Category: Sports

Bob Sumner was reffing a high school basketball game years ago when Speedy Morris, then the coach at St. Joseph’s Prep, waved him over.

Perhaps the legendary coach wanted to discuss a call or ask the ref to look for something on the court. Nope. He just wanted to tell Sumner what he thought of the ref’s beloved college football team.

“You know something,” Morris said. “Notre Dame sucks.”

Sumner’s passion for the Irish runs so deep — Saturday’s game against Michigan State marks his 50th annual pilgrimage to South Bend, Ind. — that even black-and-white referee stripes can’t hide his love for the blue and gold. Most don’t even know his name.

“People will say, ‘Bob Sumner is doing the game,’” Sumner said. “They’ll say, ‘That wasn’t Bob. That was Notre Dame Harvey.’”

Sumner, like so many Irish supporters, didn’t attend Notre Dame. But that didn’t stop him from falling for the Irish in the 1970s as a kid in Grays Ferry, where it seemed like half the neighborhood was split between Penn State and the Golden Domers.

The neighborhood — just like pockets of Northeast Philly and Delaware County — often felt like a Notre Dame satellite campus.

Sumner’s Uncle John took him as a kid to see the Irish at JFK Stadium and he used to race home with his brother after church at St. Gabriel’s to watch the ND highlight show.

In 1977, Sumner flew to South Bend with a bunch of older guys from the neighborhood who watched Notre Dame every Saturday at Dean’s Bar. Notre Dame Harvey — no one quite knows why his family started calling him Harvey, but it’s easy to explain the Notre Dame part — was born.

The Grays Ferry clan — “The Notre Dame Club of Grays Ferry,” they called themselves — went out every season as they drove Winnebagos, rented buses, and boarded airplanes to turn South Bend into South Philly.

One guy said he told his wife before they got married that the annual trip was part of the deal. Sumner even played the fight song at his wedding.

They hang in the bars, walk around campus, go to church, and even once helped paint the gold helmets. It’s hard to explain, Sumner said, until you make the trip. The school became his identity as there’s no hiding his love for ND. Even when he’s trying to ref.

“I knew I couldn’t ‘T’ Speedy up,” said Sumner who ends every phone call with a ‘Go Irish.’ “He’s a legend.”

A nail in the foot

Sumner’s first trip to Notre Dame in October 1977 came a week after the Irish wore green jerseys and blew out fifth-ranked Southern California. The team ran onto the field that day behind a wooden Trojan horse, which was still on campus when the guys from Grays Ferry arrived.

“I was jumping on it and I stepped on a nail,” said George Sumner, Notre Dame Harvey’s older brother. “I had to go to the hospital on my first night on campus.”

A nail? No big deal. Sumner got a shot at the hospital and was back with the clan that night. The Irish played Navy the next afternoon and the guys returned to Dean’s at 29th and Tasker with a win.

“First time in the stadium, I had the tears running,” Sumner said. “It’s something that you grew up with and you saw it on TV. But when you’re there, it’s like, ‘Oh my God. I’m here.’”

The first trips were run by neighborhood pillars Jack Keenan and Greg Horan before Notre Dame Harvey took over. They connected with alumni, found ways to score tickets to sold-out games, and have met everyone from Ara Parseghian to Will Fuller.

Lou Holtz even wrote a letter to Bob Sumner after Sumner coached the St. Gabriel CYO football team — of course, they’re the Fightin’ Irish — to a 1992 championship.

“Just wanted to let you know that the ‘other’ Fightin’ Irish football team in South Bend has heard about your capture of the Parade of Champions,” Holtz wrote.

Most of the crew who have traveled with Notre Dame Harvey are Subway Alumni, the moniker worn with pride by ND fans who didn’t go to school there. They used to pack a bus with neighborhood guys and made sure they had enough beer and hoagies for the ride.

“Going out was phenomenal,” George Sumner said. “But coming home was a long ride. Win or lose. It’s brutal.”

The annual trip became an event. For years, they parked their Winnebago next to the stadium all weekend and showered in the basketball arena. They were living large, George Sumner said.

“People say, ‘You go there,’” said George Sumner, who went to Temple but cheered for the Irish against the Owls. “I say, ‘Yeah.’ My wife says, ‘Stop lying.’ I say I go every year. But I did sneak into two classes. I snuck into a philosophy class and a chemistry class so I’ve taken classes there. Dean’s list.”

A kitty on the bar

Harvey planned to leave Thursday morning before dawn, which he figured would get him to the Linebacker Lounge by 4:30 p.m.

“We’re in ND,” Harvey texted Thursday at 4:38 p.m. “Go Irish.”

They planned to have a “a couple cold ones” at the Linebacker Lounge and “go as far as their body takes us.” The 68-year-old Harvey said the crew might not stay out like they used to and has learned the importance of a good breakfast.

But the bartenders at the spot by the football stadium still know the crew from Philly as the “Grays Ferry Gang” who always pile their cash together on the bar.

“We’re Philly people,” Sumner said. “We throw up a kitty. People don’t know what a kitty is. The bartenders we know in the Linebacker say, ‘They’re all right. That’s a kitty.’”

The crew is about 700 miles from Grays Ferry, but they make an Indiana watering hole feel like Dean’s, where they still gather once a year to watch the Irish. They pool their money together and tell the bartender to pull from the pile whenever someone orders a drink. The leftover cash belongs to the bartender.

“Being from South Philly and Grays Ferry, you always took care of the bartenders and treated them with respect just like a police officer,” Sumner said. “We went to Pittsburgh one time for a game and threw up a kitty with 300 or 400 dollars on the bar. Guy goes ‘What’s that?’”

Sumner gave him a South Philly education. The crew stayed for two hours and left $100 on the bar.

“He goes, ‘What’s that?’ I said, ‘That’s yours. We’re leaving,’” Sumner said. “He was almost in tears. We’re walking out the door and says to the gang, ‘By the way, guys, I open up tomorrow at 8 o’clock.’”

The trip is planned around the game on Saturday but it has become so much more than just the four quarters. It’s the kitty on the bar, the pep rallies, the excitement when the crowds begin to fill campus on Friday, and the tailgate on Saturday — “Bring your own food,” they say — as kickoff nears.

“People still think we’re crazy,” said 71-year-old George Sumner. “But there’s so many people we’ve met and friendships formed all over Notre Dame.”

‘I felt like Rudy’

Sumner bartends each summer at Keenan’s — the North Wildwood bar Jack Keenan used to run — and one of his coworkers lives near Joey O’Brien, the star recruit from La Salle who is now a freshman at Notre Dame. Harvey needed to meet the kid and his parents so his buddy set up a dinner at a bar in Lafayette Hill.

“I didn’t even know where Lafayette Hill was,” said the guy who calls his South Jersey town “Little South Philly.”

He listened to O’Brien’s father Joe tell stories — “He’s like one of us,” Harvey said — and talked to the kid about playing at ND. Earlier this year, Harvey was wandering around campus the day before the Blue and Gold spring game when the football team walked by on their way to practice. O’Brien spotted him and asked Harvey if he wanted to come to practice.

“I felt like Rudy,” he said.

A staffer brought him to head coach Marcus Freeman and introduced him as “O’Brien’s uncle.” He was in. Notre Dame Harvey — the guy who used to call into Howard Eskin’s WIP radio show to defend the Irish — watched practice on the sidelines. Eventually, he made it back to his crew after telling them he was making a coffee run. Three hours later, he had another story to tell.

“I was just out for a casual walk and one of the greatest thrills of my life happened,” Sumner said. “I was like a kid in the candy store. Everyone treated me great. Freeman must’ve really thought I was his uncle.”