One way or another Notre Dame owed John Adams his 15 minutes of fame. When Adams went to South Bend he knew that sub six-foot linebackers with Irish mothers and big dreams were a dime a dozen. Still, Notre Dame is Notre Dame and even if they didn't come looking for John Adams he was happy to be there.
Then, Lou Holtz, the last legendary coach which Notre Dame employed arrived on campus. John Adams was in good shape. He weighed his options. He could be a sad sack heading out to some fantasy gridiron camp to fend off a midlife crisis in a few decades time or he could go for it. He tried for that most romantic of cameos. The walk on. A dozen wannabees standing at the back of the hall as the Fighting Irish jocks recruited out of high schools all over America sat in their assigned seats.
Adams made it through four, five months of early morning sessions before they asked for the play-book back and started handing the fabled uniforms and helmets out to other guys. Ah well.
Senior year and with no chance of making the team he left his mark in South Bend by camping out for three nights in a row to be first in line for football tickets. Ordering pizzas, sandwiches, sustenance. Created a little spectacle and got 50-yard line tickets.
Looking back at all that time and thought devoted to football and girls he laughs. In the 1980s there was so few questions.
Ronald Reagan gulled everyone in a place like Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana. Now on days when the skies are grey and the stories in Ballymun are black he laughs to himself and wonders where his head was at.
Not too long ago he saw a friend from Notre Dame. He said John, I have some good news for you and proffered an envelope. John Adams opened the envelope with his heart first. Could this be the funding he'd been campaigning for to aid Ballymun's Youth Action Project? The YAC is devoted to aiding the recovery of drug addicts and helping their families. It needs money like a baby needs food.
Instead it was news of an award. John Adams is this year's winner of Notre Dame's Dr Thomas A Dooley award for Community Service. Initially he couldn't help but be a little disappointed. Money would have been manna. The Dooley Award is the first big trophy to arrive in the Na Fianna GAA club this year.
John Adams moved to Ireland four years ago, and encouraged by men like Leo Fay and Paul Smith threw in his lot with the Mobhi Road mob. Undeterred by never having really played the game (well it's Na Fianna we're talking about!) he learned the rudiments and established himself as the right corner back on the clubs vaunted Division Seven team. He knows that neither Tommo Lynch or Kieran McGeeney are likely to lose their places to him before the club's All-Ireland semi-final appearance on February 20th.
By the time he'd arrived in these parts wooing Anna Marie O'Shea from Beaufort, he'd added a Masters degree in Administration, Planning and Social Policy from Harvard to his resume and done a little work for Senator George Mitchell. A job opened up in Ballymun and he's been there since. His beat is that part of Ballymun that some people refer to as Beirut.
Lately some meetings must be held in the evenings because some people in Ballymun are working. People arrive to those meetings sometimes in cars. Yet change is so gradual that John Adams can hardly see it. Meanwhile, another kid falls between the cracks every day.
You can hear the frustration in his voice. Take education. Sixty five per cent of the kids don't do a Leaving Cert, so in Ballymun they began an after school programme in one of the Towers. The kids who need it most get it. Kids with no support at home, nowhere to go. They get a meal, help with homework, some part of their lives planned out by the programme. They thrive. John Adams can see the kids progressing in happy skips. Of course they have no funding.
Money for the programme is seeping to them through the local drugs task force. Drip, drip, drip. Every penny a bloody struggle.
None of the people who wear suits and stamp forms in town want to know.
Education. They've been pushing for an alternative school and finally they got a pilot project going. That runs out in June of this year. Then what?
He sees kids at risk, out on the streets till nine, 10, 11, at night and beyond. Kids with both parents wasting away from addiction. Lots of good kids and lots of heroin floating around.
How to keep them apart? Last week John had a story. A good kid, with two parents suffering addiction gets sent home from school. He'd gotten himself up in the morning when the social worker arrived. He'd got himself to school but arrived late. So he's sent home, left to his own devices and somebody else has to restore his confidence, show him once again that there's a way out.
DRIP, drip, drip. John has tried a few projects centred around sports. He produces a football on Friday afternoons and they are drawn to it like little filings to a magnet. He started with gaelic but it made chaos. Soccer works better.
Still, the amount of anger the kids have. It's head to head every two or three minutes but he rides it out. Somedays it's mayhem, always it's unstructured but the kids turn up. It's a landmark in the week. Fun, even.
On Saturdays he coaches the under-12s in Na Fianna. He notices the difference. At 10.30 a.m. 20 or so cars pull up and kids appear. If they need to be somewhere for a game, the fleet dawdles and pulls off with the kids in it. He can't help thinking about the kids back in Ballymun.
He'll drive to South Bend, Indiana, on Thursday for his award. He'll take in some basketball at the weekend. First time back in nine years. He'll have a couple of colleagues from Ballymun along and they'll be trying to pick a few brains, looking to find a few avenues down the fundraising labyrinth.
He knows what people say about the big cash machine that is Notre Dame University. He knows the resentments the Fightin' Irish stir up but there's a lot of good happening there too, he says. Lot of hearts in right places. And this week John Adams hopes his award will open a few doors and shake down a few dollars for Ballymun.
