That Old School Spirit

At the USC-Notre Dame game a few years back the rain had come down so hard that three-quarters of the crowd had disappeared, and most of Elerding's family and friends had fled to the motor home. But there sat the doctor beneath his umbrella, peering through the deluge until the final gun, even staying afterward to stand and sing the alma mater with a few other waterlogged stragglers. Of course it was only a game, but sometimes in the heat of battle his family would look at him and see a man they never saw on weekdays or Sundays, in summer or in spring, an emotional man, a released man, a man who jumped and screamed.

Of course it was only a game, but somehow the Trojans, bursting out of that stadium tunnel, had come to stand for a way of life. If you asked the doctor, "What is your fundamental philosophy?" he might ramble for 10 minutes and never quite hit on it. But the sight of those USC teams rolling across the Coliseum grass, dominating their opponents—and without a single penny of the government aid that the UCLAs and Oklahomas and Nebraskas depended on, dammit. All of it happened, year after year, because the school annually turned out a phalanx of new achievers, men who pulled themselves up by the bootstraps and went on to be the cream of their crops and the captains of their industries, men who started companies and expanded businesses that created jobs and took people off the welfare rolls, men who took care to plow back their superabundance into the institution that had launched them, so that the Trojan tradition of independence and excellence would go on and on. Yes, the sight of that wave of red and gold articulated everything. Maybe you cannot comprehend that. But a Trojan can. It is a little like being a Marine. You know you are one of the elite.

"Loyalty, respect, tradition, winning," says Elerding's 31-year-old son, Chuck, also a USC graduate. "The school's values become your values. You go to UCLA for four years, but you're a Trojan forever. We were born and raised Trojans. USC has meant everything in our lives. It's something that we are."

Yes, the doctor sensed, there was something almost magical about the school and the success it conferred upon the youths who strode across its 150-acre campus. Hadn't he gone in as the skinny son of a middle-class construction contractor from Los Angeles and come out as a dermatologist so successful his accountant would insist he make some investments as tax write-offs? That was why he had started buying property, and that was why he became rich. He had never planned on it, had never really thought much about money. It was almost mystical.

Certainly he had worked his tail off for everything he had; he was, after all, a self-made man. Yes, it was exhilarating to be self-made, but it was a little lonely, a little frightening, too. Even a self-made man needed someone or something to be thankful to, something for which he could sacrifice. Was that death whispering to him? Choose your altar, doctor. Choose it quickly.

His condition grew worse. The mystery deepened. All the medical knowledge Elerding had accrued, all the brilliance he could buy with all the money he had amassed...and now he suffered from a disease that could not be treated because no one could identify it, no one could name it. You never ever know.

There was no more room for delay. In April, emaciated, the doctor who never allowed himself to be sick surrendered to a hospital. A new battery of tests began. Even the hospital smells that had once been so matter-of-fact now had a different character, a fragrance of horror, an essence of dread. Daylight fled. Night came. Choose your altar, doctor.

Certainly he could do as other men did, leave his legacy to the United Way or the American Cancer Society, to which he had already made some smaller contributions. But wouldn't that be like writing a check, folding it into a paper airplane, and sailing it off into space? God, if he ever made it through this nightmare he wanted to donate his money to something that would give back something positive, like the grin he used to receive when a teenager's acne cleared up. He wanted to give it to someone with whom he could nurture an ongoing relationship, like the old patients who came back with their children and grandchildren. Who knew into whose pockets $1.75 million might vanish if he gave it to some group claiming to feed war refugees in the Sudan or to clothe orphans in Colombia? No, he finally said, searching for a way to explain why he had no urge to donate the money to other causes, "I don't feel an obligation to give to them."

This was money he could watch at work each fall—if he lived, please, God, if he lived—money he could watch tumble end-over-end through the air, that he could help multiply by attending the fund-raising meetings with all the other men and women who shared his passion, money that would continue to work even when he died. He wasn't really giving it to a punter and a head coach, the doctor pointed out, he was giving it to a cause that brought thousands of people together five or six times a year, that created instantaneous friendships. (How many times had his sons, just by wearing the colors, had strangers walk up and say, "You're a Trojan too?") It was a cause that kept the school's name on everyone's tongue, that kept student enrollment high and that inspired others to donate millions more to music and art departments, libraries and science labs. Money that ricocheted, rippled, resounded. Forever. Is that word clear? An infinite number of young men, theoretically, would receive the benefits of his gift, walk the same walks he had, smell the same smells, yearn the same yearnings, hurdle the same hurdles, eternally, everlastingly, perpetually, forever and evermore.

What a time those young men were in for! Hell, if right now he could rip off the tubes and IV bags and escape this reek of disinfectant, he could walk that campus and the memories would wash over him like a morning shower. Trifling memories to anyone else, perhaps, but to him the sensations revived by the turn of a corner, a slant of sunlight, a color of brick were powerful. The tightening he felt in his stomach when the English professor handed out a test in Founders' Hall—since renamed Taper Hall—with the essay question: What was Keats's meaning of beauty in Ode on a Grecian Urn? The amazement he felt one night when he slipped outside the Science Hall to cop a cigarette and the university chancellor called out, friendly as the milkman, "Hello there, young man!" Do you hear the fountain gurgling in Alumni Memorial Park? Oh, the tingle he felt there at graduation when he opened up the commencement program and discovered that Charles E. Elerding had been chosen USC's outstanding biological sciences student. A shadow of his self remained on that campus—his best self?—a self naive and eager and ready to take on the world. The truth, now: How often would he and thousands of others like him ever go back and glimpse that self, were it not for football?