Keith Penrod, who spent decades inspiring University of Notre Dame student-athletes, coaches and staff members, has passed away at the age of 71.
Penrod was a constant presence at Irish athletics events throughout the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, attending Fighting Irish practices and games. His loss is felt throughout the Notre Dame Athletics community.
Penrod is survived by his mother, Evelyn Penrod; siblings Sandra (Larry Roberts) Stewart, Linda (David Swihart) Bella, Brian Penrod, Kevin (Linda) Penrod, and Dale Penrod; close friends Katie and John Anthony; many nieces and nephews; and numerous friends from his “Fighting Irish family.” He was preceded in death by his father, Howard Penrod.
Visitation for Keith will be held from 4 pm to 7 pm on Thursday, June 20, 2024, at the Palmer Funeral Home-North Liberty Chapel, 202 N. Main St., North Liberty. Burial of his cremated remains will take place at a later date at Cedar Grove Cemetery, Notre Dame.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions in Keith’s name may be made to the Cerebral Palsy Foundation, 3 Columbus Circle, 15th Floor, New York, NY 10019.
For a perspective of Keith’s influence in the Notre Dame community and his incredible life journey, the following is a reprint of a feature story written in 2001 for a Notre Dame football game day program. The story is presented as it was written in 2001, which does refer to other members of the Notre Dame community who have also passed since publication.
From 48 Hours To 48 Years
The story of Notre Dame’s No. 1 Fan
By Lisa Mushett
From Dan Devine to Bob Davie and from Digger Phelps to Mike Brey, there is one man who has seen it all at Notre Dame.
Born Nov. 30, 1952, in Mishawaka, Indiana, Keith Penrod was given only 48 hours to live. Now, 48 Years later, Penrod is an integral part of the Irish athletic program and is still earning his title as Notre Dame’s No. 1 fan.
GROWING UP
The minute Penrod came into the world, there was something special about him. The second of six children of Howard and Evelyn Penrod, Keith was born with his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, cutting oxygen to his brain. The doctors gave Penrod only two days to live and, if he did survive, it was thought he would have severe brain damage.
Penrod was confined to an incubator for 10 weeks. During that time, the top of his head touched the middle of his back because the muscles in his neck never developed and were like rubber. Doctors ran more tests and found that Penrod was a victim of cerebral palsy, a condition caused by damage to the brain. It usually occurs before, during or shortly after birth, and is characterized by an inability to fully control motor function.
With the information about cerebral palsy limited at best back in the early 1950s, Penrod’s parents blamed the doctors for Keith’s condition. He didn’t, though, and was determined to prove the doctors wrong and provide himself with an opportunity for a normal life. Unable to walk, Penrod entered intense therapy of all kinds. The therapy sessions were even harder because he had a difficult time breathing.
The sessions began with Penrod blowing into a balloon to increase the air capacity of his lungs. That soon followed with treatment on his legs to improve his reflexes. Penrod began wearing knee braces from the waist down in hopes that he would someday be able to walk, even though the braces were extremely painful. He continued his therapy, but would get around by crawling on his hands and knees.
“I got around quicker on my hands and knees than a lot of people did,” Penrod said.
“I would crawl across gravel, rocks, you name it.”
All this time, Penrod was attending a regular elementary school. He would crawl on his hands and knees inside the classroom and if he needed to leave the room, he would use a baby stroller to get around. His friend and classmate, Ron Otto, would push him around and help him go down the eight steps to the cafeteria every day.
One day, Penrod fell down the steps at school, hit his head and was rushed to a local hospital.
“The doctors told me if I fell down the stairs again, I would have severe brain damage,” Penrod said. “The funny thing is, I have hit my head so many times since then. I think I scared them.”
Ready to enter fifth grade and now confined to a wheelchair, Penrod was informed by the school’s administration that he could no longer attend their school. He was relegated to homeschooling for the next two years.
“I never looked at myself as handicapped,” Penrod said. “There were only two differences between me and everyone else. They might talk better and they might be able to get around better but we all have the same heart and the same mind. It is the way we use our heart in how our mind goes.”
While Penrod was being home schooled, he used the time to get to know his family better. He learned invaluable lessons he would need later in life by watching his mother do household chores. He also visited with his great-grandparents three or four times a week, developing a special relationship with his great-grandfather Fred Hoffmanı. An immigrant from Germany, Hoffman endured many of life’s challenges trying to survive in a foreign land. He told Penrod about coming to America and learning to drive a threshing machine
“I never understood why the Lord did not want me to go to school for those two years,” Penrod said. “Looking back, now I know. It was so I could learn to do things needed in the real world. It was also an opportunity for me to get to know my great-grandfather. He listened to the person I was and not what he wanted me to be. I really looked up to him. It is hard for me to put into words what he meant to me.”
Two years later, Penrod talked his mother into taking him to the local school, LaVille Junior and Senior High School, with the hope of enrolling again in classes. After meeting with the Penrods, the principal initially said no, but, not one to not one to give up, give up, Penrod proposed a deal. “I said ‘Give me three weeks and if I can get around, I can stay. But if not, then I will go back to home schooling.’ Three weeks turned into six years,” Penrod said.
Penrod assimilated to his new school nicely, but it was an old elementary school acquaintance who changed his life. While in elementary school, a teacher named Bill Snyder would play marbles with Penrod on the playground. Snyder was also the seventh-grade basketball coach at LaVille. One day Snyder asked Penrod if would like to come to basketball practice. He agreed and was soon hired as the manager of the basketball team.
“I was responsible for all the balls and all the towels,” Penrod said.
“I also became very close to all of my classmates, especially the athletes. They saw something in me and realized I was not going to let anything stop me.”
He was given 48 hours to live, but Keith Penrod never quit. Now @NDFootball's biggest fan has a unique friendship with @tevonconey pic.twitter.com/7abtRseX7o
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) December 8, 2016
Penrod finished his high school career with 10 letters as a manager for basketball, football, baseball and track. That mark still stands as the most letters ever earned by a manager.
But it was during high school that one of the greatest acts of kindness ever bestowed on Penrod occurred. Returning from an away basketball game, Greg Frehauf, a player on the varsity team, was sitting next to Penrod and asked him what he wanted for Christmas. He replied he would like an electric wheelchair because his current wheelchair was so hard to get around in, but he knew his parents could not afford it.
Frehauf went to the head of Letterman’s Club, a group of former athletes at the school, and collected $1 from every member of the club. At a Christmas assembly in front of the whole school, Frehauf and Letterman’s Club presented Penrod with his first electric wheelchair.
Penrod graduated to a standing ovation from LaVille High School. He wanted to attend Bethel College, but the college would not permit him enroll, so he was left wondering what to do next.
His family moved directly behind LaVille High School and he paid daily visits to the lady who did the laundry. The woman passed away from cancer during the year and the school asked Penrod if he would take over her laundry duties.
“I did everything from unloading the laundry bins, to washing and drying clothes, to folding everything,” Penrod said.
While working at the school, he became close friends with the custodial staff. They encouraged Penrod to write a letter to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., to see if there was anything they could do for his legs in hope he could eventually walk.
Without telling his parents, Penrod sent a letter to the clinic, thinking he would never hear back from them.
One day a few months later, Penrod turned home from work to find his parents waiting for him with a letter in their hands from the Mayo Clinic, wondering why this prestigious hospital was sending him a letter. Penrod opened the letter, which invited him to the clinic for tests in September. Penrod begged his parents to take him to Minnesota, but his parents had reservations. As a child, Penrod had grown too fast for his leg braces and was in constant pain. Hating to see their son go through that continual discomfort, his parents stopped taking him from specialist to specialist.
“I’d given up, to a point,” Penrod said. “I was tired of fighting and the pain was too great. I was just tired of everything and wanted to live my life. But when this opportunity at the Mayo Clinic came up, I knew this could be my only chance to ever walk.”
Penrod and his father made the trip to Rochester and, after a week of testing, doctors concluded they couldn’t do anything for him. After Penrod refused to accept that diagnosis, one doctor stepped forward and said, “If you are willing to go through intense pain and physical therapy there is one thing we do, but we have never done it on a cerebral palsy patient before.”
Penrod agreed to the treatment, but contracted pneumonia days before the scheduled procedure. After recovering from that, he went through two surgeries, the first to see why his knees knocked together and the second to cut tendons in his knees and stretch them, in hopes he could walk.
After having his legs in soft casts for 10 days and then in 25-pound hard casts for months, Penrod had the casts removed and his days of excruciating therapy began. He suffered a setback emotionally when his great-grandfather passed after falling and breaking his hip.
Penrod then refused to continue therapy until one day the nurse brought him to the hospital chapel. “That was the day I let the Lord in my life. I knew I’d been blessed with so many things and my great-grandfather would not want me to give up. He was there watching over me,” Penrod said.
Penrod soon began walking with the help of parallel bars and then crutches. Eventually the big day came for him to try to walk without those aids. “I was told to get away from the bar and put down my crutches,” Penrod said. “I took three steps before the doctor told me to sit down. I had no words at that point. It was just my own legs and the Lord at that point. For 20 years, I could not walk and on that day I took three steps.”
Penrod continued to walk more and more and finally on May 10, 1973, he returned home and walked across the room to his mother. Soon the cerebral palsy took over his body and he was once again relegated to his wheelchair, but for a short time, he had walked.
ASSOCIATION WITH NOTRE DAME
When Penrod would cry as a child, parents would lay him on a pillow in front of the television. This usually worked and he’d stop crying, especially when Notre Dame football was on.
Penrod attended his first Irish football game in 1969, when the Irish defeated Air Force 13-6 at Notre Dame Stadium. Penrod then moved to Osceola, Indiana, and started attending Notre Dame basketball games, too. He would sit on the concourse and, after the game, would move down to the floor area so could shake hands with his favorite Irish players (including Austin Carr, who he saw break Notre Dame scoring record).
After a game one night, guard Rich Branning saw Penrod and invited him into the locker room. Soon Penrod became close with then-head coach Digger Phelps, who made Penrod a regular member of the basketball team by inviting him to pregame talks and allowing him to sit next to the bench.
“You just saw a spirit in Keith and how he truly loved Notre Dame,” Phelps said. “He would come to practice every day and then you’d see him at night on a busy road in his wheelchair. He was an inspiration for all of us.”
It was at the basketball arena that Penrod struck up a friendship with Notre Dame athletics’ chaplain Rev. Jarnes Riehle, C.S.C. Phelps and Riehle told the football staff they had a young man who they thought should be involved in the program and promptly introduced Penrod to Irish linebackers coach George Kelly. An immediate bond was struck between the two as Kelly would pick up Penrod every day before football practice so he could come watch and then would take him home every night after practice – with a stop for a cheeseburger and chocolate shake at the local McDonald’s.
“Keith was always at practices and soon became close to my wife Gloria,” Kelly said. “He was visiting Gloria at the house on a regular basis. There is not a child or grandchild in my family who does not know Keith or appreciate all that he has overcome in his life. He has become a member of our family.”
“Keith is a remarkable young man,” Riehle said. “He has put tremendous trust and faith in God. With all he has through, he has never complained about anything. He is quite an inspiration to everyone he comes in contact with.”
But times became tough again for Penrod. His health was still not good, and financially he was struggling to survive. He decided that his life in heaven would be be better than his current life and tried to commit suicide, not once, but twice.
“I woke up the second time with a tube coming out of my throat taking blood out of my stomach,” Penrod said. “I just cried and cried. I decided that I was going to give 100 percent myself to the Lord during the winter to see what would happen. Later I realized the Lord allowed that to happen so down the road I would be there for others who were going through the same thing.”
Fully healed and now living a life devoted to God, Penrod came back to what was now becoming his second home – Notre Dame.
Knowing the Irish had a huge basketball game at Pauley Pavilion in 1982, Penrod made arrangements to fly to Los Angeles on his own so he could be there for his beloved Irish.
Phelps found out about Penrod’s plans and decided he would surprise the team by taking him as a guest of the team. Although shocked by his appearance, the players welcomed Penrod with open arms. Before the shootaround that day, Notre Dame arrived at the gym while UCLA was practicing on the floor. The Irish went to the locker room, but Penrod stayed and watched the Bruins. Later that night, Penrod called the-assistant coach Pete Gillen and told him what he saw in practice. Gillen laughed and said, “You must be our secret weapon.”
Penrod also met with forward Cecil Rucker on the hotel balcony the night prior to the game. Rucker was going through some difficult times, but Penrod’s wisdom helped him have what many said was the best game of his career. Although the Irish lost to the Bruins, 48-47, Penrod forever cemented his position with the Irish. It was at that point that Phelps proudly proclaimed Penrod Notre Dame’s No. 1 fan.
“Keith is true blue,” Phelps said. “All he wanted was to live a normal life and he lived it to the fullest. He provided so much inspiration to everyone on my team. When my players felt sorry for themselves for having a bad game, Keith reminded them what was really important in life.”
Called the “Crazy Character” growing up because the word “no” was not in his vocabulary, Penrod decided secretly to take another trip, this time on his own, to watch the Irish football team take on top-ranked Pittsburgh at Pitt Stadium in 1982.
Penrod hopped a bus to Pittsburgh and then took a cab to the stadium. When Notre Dame’s bus pulled in, much to head coach Gerry Faust and the team’s surprise, Penrod was sitting in his wheelchair outside of the locker room door. Faust immediately invited Penrod into the locker room as the Irish went on to defeat Dan Marino and Panthers 31-16. After the game, Faust once again invited Penrod into the locker room and the team huddled together. He stood in the center of the team and said, “I want to give the game ball to the most inspirational person in winning today’s game.” He turned and gave the ball to Penrod.
“I told coach Faust and the team I knew this was a big game for them and I wanted to be there for them,” Penrod said. “I never ever expected to get the game ball.”
Penrod also made another leap of faith of a different sort. Realizing religion was fast becoming an integral part of his life, Penrod decided to convert to Catholicism. He was baptized April 8, 1982, at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. Kelly and his wife were Penrod’s godparents and Father James Riehle performed the ceremony.
“Everyone thought I was already Catholic. I realized, though, the Lord brought all of these people into my life for a reason. He wanted me to be part of Notre Dame.”
Penrod was already a part of Notre Dame in so many ways. He was at practice and attended every home event, oftentimes traveling the streets late at night to return to his new home in Roseland. One day, there was a knock at Penrod’s door and much to his surprise found a brand new green golf cart waiting outside. Taken aback, Penrod said he could not afford this new cart, but someone had already picked up the tab. Although he is still not 100 percent sure to this day paid for the cart, he thinks he has a pretty good idea.
“I think Digger, George and (former athletic director) Gene Corrigan did this for me. I was so grateful, words cannot express how I felt.”
Penrod’s inspiration also has been felt by numerous individuals at Notre Dame. Although a few stand apart from the rest – Bob Crable (who Keith to his wedding), Joey Getherall, Jerome Bettis, Blair Kiel, the late Rodney Culver, Chris Zorich, “Tiny” Tim O’Neill and Hunter Smith.
Penrod feels that he has been touched by all of the athletes at Notre Dame in some way and hopes that he has touched them as well. “I have been through so many things in my life,” Penrod says. “If I can help one person in need or just listen to what they have to then I feel like my work has been done.”
“Keith prides himself as a philosopher,” Kelly said. “He always has words of wisdom for the athletes and they listen. He feels he can really help people by telling them what he has gone through in his life.”
Tim Andree, who played basketball for Notre Dame from 1980-83, is another who was touched by Penrod. The former center received an award at the annual Notre Dame basketball banquet in 1982. When Andree went to accept his award he said: “There is one person who has influenced me to be what I am today. That person is Keith Penrod. I want to give this trophy to him.”
It was only fitting that Andree would win the same award following his senior year.
Three years ago, when Penrod had back surgery and had to miss the Navy football game, former punter Hunter Smith gathered his teammates at midfield and said a prayer on Penrod’s behalf.
“Throughout my association at Notre Dame, I’ve met and been around many athletes, coaches, administrators and students. I always look at them as people first and friends second,” Penrod said. “For I love the Lord, life, and people. They keep me going. I love the University of Notre Dame and I am with them all the way, no matter what happens.”
Still today, you can come by any Notre Dame football practice rain or shine – and see Penrod in his wheelchair or fancy green golf cart that can play the “Notre Dame Victory March.” You can also see pulling aside a player or two telling them to keep their chins up and to remain positive.
What better person to listen to than Penrod – someone who has turned what was supposed to be two days into a lifetime.
Lisa (Nelson) Mushett, a native of Keller, Texas, was a member of the University of Notre Dame athletics communications office from 1998-2004. She is currently the CEO of Net Results, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and also serves as the Coordinator of Men’s and Women’s Tennis Officials for the Big Ten Conference.