“My parents never asked, `Why us?'” says Kris Humbert, the Parseghians’ middle child between Karan and Mike. His wife Katie encouraged him and helped keep him strong. He was crisscrossing the country, speaking at medical seminars and conventions and swimming laps in the pool to work on his stamina. He helped make NPC–sometimes referred to as an orphan’s disease because its rarity makes it easier to put it on the back burner–become more than just a paragraph in medical books.Īra was 71 at the time of his grandchildren’s diagnoses and he took on a demanding schedule reminiscent to his coaching days. He and his family worked tirelessly, raising millions of dollars for research and labs. When Karan was diagnosed with MS more than 40 years ago, he served on the national board for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.Īnd when his son Mike and daughter-in-law Cindy received the devastating news in 1994 that three of their four children had the debilitating and terminal Niemann-Pick Disease Type C (NPC), he helped create the Ara Parseghian Medical Foundation in an effort to find a cure. Yet he took that rage and anguish and turned it into a positive force. “Sometimes over the years when I was in the car and alone with my thoughts, I just wanted to pound the windshield out,” says Ara who led the Irish to two national championships and a 95-17-4 record during his Hall of Fame career. “You should never have to bury your children or grandchildren,” Katie Parseghian says.īut yet it happened to them.
Three years ago, he and his wife Katie lost their daughter Karan to multiple sclerosis after three of their grandchildren–Michael, Christa and Marcia Parseghian–died of Niemann-Pick Disease Type C (NPC), a rare genetic disorder.
Memories that these pictures conjure up can scramble his emotions and cut him like a knife. “It reminds me of who we are and what has happened.” “That’s when I take time to review our lives,” says the 92-year Notre Dame football legend. The following story appeared in the 2015 edition of “Strong of Heart”, chronicling the Parseghian family’s battle with Niemann-Pick Type C disorder.Ĭane now in hand, Ara Parseghian will occasionally pull to a halt in his South Bend home’s hallway where many of the family photographs hang on the wall. RELEASE: Former Irish Coach Parseghian Dies At Age 94