Knute Rockne - Memorials

Memorials

• Notre Dame memorializes him in the Knute Rockne Memorial Building, an athletic facility built in 1937, as well as the main football stadium.
• His name appears on streets in South Bend and in Stevensville, Michigan (where Rockne had a summer home) and a travel plaza on the Indiana Toll Road.
• The Matfield Green travel plaza on the Kansas Turnpike, near Bazaar, contains a memorial to him.
• Allentown Central Catholic High School in Allentown, Pennsylvania dedicated its gymnasium, Rockne Hall, to Knute Rockne.

• Taylorville, Illinois, dedicated the street next to the football field as "Knute Rockne Road".

• The town of Rockne, Texas was named to honor him. In 1931 the children of Sacred Heart School were given the opportunity to name their town. A vote was taken, with the children electing to name the town after Rockne, who had died in a plane crash earlier that year. On March 10, 1988, Rockne opened its post office for one day, during which a Knute Rockne twenty-two-cent commemorative stamp was issued. A life size bust of Rockne was unveiled on March 4, 2006.

• The Studebaker automobile company of South Bend marketed the Rockne automobile between 1931 and 1933. It was a separate product line of Studebaker and priced in the low cost market segment.

• Symphonic composer Ferde Grofe composed a musical suite in Rockne's honor shortly after the coach's death.

• In 1940, actor Pat O'Brien portrayed Rockne in the Warner Brothers film Knute Rockne, All American in which Rockne used the phrase "win one for the Gipper" in reference to the death bed request of George Gipp, played by Ronald Reagan.

• Rockne was enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame in 1951 as a charter member and in the Indiana Football Hall of Fame.

• In 1988, the United States Postal Service honored Rockne with a 22 cent postage stamp in his honor. President Ronald Reagan, who played George Gipp in the movie "Knute Rockne, All American", gave an address at the Athletic & Convocation Center at the University of Notre Dame on March 9, 1988, and officially unveiled the Rockne stamp.

• A biographical musical of Rockne's life premiered at the Theatre at the Center in Munster, Indiana, on April 3, 2008. The musical is based on a play and mini-series by Buddy Farmer.