Type C disease, a rare genetic pediatric neurodegenerative disorder that took the lives of his three grandchildren. The Ara Parseghian Medical Research Foundation has raised more than $45 million for research on the disease. Nobody was a more tireless fund-raiser than Ara.

“Ara gave his heart and soul to our fight against Niemann-Pick Type C disease from the very start of our foundation,”said Cindy Parseghian, Ara’s daughter-in-law and the foundation’s president. “Until shortly before his death, he continued to help move the work of the APMRF forward.”

Tributes from across the sports world and elsewhere poured in upon Ara’s death on August 2, 2017, at age 94. From great friends like his lunch partners Roger Valdiserri and Art Decio, to others across the nation. In essence, they all said the same thing: No finer man has ever graced a sideline.