Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1183432
52 NOV. 16, 2019 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED BY LOU SOMOGYI N o matter what any other stop- watches might say, college football in its 150 years of play has seldom seen a more explo- sive and electrifying game-breaker than Notre Dame's Raghib Ramadian "Rocket" Ismail from 1988-90. For a man known for his speed, though, it seemed unusual that it would take a slow 29 years to induct him into the College Football Hall of Fame. It finally became official last January, he was feted at Notre Dame for the distinction during the game against Virginia Tech Nov. 2, and he will be enshrined Dec. 10. The winner of the Walter Camp Award as the nation's best football player in 1990 as a junior, and the runner-up to BYU's Ty Detmer in the Heisman balloting, Ismail became the first Notre Dame player to move to the professional ranks prior to his senior year before later earning his degree. Born Nov. 18, 1969 in Elizabeth, N.J., Ismail will celebrate his 50th birthday this month after earlier commemorating his 25-year mar- riage to wife Melani, with whom he has four children. Oldest son Raghib Jr. originally enrolled at TCU and is now currently a senior wide receiver for the Wyoming Cowboys. The elder Ismail has become an inspirational speaker at schools, churches and civic groups as a way of "paying forward" the numerous people who lifted him from adverse circumstances in his youth. After his father died in 1980 when Ismail was 10, the family refused to buckle to the climate in a section of Newark where the economic, educa- tional and moral climate were at their nadir. It was an environment where ambition and setting goals for success were frowned upon by peer groups. Thus, mother Fatma Ismail — af- fectionately known as "The Launch- ing Pad" for bearing first The Rocket and then The Missile (Qadry) and fi- nally The Bomb (Sulaiman) — made the most difficult and painful decision of her life: In 1983, she sent her sons to Wilkes-Barre, Pa., to live with their grandmother, and sent her paychecks from various jobs in Newark to Wilkes- Barre, where a dollar stretched much farther. Although originally reared in the Islamic faith, Ismail and his broth- ers adjusted and converted to their grandmother 's Christian tenets, meaning "if you don't go to church, you get no food." Wayne Dwyer, Ismail's assistant football coach at Meyers High School in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and longtime fam- ily friend, remembered first meeting the 13-year-old Ismail in 1983. "His maturity came from being separated from his mother," Dwyer recalled. "When he was 10, he became the man of the household. After school, when it was time to get away for other kids, 'Rock' would first see to it that Sulaiman would get home from school and do his work. "Then he would tend to his grand- mother [who was in her 80s and be- coming ill] for about an hour or so and take care of her for the afternoon be- fore getting ready for practice." It was in the Dwyer home where Is- mail first heard Notre Dame's "Victory March." Dwyer became an Irish fan through his association with Mickey Gorham, the head football coach at ANOTHER HAPPY RETURN Raghib "Rocket" Ismail honored at Notre Dame as a College Football Hall of Fame inductee In three spectacular seasons, including the 1988 national championship, Ismail (far left), shown with his family, became the first Irish player to surpass 1,000 yards rushing, receiving and returning en route to winning the Walter Camp Award as the nation's outstanding college football player in 1990. PHOTO BY ANDRIS VISOCKIS