Rudy: My Story

by Rudy Ruettiger

  An all-access pass? To the White House?

  A United States marine in full dress, white gloves and all, opened the door for me as I approached the building. Inside, an assistant greeted me right away with a big handshake and “welcome.” They ushered me down a magnificent hallway toward the Blue Room, where they said everyone was gathering before the film.

  Everyone? I thought. Who’s everyone? I knew Angelo Pizzo and David Anspaugh were both invited. Our producer, Robert Fried, would be there too. Yet when I walked through that door there were fifty-nine people in the room. Congressmen and senators, including Senator John Glenn—a man who had walked on the moon! I saw faces I recognized from TV. Men and women dressed to the nines. Is that Larry King? The reception was so large, it spilled over to the adjoining Green Room as well. I started to feel just a bit overwhelmed. Then all of a sudden, First Lady Hillary Clinton slid through the crowd with a big hello. She shook my hand, and before I knew it she was introducing me to the president of the United States.

  It all happened so fast, I hardly remember a word that was said.

  Bill Clinton’s handshake was strong, and I do remember understanding very quickly why everyone said he was charismatic. In an instant, he made me feel welcome, as if I were a friend, as if I belonged in a room full of leaders at the White House. If there had been any sense of elitism, any “us versus them,” any hint of the discomfort that a guy like me might feel in a room like that, President Clinton made it all slip away in an instant. Angelo, David, Rob, and I presented him with a tie—we had heard he loved ties—and we gave him a Rudy baseball cap. He seemed genuinely appreciative and spent time congratulating each one of us on our hard work and perseverance in getting the film made.

  It’s a funny thing: when you’ve accomplished a big dream in your life, there’s a mutual respect that comes with it. There can be other things too: jealousy, envy, and the like. But none of those were present on this night. I truly felt like I belonged there. It just felt sort of natural. And that’s how President Clinton treated our introduction too.

  Before I knew it, they began ushering everyone down the hall into the screening room, including Chelsea Clinton and one of her friends. The whole family was there. Watching people filter out, I was simply stunned by the logistics: How many people did it take to arrange all of these schedules and all of the security for all of these people in powerful positions to get them in a room at the very same time? That blew me away.

  Yet before I stepped out into the hallway I saw something that truly stopped me in my tracks. There were portraits of former presidents hanging all over that room, and right by the door I spotted a portrait that made my heart pound.

  Suddenly, I was ten years old, standing in front of the whole class as my fifth-grade teacher blasted me, over and over again, with the same stupid question that I just couldn’t answer: “Mr. Ruettiger, who was our fifth president?” she said. “Mr. Ruettiger, answer the question!” I didn’t know. How could she expect me to sit and study the names of the presidents last night when the Yankees game was on?

  She humiliated me in front of the whole class. She made me feel worthless. She and other educators at that school had already told me, flat out, on numerous occasions, that I was a lousy student and that with “my bad attitude” I would never amount to anything. On that day, she hammered that message home in front of my peers.

  I believed her. For a very long time, I believed her. I believed all of them. It had been a long time since I had even thought about that memory.

  “Who was the fifth president, Mr. Ruettiger?”

  As I stood there looking at that portrait, I knew, once and for all, just how wrong she was to do that. How wrong they all were to do that to any kid. In my mind, I shouted it to her across three decades of frustration and anger. “The fifth president was James Monroe! You want to know how I know? I know because I’m standing in the White House, looking at his portrait! You want to know how I got here? Not because I was the best student. Not because I followed some prescribed notion of what I ‘needed to know’ to get ahead in life. And certainly not because I memorized the names of the presidents as a ten-year-old. I’m here at the White House because I followed my dream. I followed my passion. I did my best wherever I could. And I didn’t let you stop me!”

  Maybe I didn’t say all of those things in my head as I stood there, but the feeling was pretty dramatic. What I realized fully as an adult is that the humiliation and inadequacy I felt in that fifth-grade classroom derailed me for the rest of my school-age years. That’s not what school’s supposed to do. Teachers shouldn’t stop kids. They should inspire kids. Kids need inspiration. Heck, we all need inspiration. It doesn’t matter if you can’t pass some test or memorize some list, or if you suffer from learning disabilities the way I did. What matters is that you’re fired up and inspired to go out and learn about what matters to you; that you’re so passionate about whatever it is you want to accomplish that you don’t let obstacles stand in your way. I wish every kid in America could find the sort of inspiration and passion I found after those miserable school years were over.

  The sudden memory made me really upset. Despite the fact that I had accomplished so many of my dreams and gone out and made a movie about my life story, it took me until that very moment—standing in front of James Monroe—to realize just how big that message of Rudy really was and how important it was that I take that message of pushing on, of dreaming, of never losing hope, just as far and wide as I could. I felt that new mission burning inside of me as I left that portrait behind and followed the ornate hallway down to the White House movie theater.

  As I stepped inside, I couldn’t help but shake my head and smile: they saved me a seat next to Larry King, and as the lights dimmed I fully realized what a “big deal” moment this was.

  What would that fifth-grade class think of me now? I wondered.

  President William Jefferson Clinton sat there and watched the entire movie. Every frame. He never left to take a phone call or to pick up a memo. No advisor ever whispered in his ear. The leader of the free world, arguably the most powerful man on the planet, sat there watching the story of my life for 114 minutes. Larry King kept whispering to the lady next to him. It was kinda bugging me until he told me afterward what he was telling his friend: that the story reminded him of his own life.

  In the scene where Rudy finally receives his acceptance letter after three semesters of trying (and failing) to get into Notre Dame, and he opens the envelope as he sits on a bench by the pond looking out at the school’s famous Golden Dome—the very same spot where I took my pal and mentor, Freddy, to show him my Notre Dame acceptance letter in real life—I saw congressmen and senators and even the first lady wiping tears from their eyes.

  They got it.

  When it was all over, as the lights came up, First Lady Hillary Clinton stood and said, “Way to go, Rudy!” in such a commanding voice that every person in that room paid attention. And then she said something else: “Every kid in America should see this film.”

  I sat there awestruck. I could hardly believe it. Why would the first lady feel so moved that she would stand up and say something like that? In front of all of those influential people, including her husband?

  There could only be one reason. It was the very same thing I had just experienced during my little personal moment with President Monroe in the Blue Room: she was moved by the message. She was moved by the message of inspiration and hope that came from my story.

  God sure works in mysterious ways, doesn’t He?

  It all just hit me so hard in that moment. After all, who am I? I’m not that special. I’m certainly not that talented. I didn’t accomplish anything at Notre Dame that most people would ever consider a “great feat.” I’m just some kid from Joliet. A kid who made a few good choices (and even a few bad ones) here and there, who worked hard, never stopped dreaming, and never gave up. And now here I was, in the White House.

  When the crowd left
, the president brought a few of us into the Oval Office. He showed us some of the tchotchkes and bits of memorabilia he kept around—personal reminders that helped keep him grounded. The whole thing was so surreal that I truly can’t remember what we talked about, but I do recall that neither he nor First Lady Clinton could stop talking about the inspirational message of the film and how important a message that was for our educational system. In the coming days, the president wore the Rudy baseball cap we gave him out in public. That’s how into the message he was! In fact, from what I understand, the only reason he stopped wearing it was because his staff made him remove it. It was an election year, and primary season was right around the corner. Apparently some people were confused and thought his hat was an endorsement of an entirely different Rudy: New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was a serious contender at that point to become his potential Republican opponent!

  My point is that Rudy had quite an impact on both the general public and on some very influential and powerful people. What became clear to me that October 15 in Washington, clearer than ever before, is that Rudy, in a sense, wasn’t about me. It wasn’t even really about what I had done. It was the message that came through my story, the message that came about, because of my perseverance, that was not only meaningful but powerful enough to move a first lady to tears; to ring true to a legendary media personality like Larry King; to seem familiar and uplifting to a senator who had once walked on the moon; and to entice a president to invite me into the Oval Office for a little chitchat.

  The message is what mattered. And that message needed to be heard.

  The funny thing is, as I sit here today looking back at my life, I can’t imagine anyone ever predicting that young Daniel Ruettiger would become any kind of a messenger. (Least of all, me!) But that’s exactly what I had become now. That’s exactly where God’s path had led me. And I was just getting started.

  18

  Sharing the Message

  Starting a new career in mid-life is a challenge many people face, even when they don’t want to. It’s never easy, either way. But I dare you to ask most people who started a whole new career path in their late thirties, early forties, maybe even their fifties if they’re happy about what they’ve accomplished. I bet you nine out of ten of them will say, “Yes! Absolutely. I’m so glad I did it. I wish I had done it sooner!”

  Change is good. Life is all about change. The question to ponder is whether you embrace the changes and learn to grow both from and with the changes, or whether you let those changes scare you into retreat.

  After the filming of Rudy ended toward the end of 1992, I knew I’d have less than a year to get my act together. Less than a year to prepare myself to take advantage of the opportunities that the film’s release would present to me. A movie is a once-in-a-lifetime thing for someone like me. If I didn’t take advantage of it in some way, I may never get another shot. I knew that.

  So I started asking myself some really serious questions. Mainly, what did I want to do with my life? I knew I didn’t want to keep shoveling snow and mowing grass, that’s for sure. I had been down the coaching route early on, and I still had no interest in that. I knew I didn’t want to go back and sell insurance, and I didn’t want to get back into the car business either.

  What did I really want to do? What got me fired up? What got me out of bed every morning? What was that feeling I had when we were making the film? What were the best, most productive times of my life? What could I focus on that would keep me happy (and hopefully well paid) for the rest of my life?

  The thing I kept thinking back to was early in my insurance days, when I went to a seminar aimed at firing us up, and I saw that guy give a speech that brought all of us insurance salesmen to our feet. I kept thinking back to that feeling I had as I walked out of that room—that feeling of, “Man, I want to be able to do that for people some day!”

  I thought long and hard about what that guy did. I thought long and hard about what the movie Rudy was going to do for people. And I knew, once and for all, what I wanted to do: I wanted to inspire people. I wanted to take the message of Rudy, the message of my life’s journey, and infuse that message wherever I could—to companies big and small, to the military (building on my navy background), to colleges, to high schools, to middle schools, maybe even to elementary schools.

  I wanted to get up in front of audiences, big and small, and inspire them to change their lives; to do great things; to follow their hearts; to work hard; to dream big; and to chase after their dreams with everything they’ve got, because this is the only life we’ve got to do it in!

  The long and short of it was that I wanted to make a career as a public speaker.

  Some of the skills I would need, I already had. I always gave great pep talks at sales meetings when I was on the road with the insurance company. I knew how to fire up my sales team at the car dealership too. I had fired up my players during my short stint as an assistant coach at Notre Dame, during my graduate assistant year. I had learned how to talk to Hollywood types, famous people, even the president! And to do it with relative ease.

  But how would I formulate a speech? How would I come up with enough to say? I didn’t want to just wing it. I wanted to be ready. I wanted to practice, and for that, I turned to my buddy Paul Bergan. He wasn’t just a great football coach and coordinator; he worked for many years as a regional director for career/technical education in Michigan, and he was great at his job. He was a real educator who knew how to inspire his own teams in his school district, and I hoped he could inspire me and teach me how to organize a great speech.

  We worked tirelessly in the basement of my condo, in the very same place where the chalk talks took place. We worked with the white board, and we started hanging up poster boards all along the wall, mapping out the perfect Rudy speech that would work in front of the widest audience we could imagine. It involved some retelling of my story, and some big inspirational words; we developed a flow from beginning to end, with peaks and valleys in between, and built toward a climactic ending, just like a movie!

  The problem was, I was lousy at memorization. So while all that work got me thinking in the right direction, I just wasn’t able to grasp it all. And I certainly couldn’t take all the posters along with me to pin to the wall whenever I gave a speech.

  Still, all that preparation did me good, and I’ll forever be grateful to Paul for taking the time to do that with me. He believed in me. He believed I could be not only a good public speaker, but a great one. And it helps to have someone believe in you no matter what endeavor you’re taking on.

  Just after the movie came out, and the media went wild for it, my prediction that doors would start opening for me came true: I got a call to do my first speaking engagement in front of a group of fourth and fifth graders right in South Bend.

  I was told that the teachers had shown Rudy to all of these kids. That was a good thing. At least they’d know who I was. I didn’t realize that the teachers didn’t explain to the kids that the guy who was coming to see them was the “real” Rudy, and not Sean Astin! So when they introduced me, the kids were massively disappointed. That is no way to start a speech. One little boy even spoke up: “You’re not Rudy. You’re a fake.”

  “No, no,” I said. “I’m the real Rudy. I lived the life that the movie was based on.”

  It didn’t matter. I had lost them right from the start. They weren’t interested in anything I had to say because the setup was all wrong. They weren’t primed to listen. They were primed to reject me from the get-go.

  My speech was a flop. I lost track of what I was talking about. I lost the flow. It was just a disaster. I left that school defeated and questioning whether I was cut out for public speaking at all. But that feeling was short-lived. I knew I just had to practice. As with anything else in life, I had to find my groove. I had to stand up, dust myself off, and get back in the ring to keep fighting. If I couldn’t do that now, then what good were my speeches anyway?


  So I got back out there and did it again. And again. The phone didn’t stop ringing. The power of the film led to lots of requests from all over the country. Corporations, schools, teams—all sorts of people wanted me to come give them a pep talk or a motivational speech of some sort. The movie’s power was simply undeniable. Slowly but surely, the more I did it, the more I realized I didn’t have to give a perfect speech. I didn’t have to be Zig Ziglar, you know? What I had to be, what the audience wanted me to be (when they were expecting to meet me and not Sean Astin, that is), was Rudy! The fact that I was a regular guy was the whole basis of what made my story powerful, and it was the same thing that would make my speaking engagements powerful.

  I learned to get up there and just have a conversation with the audience. I learned to not be overwhelmed by the audience, not to look at the whole audience—whether it was ten people, five hundred, or five thousand—but to look at individuals in that audience to get a read on whether or not my words seemed to be resonating. Getting them to smile was a big deal, of course. You make people smile, and you’ve got ’em. I saw that right away at our film premieres, like when I made that little joke about sneaking into the Rialto to watch The Ten Commandments. It didn’t take much to make people laugh, I found. And most people who are attending a speech are really rooting for you. They want you to succeed. They don’t want to be bored. They want to be entertained, and down deep, they really, really want to be inspired.

  One of the clearest examples of that lesson, for me, came around because of an old connection.

  Not long after the movie came out, I got a call from Barry Alvarez. Way back in the late 1980s, when he was an assistant coach at Notre Dame, we developed a relationship through the car dealership. His dream of becoming a head coach had come true, just like he said it would—he was now head coach at Wisconsin—and he was well on his way to becoming a Hall of Famer.