Later Years
He served as the Director of Athletics for the University of Wisconsin–Madison from 1969 to 1987. Within four years, he had raised home attendance at football games from 43,000 to 70,000. During his tenure as athletic director, the number of sports offered by the UW athletics department doubled and the Badgers won national titles in hockey, men's, and women's crew, and men's and women's cross country.
Hirsch died of natural causes at an assisted living home in Madison, Wisconsin on January 28, 2004. An annual run, the "Crazylegs Classic", is held in Madison in his honor, with proceeds benefiting the UW Athletics Department.
Read more about this topic: Elroy Hirsch
Famous quotes containing the word years:
“Every milestone of a firstborn is scrutinized, photographed, recorded, replayed, and retold by doting parents to admiring relatives and disinterested friends. . . . While subsequent children will strive to keep pace with siblings a few years their senior, the firstborn will always have a seemingly Herculean task of emulating his adult parents.”
—Marianne E. Neifert (20th century)
“Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!
Clouds of the west—sun there half an hour
high—I see you also face to face.
Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to me!
On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning
home, are more curious to me than you suppose,
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)