Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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www.BLUEANDGOLD.com JUNE/JULY 2021 15 A TRIBUTE TO LOU SOMOGYI In the wake of Somogyi's passing, the tributes and letters poured in, most of which celebrated his mastery of Fighting Irish lore and his gift for sharing through words what he saw and heard every day for 37 years on the Notre Dame beat. Yet, it's the inspiring stories be- yond football and journalism of which Somogyi rarely shared that best illustrate the massive loss felt by his faithful friends and followers. PAYING LIFE FORWARD Mike Morris appeared as any other nervous freshman readying for his first day of high school, but feeling nothing at all like the other nervous freshmen around him. Morris grew up in Ann Arbor, Mich. So when his father took a job at Notre Dame before the 1976-77 school year, the Morris family moved to South Bend, and young Mike was enrolled as a relocated freshman at St. Joseph High School. Distraught at the prospect of meet- ing unfamiliar people in strange sur- roundings, Morris sat on a street curb outside the school doors, wondering how to run away as his mother drove away after dropping him off for day one. "I was almost in tears sitting there thinking, 'This has got be the worst day of my life,'" Morris recalled. "And who sits down next to me, Louie. He walked me through the damn door, showed me around. I'll never forget his kindness." From that moment, these two strangers forged a friendship that stretched almost 45 years and contin- ues strong even after Lou's passing. The two graduated together from both St. Joseph High School and the University of Notre Dame. "Without Louie's help that day, seeing me sitting outside of St. Joe, and then providing me his support and confidence, who knows where I would be right now?" Morris said. "But that was just Louie, even way back then." When asked to share some per- sonal stories about his longtime friendship with Somogyi, Morris struggled to begin. "I have read a lot of the tributes and reflections on Louie since he passed, and they really only describe half of his life. That's what people need to know," Morris said. "Louie was two different people. He was a very private person and he had the public persona that was BGI." Terrified of swimming, Morris said that Somogyi intervened and calmly taught him to float at a swimming pool on the Notre Dame campus. And terrified of college calculus, Morris said Somogyi patiently tu- tored him up. "I would have never passed that class without Louie's help," he said. Basketball, tennis, painting houses together, just goofing around on campus or making a familiar stop by Yogi's Yogurt near campus for a sum- mer treat, Morris and Somogyi were inseparable. "All of us would always order a large yogurt and Lou would always order a small," Morris said with a laugh. "Because, you guessed it, Lou always said that a large was too much of a good thing." Few of the stories Morris shared about his friend had anything to do with Notre Dame football, save for one. Irish football Saturdays were sa- cred to Somogyi, and the two friends would frequently watch games to- gether, with one understood caveat. "Lou demanded 'house quiet' so he could accurately write down the quarter stats off of the television broadcast," Morris said. "He had to make sure that the stats they were listing on the television computed with the figures he had already com- piled in his head." Morris said that Somogyi's gag or- der during Irish quarter breaks might be the only time he recalls Louie "de- manding" anything. About the only other moments Morris remembers Somogyi becom- ing moderately upset were when Notre Dame recently revoked alumni swimming privileges on campus and several years ago when Morris tried to serve his friend some homemade "Americanized" Hungarian Goulash. "It's never easy to lose a member of the Notre Dame community. We will forever miss Lou's gift of story telling, but even more so the kindness & fairness in which he treated us all. Prayers with Lou and his loved ones." NOTRE DAME OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR TOMMY REES Above: Lou and his parents. At right: Lou in high school. PHOTOS COURTESY THE SOMOGYI FAMILY The Blue & Gold Illustrated staff in the early 1990s. PHOTO COURTESY MICHELLE DELEE-HAMILTON