Dillon Hall Diaries: Black Matt Lowers The Boom

You already know from my two previous posts labeled Dillion Hall Diaries (February 6 and April 15) that during my last three years at Notre Dame I lived in Dillon Hall, the residents of which were sometimes referred to as "Dillon Dirt Bags." Yes, we wore that appellation proudly. But my first ND roost was Cavanaugh Hall, a "freshman dorm," during the '65-'66 school year. The rector of Cavanaugh then was Father Matthew Miceli, a no-nonsense middle-aged Italian Holy Cross priest, equipped mentally and physically to handle the unenviable job of keeping over 250 college freshmen under his roof in line. I write this post in memory of him.

I came to Notre Dame from Bishop Ryan, a Catholic high school in Minot, North Dakota, where the priest who was the principal, Father Blaine Cook, ruled with an iron fist. I realized this from the very first day I met him, when he bragged to my parents that the student body had recently overwhelmingly voted to compete at the Class B (small school) level in athletics, but that he had decided unilaterally to disregard that mandate and keep the school at the Class A level. Never mind that our enrollment numbers clearly called for us being in Class B. With the stern commanding tone thus having been set, I promised myself never to get into his dog house, mostly because I was afraid of the consequences which Father Cook meted out to offenders. To an observer my planned approach might have appeared as respect for the collar, and I suppose part of my good behavior was attributable to that. But mostly I behaved out of fear. I had many friends at Ryan who were more fearless than I, and I saw them pay the price. Father Cook was not a man you should anger.

This m.o. of mine regarding priests with authority carried forward into my freshman year in Cavanaugh. Father Miceli reminded me of Father Cook, and I made sure I toed the mark. One ND alum, Class of '68, recently wrote on Notre Dame Nation that Miceli's "fearsome reputation for cruelty was legend" and that guys who lived in other dorms on the Freshman Quad would not go near Cavanaugh in order to avoid an encounter with Black Matt. Speaking of legends, there was one about our Cavanaugh rector that claimed that he would sometimes wear one regular shoe and one tennis shoe at night so that when he ran down the hall after "lights out" it sounded like he was walking. Apparently, the story goes, in this way he could sneak up outside of a dorm room if he suspected something bad was going on inside. Whether the legend was true or not, the last thing I ever wanted to do was to cross Black Matt. I had enough to worry about, including tough academics and being a thousand miles away from home. But, as the saying goes, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

On October 9, 1965, the Irish were scheduled to play Army in Shea Stadium. It would be our fourth game of the season, and our third road game. The World's Fair was also being held in New York City at that time. During the summer of '65 I had received an application in the mail to sign up for a student trip to attend the game. The trip was sponsored by the Notre Dame Social Commission, a student organization which was charged with the almost impossible task of making college life in an all-male school fun. I showed the information package to my parents, who readily agreed to help me pay for the trip. Not only would I get to attend the football game and the fair, but this would be my first airplane ride as well. The Big Weekend could not come soon enough. We would leave on Friday afternoon and return Sunday evening.

Those of us lucky enough to be on the trip had a tremendous time. Most people probably remember things about their first ride in the sky. I am no exception, so please allow me this aside. I felt lucky to get a window seat on the plane, but I soon realized that most of my fellow male passengers couldn't care less about the view out the windows. A different view was more interesting, and for that they preferred to sit on the aisle. The reason? It was pretty tough to check out the flight attendants' ("stewardesses" in those days) curves unless you were on the aisle. The other main topic of conversation was that the legal drinking age in New York City was 18, compared to 21 in The Bend. The guys could hardly wait to walk into a Manhattan watering hole to enjoy several legal drinks. I was only 17 that early October, so I did not share their eager anticipation.

The Irish had no trouble with the Black Knights Of The Hudson, cruising to a 17 to 0 victory. We also got to the World's Fair, including a viewing of the Pieta, and everything about the weekend was perfect. That is, until I got back to Cavanaugh Sunday night.

I was looking forward to recapping the weekend highlights for my roommate (a New Yorker who did not go on the trip), but before I could get the first sentence out he advised me, "Black Matt told me he wanted to see you as soon as you got in." Although the rector's room was on the same floor as mine, I barely ran into him during the first five or six weeks of the school year. I was not sure he even knew who I was. I laughingly said to my roommate, "Well, I couldn't be in too much hot water because I haven't even been here since Friday afternoon." Plus, the trip to New York had the blessing of the university, so what could possibly be wrong? Despite what I thought was this sound reasoning, I was definitely worried as I made my way to the rector. All those rumors I'd heard about Miceli suddenly came back to me. The curiosity was killing me. The walk of about thirty yards down the hall seemed more like three hundred.

If you have seen The Godfather you know the look of a disgruntled Italian Don. That was the look of Father Miceli that night. There was no "hello," no "welcome back," no "how was New York?" With a sweeping arm motion he signaled me to enter his chambers, then he asked me two questions, the answers to which he already knew. First, "Where were you?" This struck me as odd, because the list of those who had signed up for the Army game trip had been posted by the Social Commission on Cavanaugh's bulletin boards, and nothing (Nothing!) was on those boards without his knowledge. Even though I knew that he knew the answer to his own question, of course I answered. His second question was, "Did you sign out with Joe?" Joe was our RA, and again I knew that Black Matt knew the answer was "no." All I could think of, in that split second, was the phrase later made so popular by the professional tennis brat, John McEnroe: "You can't be serious!" But of course I did not say that, for the reasons stipulated above.

The '65-'66 school year was the last year the dorms at ND had mandatory room checks. We had to be present and accounted for in our rooms by 10:30 each weekday night, and by midnight on the weekend. Once the RAs took our attendance, we were free to move about -- but not leave -- the dorm. All of the outside doors were locked except for the front door, and a security guard was posted there. If a dorm resident was on campus, he was required to abide by those rules. If he was going to be off campus, he had to sign out ahead of time with an RA. In my situation, the thought of signing out with Joe never crossed my mind because I mistakenly reasoned that signing up with the Social Commission was, in effect, letting the university know where I was going to be on that Friday and Saturday night. Signing out with Joe would have been redundant, form over substance. Wrong! I was AWOL.

Black Matt lowered the boom. He "campused" me for two weeks. That punishment meant that I was immediately confined to campus through the following two weekends.

Ordinarily that penalty would not have been too painful for me. I did not have a car and I had practically no money (especially after spending a weekend in New York City), so I rarely ventured off campus anyway. However, those particular upcoming two weeks were not scheduled to be ordinary circumstances for me. My parents were planning to make the 2000 mile round trip drive from Minot to visit me for the Southern Cal game weekend, October 22-24. Black Matt's punishment thus put me in a pickle. I couldn't tell my parents to stay home. They already had tickets for the Southern Cal game, a game which had been circled on the schedule for months by college football fans across the country. USC was ND's perennial arch rival, and the memory of the 1964 game in the LA Coliseum in which a phantom holding call cost the Irish not only the game but the National Championship was fresh on the minds of the faithful. The 1965 game was going to be The Revenge Game. (In fact, the main rallying cry at all the pep rallies preceding the game was "Revenge! Revenge!") My dad, the quintessential Irish Catholic, was the football team's greatest fan. There was no way he was going to miss the game. The other big problem was having my parents wondering how their son could possibly get into trouble with his rector after being in school less than two months.

After the first of my two weeks of punishment I asked Joe -- who, by the way, was a cool guy -- if he thought I stood a chance of getting Black Matt to waive the second half of my "sentence." Joe's reply, in essence, was "not a chance." He indicated that the rector sometimes campused guys for longer periods than two weeks for similar offenses. In retrospect I should have sucked it up and asked Miceli face-to-face for a break anyway. Instead, I talked myself out of it. I might have been a chicken, but at least I was a live chicken. I will never know if Joe was right, but he knew the priest better than anyone else in Cavanaugh.

The weekend of my parents' visit did not turn out to be so bad after all, proving once again what The Marquis always said: The things you worry about the most seldom happen. The Irish got their revenge, 28 to 7, lifting their record to 4 and 1. We spent a lot of time that weekend walking around the beautiful Notre Dame campus, and I enjoyed being the tour guide. The biggest negative was that I had been looking forward to eating with my parents in real restaurants, especially Portafino's seafood restaurant in nearby Niles, Michigan, but had to settle for Huddle burgers and the grog served up in the dining hall. The weekend flew by and then it was time for the tough goodbye. As my parents pulled away I wondered if they prayed that I would not get into hot water with my rector again.

***

Father Miceli passed away a week ago today at the age of 89. There has been a lot written about him on ND Nation and in the South Bend Tribune. What people had to say about him was all good. A few highlights: He was born in San Giuseppe Jato, Italy in 1923, and moved to the US when he was six years old. He graduated from Notre Dame in 1947 (the year I was born), and was ordained five years later. He celebrated the 60th anniversary of his priesthood earlier this year. He taught theology at ND from 1954 to 1962, and after a one year stint at the University of Portland returned to teach theology at ND from 1963 to 1993. He was the Cavanaugh rector for twenty-eight years, commencing in 1963, and when he left that position in 1990 he held the Notre Dame record for most consecutive years serving as rector of the same dorm. He lived out his retirement years residing in Holy Cross House on ND's campus and pursuing his favorite hobby, making wine.

Despite the legends which originated years ago, there is no question that Black Matt will be remembered by most as a good guy. In fact, a Notre Dame alum and former resident of Cavanaugh has established a scholarship at the university in Father Miceli's memory. Apparently Black Matt had a great sense of humor which my contemporaries in Cavanaugh did not get to see. In 1994, the last year before Cavanaugh was converted into a women's dorm, Father Miceli celebrated a Mass in the Cavanaugh Chapel. At the final blessing, he urged the male congregation to go out after graduation and make as much money as possible to donate to the university, so that the funds could be used to construct an additional women's dorm and "the urinals can be brought back to Cavanaugh."

I regret that I never made a point of getting to know Father Miceli. In fact, I avoided him during the remainder of my freshman year before moving into Dillon in the autumn of '66. I felt the punishment he laid on me the previous October did not fit the crime. Isn't that what the biblical verse "an eye for an eye" is all about? They say Italians never forget when someone does them a disservice. I am 50% Italian. Right or wrong, I was not able to get past the Army Weekend Incident. In retrospect, at some point I wish I had. On many occasions when I returned to Notre Dame following graduation, I made a point of paying a quick visit to Father "Flash" Flanagan, my rector in Dillon, but never ventured to the North Quad to see Black Matt. That was, and remains, my loss. May Father Miceli rest in peace.