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:
“We do not associate the idea of antiquity with the ocean, nor wonder how it looked a thousand years ago, as we do of the land, for it was equally wild and unfathomable always. The Indians have left no traces on its surface, but it is the same to the civilized man and the savage. The aspect of the shore only has changed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)