100 Years of Service

Ed and Shirley Hums retire after a remarkable combined century of service to Notre Dame.

In 1975, Ed Hums (BBA '75) began his first day of work at the University of Notre Dame ticket office. A fresh Notre Dame graduate with an accounting degree, Ed fell in love with working on campus. And that's not all — on his first day at work, he met another young employee in the ticket office, Shirley Ann Romak (MNA '97), now his wife of 45 years.

This spring, Ed plans to retire from the University after 50 years of employment, including the past 36 as a beloved teaching professor in accountancy. Combined with Shirley, who retired in 2022, the couple has dedicated 100 years of service to Notre Dame. Over the decades, the Humses have seen the campus expand and grow, witnessed the early years of the admission of female students, worked under legendary administrators such as fathers Theodore Hesburgh and Edmund Joyce, and quarantined through COVID on campus.

They even spent the past 12 years living among the students in Lyons Hall as part of Notre Dame's faculty-in-residence program.

Through it all, Ed and Shirley said Notre Dame retains the same spirit and community it had 50 years ago. "Teaching at Notre Dame is really special," said Ed. "You're surrounded by wonderful, bright students. And you're surrounded by a Catholic character, which, for me, is very appreciated."

"It really, really hasn't changed that much," he added. "The buildings might be different, but the feeling is still there."

 

A Pair of 50-Year Careers

Throughout the earlier years of his 50-year career at Notre Dame, Ed Hums moved through several departments, including athletics, accounting and the controller's office. At various times, he worked on the University budget, taxes and telecommunications management. In 1989, he took a part-time teaching role in the College of Business, eventually transitioning to full-time teaching professorship in 2001.

Hums found his passion in teaching. He loved guiding students as they took their first tentative steps into accounting. He often taught entry-level courses and classes for non-majors and nonprofit leaders enrolled in the Masters in Nonprofit Administration program. In recent years, he has offered a course on personal financial literacy for non-business major undergraduates.

Ed's passion for Notre Dame stretches back to his student days, when he worked as an athletic trainer under hockey coach Charles "Lefty" Smith and football coach Ara Parseghian, including during the 1973 national championship football season.

Although his interest in systems and structure initially drew him to study engineering, Ed struggled with the advanced math courses and realized it wasn't the right fit. "Having to change majors wasn't necessarily the best feeling," he recalled. But he soon discovered that accounting could fulfill his fundamental interest in understanding systems holistically.

"Accounting is about understanding what the numbers represent, and being able to look at the entirety of an operation," he explained. "You're not a technician just sitting there diving into numbers. You have to understand the breadth of the organization. You also have to understand how the organization fits in with peers and competitors, and how it fits into the economy as a whole." Much like with engineering, you have to make all the pieces fit together.

"When God closes a door, he opens a window," Hums said of his major switch. It is a lesson he conveys to students at crossroads of their own, assuring them that while it may take a while, they will find their path.

Over the years, Ed had the joy of working alongside many mentors, including some of his own former influential professors such as accountancy professor Ken Milani (who is also retiring in June 2025 after 53 years of teaching). The experience came full circle in recent years, when students began informing Hums that he taught their own parents decades earlier. "Now that's your old person's card," he joked. "You know that means you've been around for a while."

Meanwhile, Shirley pointed to an "old person card" of her own: Over her 50 years in the Joyce Center — first under the athletic department and then in the office of information technology — she worked through 10 football coaches, from Ara Parseghian to Marcus Freeman. She also earned a Master of Nonprofit Administration at Mendoza in 1997.

"The people I've worked with over the years have been wonderful," she said. "From day one, the community has been supportive, and it's been a great place to work."

 

A Leap of Faith

In fall 2013, the Humses took a leap of faith. The Office of Student Affairs approached them with an unexpected proposal: Were they interested in moving into Lyons Hall? After discussing it together, they decided to give it a go, although they wondered how the students would react to their presence.

"We didn't know how long we would be in residence," said Shirley. "We went into that first year with an open mind."

In the heat of late summer 2013, the Humses moved into their small apartment, separated from the rest of the hall by the Lyons arch. "It took a while to get into the rhythm of the dorm and see how things worked," recalled Ed. But 12 years later, the Hums are well-established figures.

The concept of professors in the dorms actually marked a return to an old tradition. In fact, one of the architecture professors who designed Lyons Hall moved into the apartment after its completion in 1927. During Ed's student days in the 1970s, lay professors known as "bachelor dons" frequently lived in the residence halls. Ed recalls that in those years, the Notre Dame community felt small and close-knit, and he fondly remembers running into professors around campus or at the Huddle.

Living in Lyons has helped the Humses recapture some of that feeling, connecting them deeply to campus life. The little apartment on the other side of the arch quickly came to feel like home.

"It made me realize how special the students are, and the entire Notre Dame community," said Shirley. "You just get a different perspective living here, full time, 24 hours a day."

Ed and Shirley invite small groups of freshmen over to their apartment, helping new students get to know each other. They attend chapel Mass and Lyons Hall dances, where the students always play one Elvis song so the Humses can slow dance.

Shirley hosts trivia nights, and Ed offers sessions on personal finance for Lyons residents. During midterms and finals, they host popular late-night pancake gatherings in the common room, flipping upwards of 100 homemade pancakes to offer a tasty study break.

"There's nobody in the dorms with gray hair," he said. "And they're missing that dynamic of having somebody a little bit older that they can just be at ease with."

"We try to be good role models, as a long-term married Catholic couple," he added. "The residents watch how we handle ourselves, how we go back and forth, how we talk to each other. It amazed me how much they pay attention."

"We get to see them mature," said Shirley. "As the students come in as freshmen and then graduate, you can see the change in them. That's the fun part, to see them grow up."

 

A New Adventure

The Humses like to keep busy. For 25 years, Ed was player-coach of the Notre Dame faculty hockey team — as he jokingly described it, "a bunch of faculty guys cracking skulls" — which played locally and on the road. "Like I tell my students, I spent so much time in the penalty box, I used to get my mail delivered there," cracked Ed. "Right, Shirley?"

Since retiring, Shirley has found a new use for her undergraduate degree in elementary education, volunteering in a local kindergarten classroom. "Whatever the teacher needs that particular day, I'll do," she said. "Reading to the kids, or working with words or numbers in groups or individually. It's really fun. I really enjoy it."

The Humses look forward to having more time to spend with the many friends and former colleagues they have accumulated over the years, and to traveling, something that was always tricky while balancing an academic and an administrative schedule.

This spring break, they are headed to Las Vegas, and this summer, they are planning a river boat cruise on the Seine. They are also looking forward to a trip to Germany, where Ed will attend Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, a cycle of four operas totalling about 15 hours.

"It'll be different. But I think it'll be good," said Ed, looking ahead to retirement. He finds reassurance in turning to Shirley as an example, who has embraced her own retirement. "I was anxious about it and concerned, but it was easy," she said. "It ended up being fine."

Whatever happens next, they will continue to be part of something beautiful in the Notre Dame community.

"Driving up Notre Dame Avenue never gets old," said Ed. "Even if we've been here for 100 years between us, seeing the Dome is always incredible."

"I've got to be the luckiest guy on the face of the earth for being able to attend school here and work here," he continued. "And most important of all, I met my sweetie here. So yeah, I'm the luckiest guy on the face of the earth."

 

Photos, by Matt Cashore (ND' 94), were taken at a Pancakes After Dark event put on by Ed and Shirley Hums for the students in Lyons Hall.