Rudy

by Rudy Ruettiger

  Of course, my hardheaded attitude—the one that kept me coming back for more even after being spanked as a child—was still in full effect. A few weeks later, on the very day I got my cast taken off and was told by the doctor, very specifically, to take it easy, not to do anything but rest and relax for a couple of weeks, I went down the street and wound up playing touch football with our neighbors. Giving it my all, I snatched the ball on a long throw, took a hard fall, and crack! Broke that collarbone all over again.

  I hobbled back to my dad, who was in the driveway changing the tires on the station wagon. He was always changing those tires, from bald tires to nearly bald tires that he’d grab for free from his brother’s gas station. I’ll never forget the look on his face when he saw me. That look of frustration and disappointment. That look of, “How am I ever going to get through to this kid!” He was so hurt and let down to think that I would go right out and hurt myself playing football after being told so specifically not to do so!

  I hated that look. I remember thinking, I never want to see that look in his eyes again. Ever.

  I knew there was no future for me in football, of course. Maybe that’s why I tried to play so often. When would I ever get a chance to play after high school? I wasn’t going to college, and no matter how good it made me feel or how good I thought I was, it was clear as day to me that I could never play professionally. I knew I would never play with the gods of Notre Dame, so I didn’t even fantasize about stuff like that. It just couldn’t happen. It was something I did for fun, and for me that was enough.

  Like I said, I didn’t even realize where Notre Dame was. It felt like a far-off fairytale land. That is, it felt far-off all the way up until late my senior year, when I went along on a religious retreat with the rest of my class to the Fatima Retreat Center . . . in South Bend, Indiana. Right on the edge of the Notre Dame campus.

  I was shocked that the trip was so short. It felt as if we’d barely left, what with all the carousing and joking that goes on in the back of any school bus. In reality, it was only about a ninety-minute trip from Joliet. Ninety minutes and we were there. That far-off place was real. That seemingly unknowable place was close.

  Fatima House was a low-slung brick building surrounded by beautiful green lawns, and as soon as we got off the bus at the top of the circular drive, the priests divided us into two groups: one group would go take a tour of the Notre Dame campus, the other would head inside and get started with our spiritual exercises. I was pumped up to see Notre Dame, so I immediately went toward that group, until one of the priests stopped me. “Rudy,” he said, “this is for college-bound students. Not you.”

  I don’t blame that priest for stopping me. He was right. I wasn’t college-bound. He was trying to be nice and save me some embarrassment, I think. After all, you had to get all As, maybe a few Bs; you had to be in the top percentile; you had to test well; you had to be one of the elite to attend Notre Dame. I knew all that. I had heard it my whole life. But I also knew then and there that those priests would be hard-pressed to keep me from seeing that campus now that I was standing right on the edge of it. And the thing I really wanted to see was the stadium. I wanted to get up close to that world of Notre Dame football I’d heard about, watched on TV, and dreamed about all my life. I could hardly believe I was standing so close to that place that always seemed so impossibly far away.

  Late that afternoon, during some down time when we were supposed to hang out in our rooms, I convinced a buddy of mine to break away from the group and go exploring. We snuck out the back of the building and hurried across the lawn toward a beautiful lake, which I would later learn is called Saint Mary’s Lake. If the priests had caught us, they’d have hung us by our toes! But I had to see that campus. I couldn’t resist.

  The lake was stunning, speckled with the warm glow of afternoon sunlight, surrounded by a gravel path dotted with joggers and smiling students walking by with their book bags. Two or three minutes down that path, we rounded a corner past a big old tree and there it was—the Golden Dome—the gorgeous crest of the campus, rising over the landscape at the top of a hill, topping the Main Building with an immense statue of Mary. I had glimpsed it on TV. In person, shining in the sky right in front of me, it was much, much more magnificent.

  As we came around that corner and approached the campus’s heart, I was surprised by the stillness. It felt as if I had crossed into some other world. The tumbling branches of a giant old willow tree bristled to the left. Swans glided gracefully over the surface of the lake to the right. We crossed a little roadway and set foot on a path marked by beds of pink flowers on either side, like a runway guiding us toward a strange glowing light up ahead. With each step, the light became clearer. It wasn’t one light; it was the light of many—candles, hundreds of them. White candles in glass holders, glowing side-by-side on black wrought-iron pedestals, their flickering glow reflected in the earth-colored stone of the shallow cave that surrounded it all.

  Without any intention, without any map, we had found the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes—that sacred space on the Notre Dame campus where hundreds upon hundreds of men and women, for decades now, have come to seek solace and guidance in prayer; to light a candle for loved ones lost or struggling; to kneel before the beauty of this outdoor space as a simple white statue of the Virgin Mary looks down from a prominent spot on the rocks just above. It seemed timeless, like something you’d see in a history book from centuries ago in some far-off land.

  It was beautiful.

  We continued up the pathway to the right of that hallowed spot, wrapping around behind the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, between great stone buildings that, again, seemed like pictures from a storybook or somewhere in Europe—certainly not a short bus ride from the hard-worn streets of Joliet. The Golden Dome then revealed itself again. This time we were right under it, walking out in front of the Main Building, turning around on the lush green lawn, staring up at its shining top and then at the golden cross at the top of the Basilica’s steeple next door. There was something about the landscape, the architecture, something I couldn’t put my finger on that kept drawing my eyes up toward heaven. And despite being forced to listen to years of Catholic mass through my well-attached ears, and despite serving as an altar boy for a little while in my youth, I thought, for the very first time, So this is what people mean by a “religious experience.” It was breathtaking.

  Finally, as I pulled my eyes back down to earth, I saw something more enlightening than anything I had laid eyes on so far that day: I saw students. Everywhere. Reclining in the grass, sitting on benches, swinging on a porch swing in front of one of those dorms, walking the pathways, descending the steps under the Golden Dome. Students who didn’t look like those Notre Dame football players I’d seen on TV. Students who weren’t hulking gods. Students who didn’t look like some other breed, some other group of elite, privileged people of which I knew nothing. I saw students who looked, for lack of a better description, like me! Just regular-looking kids. Short, stocky, smiling, easygoing, casually dressed, everyday-looking guys and gals who seemed to be the sort of people I might be able to talk to.

  These kids walking around with book bags over their shoulders looked nothing like the perfect, untouchable students I always imagined attended college. Nothing like the lofty, snobby, good-at-everything type of people I thought you had to be to go to Notre Dame.

  I couldn’t get over it. I talked to my buddy about how cool it seemed as we continued toward the library and turned to see Touchdown Jesus, that immense, colorful, gold-tinted mural, looking out over a reflecting pool to the lawn and Notre Dame Stadium. There it was. The home of the Fighting Irish. The battlefield on which all of those games played out. The place where all my Sunday radio and TV memories originated. The vaunted home of one of my dad’s few great passions.

  The bells of the Basilica rang out as we ran across the lawn toward that north end-zone entrance that led right into the tunnel that opened onto the field. Th
e light shone through the end of that tunnel, casting long shadows in our direction. We heard voices, echoing from around a corner somewhere, and all of a sudden the Notre Dame football team was walking down the sidewalk right in front of us! They were all beat up, battered, and grass stained, just coming back from a practice; and as they all piled into the locker-room entrance just off to one side of the tunnel, my buddy and I got swept up in the group and just followed them right on inside.

  I couldn’t believe the size of these guys. They really were as big as they seemed on TV. Bigger! As they headed into the locker room, my buddy and I saw faces we recognized and kept nudging each other: “That’s Alan Page!”—the defensive end who helped bring the team to the championship the year before. (He would go on to play for the Vikings and the Bears before getting elected to the Supreme Court in Minnesota.) We got so swept up in the excitement of the whole thing that we just went with the flow. I couldn’t believe we were in the locker room! It was awesome. Our eyes must’ve been as big as saucers as we started chatting some of the guys up. “Oh, it’s so great to be here, to see you guys. Yeah, we’re just visiting from Joliet, and you guys are awesome!” We must’ve sounded like giddy fans. We were.

  The thing that really surprised me, though, was just how many players were in that locker room. Dozens of guys. I never realized how deep the team roster went. This wasn’t like high school. And they weren’t all hulking six-foot-five giants like Page. The fact is, there were plenty of guys on that team who looked like me! Over the smell of that sweat and the noise of everyone talking over one another in a post-practice, pumped-up excitement, it hit me like another slap in the face: not only were there students here who looked like me, there were guys wearing Notre Dame uniforms and playing on this team who looked like me too! They were on the shorter side. Stocky. I never saw these guys on TV. Never saw them on the field. But there they were, in the very same locker room as the big guys.

  “Hey! Who are you guys? What are you doing in here?” The voice came booming from the doorway. We turned, knowing we’d been caught, only to see that the man behind the voice was Ara Parseghian, the greatest coach Notre Dame had seen since Knute Rockne. He had just led Notre Dame to the National Championship in 1966. I was awestruck. I didn’t know what to say. Then a string of words just came shooting out of my mouth: “I’m gonna play football for Notre Dame!” I shouted. I have no idea why I said that. It made no sense.

  “Well, not today, you’re not. Get out of here!” he said. We apologetically slipped outside into the glowing late-afternoon sun bouncing off the walls through the end of that famous tunnel. We looked at each other and just laughed. We were so excited, so pumped! We couldn’t believe it! We were inside the Notre Dame locker room and got yelled at by Coach Parseghian!

  Figuring we’d pushed our luck far enough and seen just about as much as we could for one day, we ran all the way back to Fatima House, snuck back inside just in time for dinner, and were thankful no one noticed we had gone.

  I didn’t think a whole lot more about Notre Dame in the days and weeks after that afternoon. I was glad I had seen it, of course, but I had no reason to dwell on it. I went back to the retreat, we read our Bible verses, and we took that quiet time that our priests asked us to take to reflect on ourselves, our lives, and how far we had come in our high school careers. That was all good. I enjoyed that time. But it didn’t move me.

  As time went by and I thought back on that day, the feeling I got from taking a walk on that campus is what moved me. The feeling I got from stepping inside that locker room moved me. For some reason, as we walked around that lush, beautiful campus, I didn’t feel like an outsider. I felt as if I belonged there. It was almost a cleansing feeling—clearing away some of the negativity that had clouded my mind. I had resigned myself to what I thought was an unalterable fact, of course: I was not a “college-bound” guy. And yet, when I look back now, I can see that a seed was planted. That seed would grow even when I wasn’t tending to it or paying attention to it at all.

  I made it through the end of my senior year without any real fights, any real drama, or any real passion. I graduated third in my class . . . from the bottom. My GPA was 1.73. I partied. I celebrated the fact that I was done with those twelve years of crap and agony. And that was that.

  For a moment, I didn’t worry about what lay ahead. I didn’t stop to think about what was to come. I didn’t bother thinking about anything, period.

  3

  Sea Change

  Have you ever felt as if you were in a place where life just sort of happens to you? Like you’re not in control? As if someone punched the autopilot button and you’re strapped to your seat inside this contraption, helplessly headed wherever it takes you? As if you have no choice? As if you’re stuck fulfilling the expectations of what other people put upon you, and you don’t have any expectations that are truly your own?

  That’s exactly where I was after high school—still living at home, still stuck in Joliet. My mom still packed my lunch each night, right along with the rest of the kids’, only now I was taking that lunch to a place of work instead of a place of learning. I took a job at the local coal-fired power plant. Why? Because my dad had an in with a supervisor there, the job was available, and that’s what you do. My mom really wanted me to be a priest. She had been pressing that career path since I was a kid. But for years I had told her, “Mom, I don’t want to be a priest. I want to go out with girls!” When the power plant job took hold, my mom was the one who drove me in and dropped me off every morning until I finally earned enough money to buy a used ’66 Mustang.

  In a lot of ways it felt like nothing had changed. I had a locker. I had a lunch break. Only I felt like a freshman again, enduring the hazing and teasing that goes on with any new guy in a tough environment like that. I remember a superior yelling at me, “Rudy! Go get a bucket of steam! Bring me a bucket of steam, right now!” I went running around like a fool, asking everyone where I would get a bucket of steam. Of course, everyone was in on the joke, so they’d say, “Oh, go ask that guy. He’ll help you!” Half an hour went by before I finally realized it was all a big joke.

  I was busy all day doing stuff I didn’t care about, and it didn’t take long for me to pour as much heart and soul into my work as I did into school. (In other words, not very much!) There were days when I’d skip work entirely. I didn’t care.

  Autopilot. Living a life filled with other people’s expectations, other people’s plans, other people’s ideas of what my life was supposed to be.

  If it weren’t for the war, that going-through-the-motions may well have been my path for life.

  By 1969, Vietnam had seeped its way into every corner of our country. Talk of it saturated nearly every conversation everywhere you went. The load of it was heavy on everyone’s shoulders, and perhaps none more than recent non–college-bound high school graduates like me who were eligible for the draft.

  I had never been a gambler. I never saw the point. Tempting fate on the roll of the dice just wasn’t my thing, and the heavier the weight of that draft piled on me, the less inclined I was to let some lottery decide my future. I didn’t want to die in some jungle somewhere. I knew I didn’t have the grades or skills it would take to become an officer or a pilot or to get a desk job back home while my peers went off to fight on the front lines of this terrible war—a war that seemed to be doing more damage to the American psyche than any of our bombs were doing to the Viet Cong. I knew that I was the type of guy who would be sent directly to the front lines.

  When life and death are on the line, it spurs you to think a little differently, maybe the way we should be thinking all the time, or at least most of the time. Especially when it comes to the big decisions such as where we’re headed in life, what we do for work, who we’re gonna marry, and so on.

  So I decided to do the only thing I could to take the power away from the roll of the dice. I decided to take fate into my own hands.

  I didn’t let a
nyone know I was headed to the navy recruiting office. Not my family. Not a friend. I didn’t want anyone to deter me. I didn’t want anyone or anything to change my mind. It was what I wanted to do, what I felt I had to do, and I did it.

  The way I saw it, the navy was the safest choice I could make. I didn’t want to die. Plus, there were perks. I had never been on a boat. I had never seen the ocean. I had certainly never seen the world. Like I said, the one- or two-mile radius around my house was it, except for the occasional baseball game in Chicago or field trip to a neighboring city or state. I had no idea what I was in for. It didn’t matter. Something inside told me it was what I needed to do. So I did it.

  When I shared the news with my family, they were shocked, of course. But they also understood. They wished the best for me and even threw me a going-away party before I headed off to training camp. I think my dad was surprised I manned up and made a big decision like that all on my own. Maybe it was just that he knew what I was about to go through, having served himself, but on the day I left, he had a different sort of look in his eye than I’d ever seen before.

  I didn’t hop a train to some exotic locale in the murky swamps and searing temperatures of the Deep South for my boot camp, the way you see in a lot of movies or read about in books. No sir. I traveled forty-five minutes north of my house to a freezing cold training facility in Chicago. Still, it didn’t take long for me to realize I was about as far from home as a young man could be.