How I Got This Way Page 15

  Chapter Fifteen

  COACH ARA PARSEGHIAN

  Okay, just to be clear with you: I would remain grateful for the invaluable wisdom I had absorbed so early on from the great Coach Leahy. Losses, as he predicted, cannot be avoided during the course of our regular everyday lives. And yes, each setback that we suffer makes us stronger and better individuals. That much I did come to know well, or have at least tried my best to embrace, along the way. But I might as well tell you now—when it comes to Notre Dame football losses—there is only so much that I’m capable of accepting. To this day, I cannot speak after an Irish defeat, not for many hours, anyway. I sulk and I mope, quietly heartbroken, or else I pout and gnash my teeth. It can be very embarrassing, really. I just do not take it well. And Joy, meanwhile, cannot stand the way I don’t take it well. She has told me so in no uncertain terms. Even when I think I’m taking it in stride I can be unbearable. I understand completely. And believe me, I’m sorry!

  But let’s go back to where I left off—simply because loss had soon enough, and quite shockingly, become the status quo after Frank Leahy retired from coaching in 1954. Notre Dame, in fact, wouldn’t see another coach like him for ten agonizing years. And it showed. The football team went into a serious decline and the fan base sank with it. Even though Leahy had helped me understand the essential meaning of defeat, it was still like a knife in my heart every Saturday when we consistently lost throughout that decade-long drought.

  Meanwhile, a new young college coach from Akron, Ohio, had landed a job helming the Wildcats of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, which is located just north of Chicago. Many times each year this man would drive between Akron and Chicago on that Indiana interstate highway, always glancing up to see the Golden Dome as he passed Notre Dame, and never dreaming that he’d one day become the next bona fide legendary head coach there. His name was Ara Parseghian, and he was beginning to make a respectable football program out of the perennially hopeless Northwestern team, whose own school newspaper had been pleading, out of sheer humiliation, for them to drop out of the conference. But Parseghian wouldn’t let them quit, and even with that mostly mediocre team, he was beating Notre Dame with stunning regularity. In fact, he beat us four times in a row. And that, as it turned out, was enough to prompt Notre Dame’s president, Father Theodore Hesburgh, to hire him away and make him head coach in South Bend. Parseghian arrived too late in 1964 to do any fresh recruiting; he would have to make the most of a team with five consecutive losing seasons—a team that had lost seven out of nine games the previous year. No, this was not the Notre Dame team or tradition America had once revered. Not even close.

  Ara really didn’t know what to expect from the students, who were already pretty gravely down in the dumps about football. But on a cold February morning with a couple of feet of snow still on the ground, a crowd of three thousand poured out of the dorms and classrooms to surround and welcome him. He stood there in the center of the campus outside of Sorin Hall ready to begin with a simple hello, but the group started to cheer, and that cheer grew into a roar—and that roar, I was told by Notre Dame’s sports publicity director Roger Valdiserri, lasted ten full minutes. They wouldn’t stop. It was evident that everyone wanted him to deliver more; they wanted their old Notre Dame back, and they hoped that he would be the guy to do it for them.

  Of course, I was hoping as hard as all the rest of them. My friends during those years had witnessed how badly I’d reacted to that unending string of losing seasons and naturally thought I was either ridiculous or insane. But out in California they couldn’t begin to know what I knew about the old days on that field. So I stayed in close contact with Roger, who’d been a classmate of mine in the fifties. Right away, I peppered him with questions, wanting to know everything about Ara.

  “What’s he like?” I asked immediately.

  “Intense,” Roger told me. “Very intense.”

  “What time does he get there in the morning?”

  “Around five a.m.,” Roger reported. “While the rest of the campus is asleep, he’s there at his desk with his coffee, plotting and planning.”

  I liked the sound of this guy right away, but what could he do with the same team that had won only two games the previous season?

  As it was, Ara’s hiring coincided with my own major new career shift to take over that national syndicated late-night show from Steve Allen in Hollywood. By the time I’d settled into that job, such as it was, Ara had already won his first three games, and then the fourth and fifth. I felt the excitement build from all the way out on the West Coast and had an idea. I wrote Ara a letter to congratulate him on what was happening. I told him that I truly believed he could win the next five games and then the national championship as well. I also said that I would love to interview him for my show on the Sunday following the game against the University of Southern California Trojans, which was still a handful of weeks away. He very kindly wrote back, saying he couldn’t promise an unbeaten season, but sure, he would meet with me when the Irish came to Los Angeles for the USC game. And then, just as my gut had told me, he won the sixth game, and the seventh, and the eighth, and then the ninth. He was on a roll and grabbing the attention of the nation.

  After that 9–0 start, he even landed on the cover of the November 20, 1964, issue of Time magazine. The story declared that Ara was the coach to put a new coat of gold on the Dome. I couldn’t have agreed more. Time reported:

  Handsome and raven-haired, Parseghian could pose for anyone’s image of the spirit of Notre Dame—wearing Leahy’s shoes and Rockne’s suit. He has to win because the laundry bill is too high when he loses; his wife has to change the sweat-soaked bedsheets each morning. . . . For Ara Parseghian, the man who cannot stand to lose, the day begins at 5:30 a.m. with four cups of coffee, usually ends with a tranquilizer and the Late Late Show. Even when he eats, he has a pencil in the other hand, diagramming a play. Is there something he has forgotten, some minuscule detail he has overlooked, some new way to win? There has to be, there always is at Notre Dame.

  A week after the Time story was published, that final game of the season had arrived—our Los Angeles showdown with the team’s longtime archrivals at USC. All eyes were on Parseghian. I was thrilled for this young coach who’d so suddenly changed everything at Notre Dame after a gruesome ten-year dry spell. The fans and the students would be on top of the world. We’d be playing for the national championship just like back in the old days, and I would be the first to sit with him the next morning and tell him how proud we all felt. We had arranged to meet for our celebratory interview on the 50-yard line at the Coliseum at 9 a.m. on the Sunday after the game.

  The Trojans have never been easy to beat. The rivalry dates back to the Rockne era. The games are always tough—especially those played out west in that Coliseum, which is still one of the largest stadiums in the country. The USC band is big, too. Impressive and always noisy—and most annoying of all, even when they stop blaring away, the drummer continues to beat his drum steadily, over and over and over again, like a grim warning . . . a surprise attack just waiting to be unleashed on the opposing team. And then, of course, there’s that Trojan Warrior mascot who gallops in on a sparkling white horse, prompting the crowd to go crazy. As the ominous drumbeat, all the while, keeps pounding, pounding, pounding. It’s downright scary. Well, I suspect many of you know what happened that day. The game went back and forth. Then, deep into the last quarter, Notre Dame was winning when USC began a drive downfield with less than two minutes left on the clock. And that drumbeat just kept thumping. And thumping. And I had a miserable feeling churning in the pit of my stomach. And sure enough, with one minute and twenty-eight seconds remaining, USC scored on a pass from Craig Fertig to Rod Sherman, and they won the game by three points. Instant cataclysm.

  I watched Ara’s shoulders slump on the field. I was beyond tears. I couldn’t believe that after achieving the impossible, after
winning every game thus far, Ara and Notre Dame would lose in the final minutes of that championship game. I was sure it was all because of the drummer and that white horse, and I thought, just for a minute, that I would go hunt them down and . . . but never mind. I didn’t do it. Frankly, I could barely move.

  That Saturday night was a terrible night to be a Notre Dame fan in Los Angeles. The city was dizzy with celebration. But then came Sunday morning and my interview with this tremendous coach who’d just had his heart broken. I arrived at the Coliseum about ten minutes before nine. My cameraman was set up on the 50-yard line. I would have understood if the coach didn’t feel like talking—which, as I’ve told you, is how I handle such losses. But I walked to the 50-yard line and waited for him anyway. How strange it was to be in that cavernous place when, just hours before, there’d been such a fierce struggle on the very turf where I now stood. A light wind was rustling the empty cups and newspapers left behind in the deserted stands where bedlam had broken loose among the crowd of ninety thousand fans who’d witnessed one of the great Notre Dame upsets in history, their all-but-certain national championship taken from them in the last moments of the game. The place felt eerie. And then I saw the limo we’d sent for Ara drive through a gate onto the field and stop at one of the goalposts. I had told the cameraman to start by panning the Coliseum seats and keep the camera rolling as the coach emerged from the car and walked out to meet me midfield. It made for both a haunting and stoic image of a very proud man, symbolically getting back up on his feet.

  Our interview turned out to become a minor classic in Notre Dame circles, with so many requests for copies to play at University Club functions all over the country. For sure, it was quite dramatic to sit there with Ara in that vacant stadium as he recounted the game nuances and those shocking final moments and the pained locker-room scene afterward. He said that not since the assassination of President Kennedy had anything hurt him so much. But while it was a terribly sad morning for both of us, it was also the beginning of our long-standing friendship.

  Ara, of course, pushed through his loss that day and continued to coach so many unforgettable Notre Dame football games for another ten years. I was there for all the rest of those drumbeating, hard-fought contests he had with USC coach John McKay, for better or for worse. Joy and I also went to the great Cotton Bowl games in Texas, all so exciting with Joe Theismann as Notre Dame’s quarterback. Ara’s coaching prowess was always amazing to see. One of his greatest moments came during the 1973 Sugar Bowl game against Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant and his University of Alabama Crimson Tide. Both teams had gone undefeated that year, and met for the first time on this stormy New Orleans night with heavy rain, strong winds, and lightning strikes in the skies above Tulane Stadium. We took a friend with us to that one, the actor-writer Jason Miller. Most famously, he played the young priest in The Exorcist, but also wrote the Pulitzer Prize–winning play That Championship Season. At the time, however, he was writing a piece about Ara for Esquire magazine. Before the game, Jason walked out to midfield, where Ara was standing, for a quick conversation. When he returned to the sideline, I asked him, “How was Ara?”

  “Intense,” said Jason. “God, is he intense.” Which was saying something, because Jason Miller was plenty intense himself. As it was, Notre Dame caught Alabama by surprise in the closing seconds on a daring play from deep in Irish territory. Somehow, through the storm, we connected a 36-yard pass and won by a single point. But that was Ara for you. He had beaten the great Bear.

  Those were joyous times for the Irish, but in 1974 I found myself in a downward streak. I had been out of work for nearly a year. Hollywood had become a dead end, and real-life responsibilities were closing in from all sides. Joy and I already had Joanna and were then expecting Jennifer. Money was tight. As I’ve mentioned, I’d been trying to make ends meet with a variety of jobs around the country. That was the same summer I got the emergency call from Chicago to take over the two-hour-long WLS-TV morning show whose host had died. I filled in for a couple of months and got a very positive reception; in the fall, they would name a permanent host. I wanted that show so badly and really thought I had it nailed. I’d gotten some great guests, such as one of my boxing idols, Chicago’s middleweight champ Tony Zale, and even Ara drove in from South Bend early one morning for a special appearance with me. It was great fun and I loved my stay there, which happened to be Joy’s hometown, making the idea all the more appealing. But at the end of the summer, the station had to make a decision and instead went with Steve Edwards from Houston. He remains a terrific broadcaster who became a great friend of mine years later in Los Angeles, where he still reigns as the local king of morning talk shows.

  But it hurt. God, did it hurt. I had felt so confident about the job that I’d already told my friends and family back in Los Angeles that it looked like we’d be moving to Chicago. So when I got the bad news, I was shocked. Well, more like devastated. My spirit was all but destroyed. My hopes were in ruins. I got in my rental car and, instead of turning north on the expressway toward O’Hare Field for what would be a miserable flight home, I turned southeast and instead headed toward nowhere in particular. I just couldn’t bear the idea of going back to L.A. like this. I kept driving and soon found myself on the Indiana Skyway and then on the Indiana Turnpike, growing more and more despondent by the minute and by the mile. I kept driving, and nearly a couple of hours had passed. That’s when I saw the first exit sign for South Bend—thirty miles ahead. I immediately thought of Notre Dame. Maybe I had actually been thinking of Notre Dame all along, following some sort of internal compass. I will never know the answer. I knew that school wasn’t yet in session, but the team would be well into preseason practice. That meant that my friends in the football program would of course be there: George Kelly, the linebacker coach; Tom Pagna, the quarterback coach; and all the other great coaches—but most of all, Ara. I figured that I could use a little cheering up, a little time to begin trying to make sense of what had just gone so wrong.

  It was a sunny late August afternoon when I swung off the expressway and got myself onto Notre Dame Avenue, heading toward that lovely campus. There, up ahead, was the beautiful Sacred Heart steeple and the Golden Dome towering above all else. I turned right and slowly approached the stadium, the House That Rockne Built. There was the locker-room door where Frank Leahy had stood in the rain twenty-four years before and told us how to handle defeat. There was the tree, taller than ever, which the student had climbed to get a full view of that unforgettable moment. All of it came back to me. I went straight to the coach’s locker room and heard myself explaining the bad news to the invincible Ara Parseghian, telling him that I’d lost out on getting the job in Chicago. I told him that I’d had enough, that I just wanted to quit—which is something you do not say in the presence of that man.

  Because Ara wouldn’t hear of it.

  “I won’t let you quit,” he said. “You must never quit.” He promised, “There will be better times ahead.”

  He threw some Notre Dame sweats at me and told me to get out on the field and go catch some passes. I walked out on the practice field and felt better almost immediately. I jogged around the track a little, ran some modest wind sprints. All of a sudden it was great to be back—right there where I had learned so much about character and ambition. I was feeling that old spirit again. I almost felt like I’d never left. I caught some passes and watched Ara and his coaches put a clock on the incoming freshman quarterbacks, checking their speed and agility. One of them was an eighteen-year-old Pennsylvania kid named Joe Montana, who came in last. Joe wasn’t very fast, but he sure could throw. Nobody knew he would become the next great Notre Dame quarterback.

  But in the course of that afternoon, most of the anger and frustration I’d felt earlier had evaporated. My legs were tired from the team workout, but my mind was clear. I wouldn’t quit. I’d keep going. Just like Frank Leahy had said, this defeat was only going to streng
then my resolve. And Ara had made sure of that. Whatever had brought me back to Notre Dame that day had simply saved my life.

  I went home and waited. Three months later, John Severino had installed me as the entertainment reporter on KABC-TV, which was where the special journey that would eventually bring me to the life I live today truly began. And once I landed that job, I wanted to call Ara to tell him the good news. Before I could reach out, however, I learned that he’d been diagnosed with a heart condition. The doctors were suggesting that he retire for his own safety. All that intensity, all that charisma, all that work had taken its toll on him. But what a legacy—he had brought Notre Dame football back from near extinction, he made thousands of friends, he had been a great role model.

  So the years went by—during which Ara himself did some work in television—and I had come back to New York and started building the morning-show franchise that has continued ever since. But one day I got a call from Ara, who told me that he needed some help telling the world about a deadly disease that I had never heard of—a disease named Niemann-Pick. Ara had become involved with the cause under the darkest of circumstances. He had discovered that he was the gene carrier for this devastating affliction, which skips a generation and passes directly from grandparent to grandchild. In his case, all four of his grandchildren were then in peril, and now Ara was asking if I might find a way to throw a much-needed spotlight on this rare and terrifying condition. He wanted to sponsor a campaign to research the disease and find a cure. He and his wife, Katie, first talked about it on my show. Viewers were stunned, having also never heard about this disease before. Naturally, the Notre Dame family staunchly got behind Ara, who has since appeared everywhere he could, spreading the message with everything he’s got.

  Like he said to me so many years ago, “You must never quit.” And he hasn’t. Now the Parseghian Foundation supports twenty-five research groups all around the United States, the U.K., and Canada—each of them making great strides. He and his family have campaigned tirelessly for years to raise the funding necessary to keep exploring possibilities, and in fact, new drug compounds have been developed that actually slow the progression of the disease. But as of yet, there is still no cure. Most tragically, three of Ara’s grandchildren have succumbed, but the oldest still lives, even though he, too, is a carrier. This sort of horror would have broken the spirit of many families, but the Parseghians have stayed the course and continued the fight. And Ara, at eighty-eight, keeps trying to win this battle once and for all. God knows, he excels at the art of winning. He has helped so many people in his lifetime, and now we all want to help him win this one. We all love him.