Santorum's aspirations clear even in '76 at Carmel

Brother details GOP candidate's dedication, time in the suburbs

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It was 1976 and a wave of peace, love and drugs had flooded the country. The Northern suburbs were no exception.

But Rick Santorum was.

Ripped jeans, leather sandals and tie-dye shirts were all the rage.

Rock band Styx performed at Libertyville High School that year, and Mundelein High School students regularly duct-taped over their license plates as they drove across town to hurl water balloons at their rivals, the Carmel Catholic High School “fudgies” — who received their unfortunate nickname from the brown uniforms they wore.

Yet, as all this was going on, Santorum, a young man new to the area, kept to himself — hitting the books and spending his free time working at Harrison House Conference Center in Lake Bluff, sacking money away for his future plans. College. Law school. Politics.

An unrelenting work ethic and laserlike focus on the task at hand characterized the GOP presidential contender's only year in the suburbs. Now, they've propelled the dark horse onto unexpected success, close on the heels of field favorite Mitt Romney, to whom he lost the Iowa caucuses by just eight votes.

Santorum will need that work ethic in the week ahead. He received just 9 percent of the vote in Tuesday's New Hampshire primary and he moves on to make-or-break primaries in South Carolina, Florida and eventually, Illinois.

It is a shoe-leather quest on a shoestring budget as Santorum's war chest stands at just $1.3 million, compared to Romney's $32.2 million, according to the Federal Election Commission.

Yet, it is a path that Santorum was preparing for even as a senior transfer to Carmel in the 1975-76 school year.

“I'm going to be governor,” Dan Santorum recalls his brother Rick telling other teens at a basketball practice, just a few years before the family's move to the suburbs, where the boys would attend Carmel.

Most of the kids, Dan Santorum said, laughed at his brother's prediction at the time.

In 1974, the boys' father, Aldo, a clinical psychologist, was transferred to the Great Lakes Naval Station's Medical Center in Great Lakes from Butler, Pa. The family of four — eldest sister Barbara stayed behind in Pennsylvania to begin her first year at Clarion University — moved into a duplex on base, near the medical center where Aldo and wife, Catherine, a nurse, worked.

Dan Santorum describes the family as religious, but more “cultural Catholics” than the devout spiritual observer his brother, a father of seven, exemplifies on the campaign trail.

“It just means more as you get older,” Dan Santorum says of his brother's deepening faith. “You understand it better. You have kids.”

Dan Santorum describes his parents as apolitical, people who “didn't show their hand” at politics. Often, the subject of conversation at the family dinner table at night was sports.

Dan Santorum says being uprooted wasn't easy on either of the boys — who are 11 months apart — especially Rick, who would be beginning his senior year in a new place.

“But Billie Jean King says champions adjust,” says Dan Santorum, now CEO of the Professional Tennis Registry in Hilton Head, S.C. “He adjusted, went to Carmel, and he enjoyed it.”

Rick Santorum, his brother says, mostly kept to himself, studying and spending much of his free time working at Harrison House — where the Shah of Iran paid a visit during one of Santorum's shifts — and playing golf on the occasional Monday at Onwentsia Golf Course in Lake Forest.

He had no girlfriend at the time, his brother remembers, but kept busy “working and messing around, playing sports and golf.”

Dan Santorum recalls the brothers' first Blackhawks game at the old Chicago Stadium, attending concerts at Ravinia and hearing the Eagles play in Chicago.

A number of families on base sent their children to Carmel, and Dan Santorum said the boys regularly carpooled to school with several other families, including Julius, Augie and Jonas Aviza.

Jonas Aviza and his wife, Joellyn, now New Hampshire residents and registered Democrats, laugh now that they see Santorum everywhere.

Joellyn said her husband has joked after hearing Santorum at debates that he hasn't changed much, spouting facts in the same manner he did at family dinners years ago, when the neighbors dined together.

The 1976 Carmel “Spirit” yearbook lists Santorum, a serious-looking young man with pork chop sideburns and a paisley shirt — as a senior transfer student who participated in intramural sports.

But the school — which was “co-institutional” at the time, with girls and boys attending separate high schools under the same roof — also records that he was a member of the National Honor Society and the school's service club.

School officials said they had no official position on the fact that one of their alumni is making a bid for president. Marketing Director Dawn Jenich noted that Santorum's socially conservative beliefs have ignited a conversation among members of the school community. He has taken strong stances against both gay marriage and abortion in all cases.

The Rev. Kyrin Caggiano, a young Carmelite priest who taught at Carmel in the late 1960s and '70s, said he learned quickly that “if you could hold a kid's attention, then they will learn.”

That's a philosophy that may have propelled a number of the school's members onto careers in public service.

Along with Santorum, school alumni include former state Rep. Al Salvi, and former St. Charles Mayor Sue Klinkhamer. “There was an open dialogue,” Klinkhamer said. “There had to be. The world was spinning so fast.”

Months after his graduation from Carmel, Santorum took part in his first real campaign as a freshman at Penn State University, organizing students for Republican Sen. John Heinz's first Senate race.

Santorum came back only for two more summers after high school graduation to the suburbs and the family home where his parents lived until 1990. But in less than two months, he will be bring his newly energized campaign “home” again to Illinois, where his supporters spent the last week gathering petition signatures and soliciting volunteers.

A virtual lifetime of campaigning exists between now and then, with the task at hand next week's South Carolina primary.

“He just keeps going,” Dan Santorum says of his brother, “but he says it's a marathon.”