The Life And Legend Of Notre Dame's John Lattner
When it comes to college football, the late John Lattner was in special company. The 1953 Heisman Trophy winner from Notre Dame and 2006-2009 Florida quarterback Tim Tebow are the only two players in the game who won the Maxwell Award twice.
Yet if you asked Lattner, who graduated from Fenwick High School and remains the lone Heisman recipient from Chicago, about his greatest achievement, he’d point to his eight children and 25 grandchildren for he and his wife, Peggy. A decade ago, we had a chance to do a memorable “10 Questions” with the typically amiable Lattner:
Q: How did your introduction to Notre Dame occur?
John Lattner: I was taught by the Sisters of Mercy nuns in Chicago. Where we lived, on the West Side, there were a lot of Notre Dame people. At the time, I don’t think I even knew how to walk, but I already knew Notre Dame was the epitome [of football]. I had 90 scholarship offers, but this was 1950 when Notre Dame had just completed a fourth straight unbeaten season. People were saying, “Don’t go to Notre Dame, because you’ll just be a number there. You won’t be able to play, you’re not fast enough”… just a lot of negatives, particularly the coaches who were trying to recruit me for their schools.
I knew that at least 40,000 people would come from Chicago to see a Notre Dame game, because this was before television had become big. So I’d be playing in front of my home crowd. It was an added incentive for me to at least try to make the team.
Q: So here you are on the freshman team at Notre Dame and the varsity finishes 4-4-1 in 1950 – which was more losses than the three that Frank Leahy had in his first seven seasons at Notre Dame. How rough must that have been?
JL: Put it this way – we started spring practice for 1951 on Dec. 9, 1950 (the season had ended Dec. 2). We had lost a lot of personnel from those teams in the 1940s and lost a lot of people to injuries in the 1950 season. We were practicing from Dec. 9 through Dec. 19, until they let us go home for Christmas. When we came back after Christmas break, we used to have final exams at the end of January, so we didn’t have any practice for about three weeks. Then we came back in February to practice in the Fieldhouse and in the old Navy drill hall. We practiced there until May 14 for the Old-Timers game.
Q: Any other stories on how obsessed Leahy was with winning and getting Notre Dame back to the top?
JL: My dad died in April of my freshman year and he was buried in Evansville, Ind., where he was from. We came out of the church with the casket and Coach was there with the assistants, Bernie Crimmins, Bill Earley, Bob McBride…Coach came up to me and said, “John, I’m awfully sorry about your father… do you have any way back to school?” He wanted me to make it back there for practice. He didn’t miss a cue. We practiced a lot that spring. It paid off because we were a real young team but improved a lot the next year.
Q: You had a memorable birthday in your senior year (Oct. 24, 1953) when you ended Georgia Tech’s 31-game winning streak but also saw Leahy collapse on that same day outside the locker room and nearly die. The word was you thought he was faking it. Is that accurate?
JL: My good friend from high school was Bobby Rigali. His dad, Joe, played for Rockne and he was on the national title team with The Four Horsemen. He used to tell us about some of Rockne’s halftime stories. Bobby would scrimmage and was a tough kid, but because he didn’t play he was a little disgusted with Leahy. So we were sitting next to each other in the locker room at halftime and we saw Father (Ted) Hesburgh go into the training room where Leahy was, Father (Ned) Joyce, the trainer Gene Paszkiet, and Donny Penza, our captain…so we knew something was going on.
Anyway, Penza comes out and he was crying and said, ‘The Coach is dying, he’s dying!’ Rigali gives me a nudge and says, “Don’t believe him. He’s pulling a Rockne.”
Q: The score was tied in the second half, and even though you found out that Leahy was in serious condition, how did you find the resolve to win?
JL: It’s something that Leahy taught us to fight through. You have to concentrate completely on the game and move forward. If you think about your mistakes, you’re going to make more mistakes. We knew he was sick, but we still had to go on and beat a real good team. There were no thoughts of how bad off he was – because that’s how he wanted us thinking.
Q: How did you find out you won the Heisman and what do you remember the most about it?
JL: (Athletics director) Moose Krause called me and that’s how I found out. He said, “We’re going to New York and you can invite your best girlfriend!” Well, I wasn’t dating my wife at the time, so I took my mother. It was a wonderful experience for her. She had never flown and never been in New York. The night before the presentation they took us for a night out on the town and at 2 a.m. my mother and I ended up in the Copacabana in Times Square. My mother loved her martinis, and one of the people with us said, “Johnny, tomorrow’s going to be a long day. We better be heading back.” I said, “Well, go talk to my mother.”
So he explains to her that tomorrow will be a busy day and she says, “Oh, okay, instead of a martini I’ll have a Miller High Life then.” We stayed until 3 a.m. She wasn’t stiff or anything, but she just enjoyed the dancing and was going to have a good time.
Q: Although you didn’t have a girlfriend to take to the Heisman dinner, you did spend some time with Marilyn Monroe when the team went to play USC in Los Angeles during your sophomore year (1951)? Can you relay the experience?
JL: There was a film called “Clash By Night” she was doing at the time at a Los Angeles studio, so after practice about five us went over to the studio unannounced. We didn’t have carte blanche to go there but Bobby Joseph, our extra point kicker, could talk like a million dollars. He talked his way into us getting on the set. Marilyn wasn’t doing anything that morning, so we went back to practice at one of the big hotel dining hall rooms and afterward we went back to the studio and sat with her in her star hut for at least an hour.
We told her we’d get her a field pass, so then she brought out her publicity pictures for us. She said, ‘What should I put on it?’ I said, “Dear John, thank you for the wonderful night we had together. Love and kisses, Marilyn.” She signed it just like that and put her phone number on it.
Later we called her up that night and said, “Marilyn, we’re all set with the field pass!” She said, “John, I’d love to go but I have to pick up another athlete at the airport.” You know who the other athlete was? Joe DiMaggio.
She drove us back to our hotel from the studio. There were five of us in that little car but we had a ball. She was so delightful. I had a buddy in the Marine Corps who was waiting for me at the hotel. She then drove him back to the main base. What a gal!
Q: What happened to the photo?
JL: I lost it in a flood in the basement back in Chicago. I didn’t have it up on the wall but I should have. We had a flood that went over where I had it stored. It was no big deal.
I had it hanging on my dorm wall in Morrissey Hall but the rector made me take it down. He kept it and said, “You can get it back when you leave this dorm.” So at the end of my sophomore year I got the picture back. Things were more strict back then, but at least he didn’t kick me out of the dorm.
Q: Who’s the greatest Notre Dame player you’ve ever seen?
JL: I never saw Angelo Bertelli play but I loved him as a man. John Lujack was a fantastic defensive and offensive player…and Paul Hornung. Paul was a freshman when I was a senior but you could see even then what a special talent he was. I’d be a punter for the varsity and he’d come down from the freshman team and kick with me and I’d say, “Paul, go back to the freshman team, you’re making me look bad here!” What struck you about him was that he was so a real big back for those days, about 220 pounds, but so athletic.
He also had a car when he was a freshman and I didn’t as a senior. I was supposed to be like a big brother and watch over him, so before school started I said to him one time, “Let’s go to a movie!” He didn’t want to and took me to Mishawaka and some bars I never heard of. We had only a couple of beers, but after a couple of days with him I said, “Paul, if I stay with you, I won’t make the team.”
Q: You’ve always been known as very down-to-earth and humble. Where did that come from?
JL: I never expected anything. My ambition in high school was to maybe get a scholarship to a small school like Loras College or St. Benedict. To get a chance to go to Notre Dame…I didn’t think I had all this in me, to be frank. I’m surprised I’ve had all these accolades thrown this way.