While the sickness continued (exacerbated by yet another cigar-smoking superior who loved to blow that smoke in my face), the doubts I had about choosing that course washed away the moment we hit the Mediterranean sunshine. Never in my life had I imagined I would ever find myself in a place so beautiful.
Italy, Spain, Malta, Greeceâwe hit a different port every three days. It was a dream! Think of what I was doing just a few months earlier: waking up, leaving for work, coming home. Now?
I'm seeing the world, and they're paying me! Paying me to see this!
Our captain was a great guy who really let us experience it all too. We pulled into Crete and he ordered a “Swim Call,” where all of us jumped off the boat into that bath-warm turquoise water; a couple of guys stayed on deck with rifles, watching for sharks. (Luckily none came.)
Feeling that sun, that water washing over me, that's when I really started dreaming. I met a lot of good guys on that ship, and I started hearing their stories, these sea-going sailors who'd been in the navy for many years. I saw their skin, with that sea-salt look, the hard skin of true sailors, man. The real deal. They'd lived, truly lived. Then in the back of the poop deck in the evening, when it was calm and all I heard and smelled was the ocean, my mind seemed to wander, almost escape itself, as I stared up into a star-filled sky and realized the possibilities were endless. Endless!
It was during those nights when my thoughts turned to Notre Dame. I know it sounds crazy that a single conversation, a few seconds with that young lieutenant on that stormy night, could set my mind on a brand-new course, but it's true. I found myself running around that ship, staying in shape, sweating in that scorching sun, dreaming of what it would feel like to go to Notre Dame. I didn't know how I could get in. It's not like my grades had magically improved just because I joined the navy. It's not like I made enough money to cover tuition. Still, the thought that it was
possible
just would not leave my brain. That one conversation changed the thought of Notre Dame from a fantasy to a dream, the difference being that a fantasy is untouchable, unattainable, and unreachable; a dream is something you can work toward, something you can envision, something you can feel beckoning you from right in front of you.
I started to see myself as one of those Notre Dame students and felt like I was suddenly becoming a student of the world.
In Athens I decided to see the sites. How could I not? And I quickly discovered the camaraderie and bonding that can happen between different cultures on the other side of the world. My buddy and I wound up chatting with a Greek family who offered to show us around. The doctor and his wife and kids took us to the Acropolis, and some amazing historic ruins that were in the process of being dug up. It was beautiful. That family fed us and they were honored to have Americans at their house. We got to Rome and the same sort of thing happened. And at every stop we made, I decided, I'm gonna go tour. I'm not gonna get drunk or chase women like the other guys. This is awesome! That's just what I did. My mind-set was that I wanted to see everything I could. Plenty of shipmates spent their time getting wild and crazy, but I just couldn't pass up this opportunity to take the world in. Who knew if I'd ever be back? I didn't want to regret missing any of it, and I tried to make sure that wouldn't happen. I still took time to work out. Lifting weights became a ritual to me. I took time to run. I even made time to take training courses back at the ship, in whatever subjects they had to offer, just to improve my study skills and to prove to myself that I might be able to make it in a classroom after all. Those Notre Dame dreams kept kicking in my gut. And somehow my travels and my sightseeing were feeding me in a way I had never felt in any classroom. I wanted to learn about everything. I wanted to know more about the world.
You hear about the Coliseum, the Pantheon, the cathedrals, and now here I was seeing them all firsthand. It was awesome. How can you not be moved seeing Michelangelo's work? Staring up at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, seeing that image of man touching God, imagining that artist lying flat on his back on scaffolding for months at a time, you can't help but think,
Wow. How' d he do that?
It's inspiring. It makes you want to do great things yourself. Or at least put in some extra effort.
How could it not?
I even saw the pope as he stepped out onto his balcony to bless the crowd in front of St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican. What an awesome sight. All of those people. No matter what you believe, there's a powerful spiritual presence in that place that you can feel in your bones. And to think of the reach of the Catholic church! I thought back to our little church in Joliet. I thought, once again, of Notre Dame, and the beauty of that campus, and the overwhelming spirituality I felt while standing on that plush green lawn as the golden statue of Mary smiled down upon me.
On a daily basis that Notre Dame dream kept growing. Everywhere I went, I'd find something that reminded me of the possibility. It wasn't a dream of going to college. No other school would do. It was the dream of being a part of that campus. Of capturing and living out that spiritual feeling I had when I looked up at that Golden Dome, and over at the cross at the top of the Basilica. Of fitting in with that student body and opening the doors to an education that could help to make me more than who I was today. More than what my parents and peers expected me to be. More than what I had allowed myself to even fantasize about.
With all the working out and bulking up I was doing in the navy, maybe I'd even have a shot at playing football at Notre Dame! Okay, so that still seemed really far-fetched, but I recall having the thought. More than once. After all, if I could dream about going to that top-notch school, why couldn't I dream about playing for their top-notch team?
It wasn't just a fantasy anymore. As I've said, it was a dream. That's a big difference. And that dream seemed closer and closer, even though I had no idea how I would ever make it come true.
As our Mediterranean tour came to an end, so did the nonstop escalation of the war in Vietnam. The emotional toll of that war was one thing. The financial toll was another. The government was cutting back on military spending, and as part of the deal, they decided to allow servicemen like me who had eighteen months in uniform to opt out early.
There wasn't even a question for me: I was sick of being seasick. I knew I wasn't cut out to be one of those salty-skinned lifelong sailors. Plus, the navy had already done more for me than I had ever imagined it could. I had seen the world, and I had grown stronger in every way imaginable.
I had a new dream to pursue now. I didn't know how I was going to do it, didn't have a clue, but I knew it was time to go home.
I'm not exactly sure when it started to sink inâ
that gnawing feeling that I was in danger of giving up. I think it was almost a year after I came back from the navy when it started to spiral. I felt that my life was quickly tracking backward, falling into routines, in danger of running on autopilot again toward a destination that wasn't my own.
I had traded my bunk in the belly of a ship for a room in my parents' house, back on Briggs Ave. (My own room, thankfully. I was finally allowed out of the basement bunkhouse and into a solo bedroom now that both of my older sisters had moved out.)
I had traded my important work on a communications ship fit for the president to go back to the power plant. It was a higher-paid position, in maintenance, with more responsibilities. I was thankful for that. But still . . . I had traded “swim calls” in the Mediterranean for sitting in the stands under the lights on Friday nights, watching high school football with old buddies from Joliet Catholic, then reliving our glory days over beers.
I had traded walks in the stunning streets of Athens and Rome for a daily commute down dusty Patterson Road, on the bad side of the tracks, past run-down houses with overgrown yards, a car lot bragging “We Buy Junk!” on its big, old, faded sign, and right through the chain-link gates that led to those skyscraper-sized smokestacks and train-car loads of black coal piled up like mini mountain ranges.
This wasn't my life. This was more like my father's life. The life of a Union Oil man who did what he had to do to support his big family. A proud life, sure. An honorable one. A good one! But it wasn't mine. I knew it. I knew where I wanted to be. I just didn't know how to get there, and for a good long time, lifeâwith its bills, its expectations, its routines, and its too-easy-to-be-trapped-in patternsâseemed to get the best of me.
I managed to stay in shape, just as I had in the navy, by running and lifting weights. My younger brother Francis had set up quite a little gym in my parents' garage, and it served me well.
When I'd run, I'd run all the way to Providence High on the other side of town to work out on their fields, and when I caught wind that they had finally started a football program, I volunteered and started coaching. I loved the game as much as ever, and coaching seemed to be the only way for a twentysomething guy to stay involved. I was a terrible coach. I yelled at the kids and did all the things I would eventually realize a coach really shouldn't do. But I had fun with it. And I pushed those kids to get faster and stronger and to play their hardest, not just at the games but at every single practice. “Give it your all! Teamwork, teamwork, teamwork!” All that stuff that was reinforced in my gut by the navy.
I was still dreaming. Dreaming big. Dreaming of Notre Dame. Especially when I'd run, when I'd work out, when I'd be alone with just my thoughts. I even had the confidence to tell other people about it. At work, someone would be talking about the game, and I'd say, “I'm gonna go to Notre Dame someday.” Guys would laugh. Chuckle. Give a little sneer, like I didn't know what I was talking about. Occasionally they'd give me some grief about it, and there were a couple of times when that old pent-up anger got the best of me and I'd wind up in a fistfight coming out of the elevator.
I'd bring it up at home, to my dad, and he'd say the most practical things he knew to say: “Well, how're you gonna get in if you don't have the grades for it, Danny?” or “How you gonna pay for that? It's a lot of rich kids go to Notre Dame.”
It's hard not to let that kind of stuff get you down.
But then there were a couple of guys who reacted very differently to my Notre Dame dreams. A couple of buddies from work. Older guys. Guys I decided to pay attention to, for some reason, more than I ever paid attention to the naysayers.
The first was George. George was a drunk. He admitted he was a drunk. He knew he had basically given up on life, given up on any dreams he might have had when he was younger, and resigned himself to the fact that he'd work at the plant until they forced him to retire, drowning any sorrows in cans of beer in the meantime. What was amazing to me is that he seemed totally at peace with that decision. One of the ways he made peace with himself, I think, was to stay connected to dreamers like me. I'd meet George at a bar after work, or sometimes stop by his house for dinner, and he'd pepper me with questions about my travels in the navy. He was an ex-navy man himself, and we swapped a lot of navy stories whenever we hung out together. He also asked me to imagine and describe what I thought life would be like at Notre Dame once I got there.
He liked to dream right along with me, and that inspired me.
Then there was Siskel. Siskel was a stocky guy, like me, but in his fifties. Real quiet kind of guy. He was very good at his job, which I admired. And he saw that I was having a hard time with some of the other guys. So one day at lunch we struck up a conversation. I could tell he was really listening to me, not dismissing my ideas as crazy or naive. The very first time we really talked about it, he told me, “You go do your dream, Rudy. You're young enough, you got nothing to regret.” The more we talked, the more I put the pieces of his own story together. He had been at the power plant for more than thirty years. Thirty! The thing was, he had a dream once just like me. He wanted to go to school. He wanted to become a doctor. But instead, he married young, started a family, and felt he had to work to support that family. He needed a job with security. At least, that's what he convinced himself he needed. Next thing he knew, thirty years had gone by. And without saying too much, he made it very clear that he regretted the fact that he didn't pursue his dream. “Go do it, Rudy!” he'd say whenever I brought up the Notre Dame idea. “Who's stopping you? You can go to Notre Dame. Why not?”
Why not?
I kept asking myself that question. Asking and asking. Was I too scared to take that risk? Maybe. Would I make a fool of myself?
Quite possibly.
What if I give it a shot and I fail? That would be terrible!
It's amazing how strong our voices can be when we're talking ourselves out of something:
I should be happy to have a good job. This life isn't so bad, is it? I have security and safety, and I'm saving some money. I don't need to go to Notre Dame. People lead really good lives without going to Notre Dame
.
But Siskel's words, George's words, and that young lieutenant's initial encouragement on that stormy sea on our journey across the Atlantic kept bouncing around my head and bringing me back to that much simpler thought of
Why not?
Then, one day, I finally got a glimpse of what I thought might possibly be my answer.
I had dated a couple of girls in town after I got back from the navy. One of them I didn't even really like that much, but her father was a Notre Dame graduate and I just wanted to be around him. How's that for dedication to my dream?
I was with the second girl, though, when an opportunity dropped right into my lap: a fellow Joliet Catholic grad who was a year behind me had two tickets to a Notre Dame football game that he couldn't use and he asked me if I wanted them. “Are you kidding?! Yeah!” So my girlfriend and I took off in my Mustang and made the trip east on I-80 to South Bend, Indiana. I was so excited to see that stadium again. I was so pumped to step foot on that campus again, period. But as we drove into town and headed to campus, something caught my eye that completely turned me around.