All Heart : Despite Tough Times, Chris Zorich’s Mother Had a Way of Showing Her Son That It’s Still a Wonderful Life

The apartment rent was $140 a month. Sometimes his Uncle Louis and his Aunt Olympia--Olympia Dukakis, the actress--sent money to help pay it. Otherwise, his diabetic mother scrimped up enough from the $200 monthly welfare disability payment that was her only income. Or Chris chipped in with the meager amounts he made at Tabor Lutheran Church, mopping floors.

The two-story brownstone occupies the northeast corner of 81st and Burnham on the Southeast Side, Chicago’s version of the Bronx. The Zoriches lived upstairs. There was one bedroom. The refrigerator was mostly empty.

Zora Zorich’s bike was parked outside. There was no sense locking it. If somebody wanted it, somebody took it. Zora had fended off thugs and thieves many times. She got mugged once while pushing Chris in his baby stroller. Chris himself figures he had been beaten up at least a hundred times. He got called honky and half-breed and got punched. When he was 7, a 16-year-old beat him bloody. Chris was so ashamed, even if she was bigger and older.

He came home Jan. 2 on the first morning flight from Miami, sad and sore. Notre Dame had lost the Orange Bowl game, 10-9, giving victorious Colorado the national championship. Chris was left weeping on the bench. He was voted the losing side’s outstanding player. He had thrown around his 266 pounds furiously, as always. He hadn’t been called “the most vicious player in college football” for nothing.

Chris took out all his childhood hostility on anyone in his way. His own coach, Lou Holtz, evicted Chris from practice three times for playing football too rough. Chris Zorich . . . the same kid teammates called “Flowers,” because he liked to pick daisies and read poetry and feed ducks. The kid who bawls at the ending of his favorite movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” every time he sees it, which has been 11 times.

When Chris stepped off the plane at O’Hare International Airport, he could hardly walk. Another uncle, Blaise Zorich, came by in his Honda to pick him up. Chris wondered where his mother was. He had phoned Zora around 4 a.m. from Miami. She took his calls any time of day or night. They spoke daily, sometimes two or three times. They were best friends. She raised him alone, a Slavic woman of infinite spirit, deserted by a man Chris never met. She wore badges bearing his Notre Dame football photo as a brooch. He mailed her Mother’s Day cards, Easter cards, Valentines, no-occasion cards by the dozen that she taped to her bedroom door. They were joined at the heart.

Uncle Blaise said he called and called, but nobody answered. Chris considered the possibilities. When he got home, her bicycle was there. He ran upstairs and knocked. The door was locked. Chris peered through a bathroom window. Saw a shadowy figure on the floor. Smashed the bathroom glass with his hand. Could see who it was. Kicked down the door. Rushed to the body in the hall. Felt her hand.

“OK, Mom,” he said, sobbing uncontrollably. “OK, Mom. Bye, Mom. I love you. Bye, Mom.”

On a May day in South Bend, Ind., 10 days before he receives his diploma, Chris Zorich wears a growth of beard, a Chicago Bears cap and a pair of Miami Hurricane football pants, cut down to shorts, given him by Russell Maryland, the first player taken in the NFL draft. Zorich was the 49th player taken. Taken by the hometown Bears. Taken by Mike Ditka, to whom he was introduced by his mother. Taken to play alongside Mike Singletary, whose number he wore in college. Taken by the former team of Dick Butkus, whose bronzed shoes were enshrined in--then stolen from--the display case of their high school alma mater, Chicago Vocational. He still can’t believe it. Papa Bear George Halas’ Bears.

“I actually said prayers to my mother that I would be drafted by the Bears,” Zorich says. “I guess she and Papa Bear set something up.”

He told them he would pay them to play. On draft day, Ditka practically had to be restrained from claiming Zorich on the opening round. The Bears needed an offensive lineman more, and got one, Stan Thomas, 6-feet-5, 305 pounds. Zorich was a defensive player, a distinguished one, a Lombardi Trophy winner, with a body of a Greek god. But he was short. A fraction over 6 feet. And that seemed to be held against him, even though Russell Maryland was no taller.

Ditka needed no convincing. “Sometimes the shortest Bears are the meanest Bears,” he said. But the head coach agreed to wait. His assistants had their way. And Zorich watched cable TV at the home of his godfather, Mike Rogan, in Elkhart, Ind., with no agents or TV cameras around. He wanted privacy. His hands were trembling.

“When the Bears’ first-round pick came up, for me it was like a bullet in a revolver,” he recalls. “I waited. Then click . Nothing happened. Then click , click , other teams picked. Then ESPN went off the air.” Forgive the bullet allusion, Zorich says. When you’re from a neighborhood like his, such language is a way of life, not just a way of death.

Tim Ryan, his college roomie, called.

“Flowers, you get picked?” Ryan asked.

“Don’t do that!” Zorich cried, thinking the call might be from the Bears. He hung up. Click .

Then they did call. And everything came rushing back: The all-star player banquet for Illinois’ top preps. Ditka, the guest speaker. Pointing him out afterward to his mom. Zora Zorich nudging him to go over, say hello. Chris, reluctant to intrude. Then going over herself. Saying: “Excuse me, I’m Zora Zorich, mother of Chris? Could he please meet you?” And Chris saying: “Mom! Please! You’re embarrassing me!” And Ditka saying: “Sure.” And comparing notes with Zora about their backgrounds, the coach’s Ukrainian, hers Yugoslav.

And Chris finally working up the nerve to say: “Coach Ditka, in four years, do you think you could remember my name?”

And Ditka saying: “I will.”

The streets don’t seem so mean today. Pigtailed girls are jumping rope. Older boys buy cones from a tinkling Hello Freeze ice cream truck. The pavement is so crumbled that the construction sawhorses tilt, but the neighborhood is quiet. There’s a corner carnival on 79th Street, a carousel and a Tilt a Whirl. There’s a public library and a Sears. It doesn’t look like a combat zone. No gunfire today.

But the gangs are around somewhere. They always are. Selling drugs. Breaking windows. Busting heads. Chris saw one man beaten with a golf club. He took being assaulted for granted. They teased him about being chubby, about being too light-skinned to be black and too dark to be white. They made fun of his mother, who said: “People told me I should tell Chris his dad died or something, but I told him the truth. That his dad was black, that we were never married and that he left.”

Chris resisted violence up to a point. Occasionally, it was fun. It was so commonplace, it was like playing . He bulked himself up. Nobody in the neighborhood could afford health clubs or weights, so they lifted manhole covers. Stuck a bar between two sewer lids, then hoisted it. Chris grew larger and angrier. He needed an outlet for his aggression. Sophomore year at Vocational, he asked to play football. But his mother refused to sign the permission slip, said the game was too rough. Chris forged her name on the form.

Three years later, Notre Dame wanted him. Chris didn’t know it was 90 miles away. Had no idea where it was. His schoolwork was only fair, his combined SAT score poor: 740. Notre Dame freshmen generally average 500 points higher. But he was bright, well-behaved, warmly advocated by teachers, motivated enough to pass trigonometry his senior year. And a football hero, naturally. So, the university took a chance. “Mom put me in my room, walked me around campus, held my hand,” Chris says. “It wasn’t like leaving the nest. We knew I was a phone call away. I called her that night, in fact.”

He always did. Reminded her endlessly to bolt her doors. She said to worry about himself. Campus life was new and strange to Chris. He says: “I know this sounds dumb, but it was something as simple as squirrels eating out of your hand. They were brown and friendly. Back home, the squirrels were gray from the snow and pollution and all jumpy all the time, probably because somebody’d rather shoot them than feed them.”

But he developed an ulcer in his freshman year, trying to make grades. Got Ds in two of his four courses. And football occupied so much time. And the coaches weren’t sure how much to harness his rage. Ferocity and football coexist, but Zorich was threatening teammates. He’s a different person on the field. His high school coach, John Potocki, called him “as vicious as a player can be.” Opponents thought so, too. Notre Dame rumbled with USC’s Trojans and Miami’s Hurricanes, on and off the field. Quarterback Todd Marinovich of USC called Zorich “scary,” said he couldn’t take his eyes off him while awaiting snaps from center.

Yet again, this was the same Chris Zorich who, when filling out a Notre Dame football form, wrote about his family:

Well, it’s only my Mom, and she is the best thing that ever happened.

Chris excelled each year, and not only at football. His personality was winning as well. When President Bush came by to address the team, Zorich told him about being distantly related to Michael Dukakis, Bush’s opponent in the 1988 election. “You sure you want to talk to me?” Zorich asked the President. “I’m with the enemy.”

The best thing about growing up hungry, his mother had said, was nobody worrying which fork to use. Now, Chris Zorich hungered to become a more cultured person. He took piano lessons. He memorized Robert Frost. He pulled a C-plus average. His fiancee, a Notre Dame volleyball player, Jill Fiebelkorn, also became a settling influence. He picked flowers for her. She would find him by the nearby St. Mary’s campus lake, feeding ducks. By last Thursday, he was taking his final exams in business communications and Greek and Latin Mythology. Next Sunday, Chris Zorich will become a graduate of Notre Dame; next summer, a Chicago Bear.

“Mom must be up there in heaven with a humongous smile,” Chris says.

New Year’s night was his final college football game. Zorich gave the Colorado team fits. Coach Bill McCartney called him “as good as there is in the country.” Colorado’s center, Jay Leeuwenburg, said he “was told I need to block him twice.” The Orange Bowl was the game of his life, and Chris wished his mother could see it.

She took him to the Chicago airport Christmas night. They spotted a woman in the terminal wearing Fighting Irish mittens. Zora Zorich went over to her. Chris said: “Mom, no! Don’t embarrass me again!” But Zora excused herself and asked the woman if she followed Notre Dame football. The woman said: “No. Why do you ask?” Zora pointed out the mittens. The woman said they were a gift.

“Well, see my boy over there? His name is Chris Zorich. He plays for Notre Dame,” Zora said.

“Oh, really?”

“Yes. You’ll be hearing about him.”

Zora was in the restroom during the plane’s final boarding. Chris stuck his head in the women’s room and called out: “Mom! I gotta go!” She ran out and gave him a hug. They both said: “I love you.” They ended every conversation that way.

“That was the last time I ever saw her alive,” Chris says. “If I’d known that would happen, I would have never gotten on the plane. I would have sat with her until the minute she died if it took 50 years.”

When he called her a few hours after losing the game, Chris was despondent.

“I played terrible,” he said.

“You played wonderful,” she said.

He came home on his own, ahead of the team. Had three hours’ sleep. When Uncle Blaise said his phone calls weren’t answered, Chris suspected the worst. In an office at Notre Dame, he acts out the rest--smashing the bathroom glass with his arm, kicking down the door, holding her hand. Pantomimes the whole thing. He hasn’t forgotten. He refuses to forget.

Zora Zorich was 59. She died of natural causes. At St. Jerome’s Catholic Church, where she had been baptized 59 years before, a farewell Mass was read. His uncles were there, and Olympia Dukakis and Notre Dame Coach Lou Holtz and running back Mark Green of the Bears, defensive back Pat Terrell of the Rams, receiver Pat Eilers of the Minnesota Vikings. There were floral arrangements from the USC team and the Miami team, sympathy cards from Colorado coaches and players.

Father Matthew Ruyechan, who celebrated the service, said: “When a son makes a mother proud, there is nothing that fills her heart with as much joy. Chris, thank you for sharing your Mom with all of us and so many other people who didn’t know her personally.”

Chris emptied the apartment. Packed his mother’s books, hundreds of them. Picked out a poem for her headstone.

“I’m 21 years old and suddenly there I am, deciding on my mother’s (burial) vault,” he says. “Suddenly, I’m a grown-up person, making my own dentist appointment, taking care of my own insurance, being responsible for myself. I don’t feel 21 or 22 anymore. I feel 30 or 40.”

He returned to Notre Dame, where the most amazing things began to happen. A letter of condolence came from President Bush. An Elkhart grade school boy, Eric Hartnett, sent Chris his allowance. Then a woman wrote a note. Asked if Chris perhaps remembered her. Said she had been sitting at the airport last Christmas, wearing Fighting Irish mittens. Chris broke down crying.

“I’ve got grandmothers I’ve never met writing me, telling me to come over if I’m needing any hugs,” he says, rubbing his eyes red again at the memory of it. “I’ve got the President of the United States writing me in January, when he’s about to go to war with Iraq over the Kuwaitis. It’s all so unbelievable. And yet, that was my mother. That was the effect she had on people.”

Jim Wainwright, an artist who illustrates Notre Dame’s football programs, wheels his disabled wife of 38 years into a university office. Chris is asked if he has a moment. Chris always has a moment for everybody. Wainwright produces a large package, wrapped in brown paper.

“This is for you,” he says.

“For what?” Chris asks.

“For being you,” Wainwright says.

Chris cuts it open. It is a portrait in oil of his mother, wearing her favorite badge of Chris, with Notre Dame’s golden dome behind them. Chris is overcome. He starts crying again. He rises and squeezes Mr. and Mrs. Wainwright with his astonishingly muscular arms.

“What can I do for you?” he says, wiping his eyes. “Can I come over and mow your lawn or something?”

They leave, and Chris sits for several minutes, staring at the painting.

“Is that not perfect?” he asks. “I mean, that’s her.”

His face is in his hands.

“Do you know what this is like?” he asks. “My life suddenly is like ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’ Do you know the part of the movie where you experience what life would be like if you were never born? That’s how I feel. That’s what’s happening to me. Mom, are you watching this up there? Can you believe what’s happening to me down here?”