Former Bears coach Mike Ditka to speak at benefit for shuttered Indiana college
Mike Ditka is a former American football player, coach, television commentator and a member of both the College Football and Pro Football Hall of Fame. Photo courtesy WEBN-TV / Flickr / CC BY-ND 2.0 RENSSELAER, Ind. (AP) — Former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka is helping out a now-shuttered northwestern Indiana college that once hosted the Bears' preseason camps.
Ditka will be the featured speaker at a June 9 fundraiser benefiting the renovation of a former St. Joseph's College campus building.
That building would become a new residence hall for the Rensselaer campus if a proposed partnership with Marian University allows it to reopen as a two-year school. The Catholic school closed last year under $27 million in debt.
The Journal & Courier reports the Bears held preseason camps from 1944 to 1974 on its campus. Ditka was a Bears tight end from 1961 to 1966.
He says the people he met during workout camps there "were good to me, and I look forward to seeing them again."