SOUTH BEND — Those conversations between father and son went everywhere.
Toward football, sure, but more often, toward life. How to live it and live it well. Live it right.
The father counseled his son on adversity. Don’t run from it, he would say. Run toward it. If it was easy, maybe it wasn’t the right path. Sometimes, days are difficult.
The father counseled his son on how to play the cards he was dealt. It might not be a strong hand, might not be a winning hand, but he had to be good with it. He had to play it out and try to change the narrative.
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The father counseled the son how to be the same person every single day that he took a breath. Never be too up when everything is good; never be too down when everything is bad. Be someone that others need you to be in that moment. Be strong and supportive. Be soft and sympathetic. Be demanding. Be tough. Don’t be afraid to smile. To show that you care. To tell someone you love them.
Those were all lessons that Notre Dame football safety/captain Adon Shuler learned from his father, Don. For 20 years, through Pop Warner football back in their hometown of Irvington, New Jersey, through high school as a four-star college recruit and on to the University of Notre Dame, where the son will serve the 2026 season as a two-time team captain, the father was there for his son.
To teach him. To guide him. To love him. To be a father.
On Monday, Aug. 31, Shuler announced via social media that 47-year-old Don Shuler had died. After two days home in New Jersey, where he was surrounded by loved ones and family members, Shuler returned to the Midwest, returned to his second family and football. He continues to grieve his fallen father, but to also celebrate him.
That’s why Shuler was where he was on a sweltering early evening on Wednesday, Sept. 2.
Before his father’s death, Shuler and his fellow team captains were scheduled to meet the media in advance of the season opener on Sunday, September 6 against Wisconsin. Everybody would have been good had Shuler asked out of any interview. Asked the media relations staff if he could retreat to a quiet place across the way in Shields Hall, where he could wrestle in private with his emotions and his thoughts and his fears moving forward without his biggest fan.
In some ways, football didn’t matter. In many ways, it absolutely did.
Shuler didn’t have to sit for the scheduled media session. He wanted to sit for the scheduled media session. Forget his skills on the back end of the Irish defense, the way he can hit and the way he can lead. This is the man that Don Shuler raised — someone who stares back at adversity, who plays the hand he’s dealt, who is the same level-headed person during good times and bad.
Someone who stands tall in the toughest of times.
“That’s just who I am,” Shuler said when asked why it was important for him to be so public when privacy beckoned. “Can’t let nothing deter you from your goals and your mission.”
He was eloquent. He was introspective. He was — and always is — Don Shuler’s son.
Pops would be proud.
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