I didn’t know about this until yesterday. I was zooming out on Google Maps, and the word “Rockne” caught my eye.
Evidently there’s a town down here—it’s just 45 minutes from Austin—named after Knute Rockne.
The story goes that in 1931, kids at a catholic school in town were given the choice between renaming the town after Rockne, who had just died in the plane crash, or Joyce Kilmer, the Catholic poet who was killed in World War I. Rockne won the vote.
It’s the only town in the world, per Wikipedia, named after the coach, and while it’s tiny—unincorporated, somewhere around 400 people—it exists, and it’s here in Texas.
There isn’t a lot to add. There’s a museum there dedicated to the history of the town, so I suppose I’ll have to drive over sometime, maybe when herd immunity’s been reached. Maybe I’ll go to Mass there the morning of the Florida State game this fall. We’ll see.
Anyway, there’s a town named Rockne, there’s only one of it, it’s 45 minutes from Austin, and I didn’t realize it was there until I’d lived here for two years.
