Sordid details

George was my father. Though I cannot say with complete confidence that Dad's explanations to his children ever told the full story, the official party line on the suspension was ... missed curfew. Filling in the blanks, I gather it was a repeat offense, there had been previous warnings, and he wasn't just late, he stayed out all night after partying somewhere. Though he did not dispute the missed curfew, he offered in his defense that he was in his seat, on time, for his 8:00am law school class the next morning.

Powers that be wouldn't have it. He was suspended for the rest of the semester, and after he cleaned out his room (probably in Lyons or Dillon), he took a "victory lap" by driving as far up the steps of the Admin building as his car would go.

Dad had a lot of stories that he shared with us, and probably twice that many died with him. His ND friends and experiences were closer to his heart than those from the NFL years.

A question in another thread asked whether Dad and Ziggy Czarobski went to high school together. The answer is no. Dad was from St. X in Cincinnati and I think Ziggy was from Chicago. They were good buds in college, though. Ziggy was one of the top characters of that era. You can't tell the story of the 46-47 teams without talking about Ziggy.

As wild as the football stories were, the movie I want to write about George was the Kentucky sheriff campaign drugging and framing episode that is mentioned in another thread on here. The upshot of that was that I, and every one of my nine siblings, at one point or another invoked a drugged-and-framed defense when confronted by Dad about questionable behavior. It usually got a laugh and a lighter punishment.

Matt Ratterman ’78