Hopelessly devoted to Blue

The Lucky Couch comes through

The Lucky Couch works some mean mojo.

Susan Chesser knows it for a fact. The 1986 Carolina Nursing graduate, who works as a health educator at the UNC Wellness Center, lived in Granville Towers as a student. During her first year, the 1981-82 men’s basketball team was something special. When the Tar Heels played on TV, Chesser and friends gathered in a Granville East lounge in which the centerpiece was the Lucky Couch.

It became a tradition wrapped in the superstition that if anyone broke contact with the Lucky Couch during a game, the Tar Heels would lose. It seemed to work. Any doubts vanished when the Lucky Couch’s magic carried Michael Jordan’s late-game jumper through the net in the 1982 NCAA championship game.

“When we won the NCAA, we were on our lounge couch, and that kind of established it for me,” Chesser said. It helped that she was already a rock-solid fan after a childhood spent watching the Tar Heels on TV with her siblings and her late father, Ben Bullock ’57, who cheered on the NCAA champs his senior year.

She remembers watching games with her sister and brother, only to find that during tense moments their dad had retreated to the back of the house. The family tradition continued with Chesser’s daughter catching Carolina Fever as a first-year student when the team won the 2017 NCAA title. A son, Stephen, may deliver another title as he is set to graduate in 2022.

Susan and William Chesser started a family tradition of the Lucky Couch to help the Tar Heel men’s basketball team. (Courtesy of Susan Chesser)

After graduating, she dated William Chesser ’85. The two often watched games on Lucky Couch II. They married and purchased a house, complete with Lucky Couch III. “I think we bought it because we couldn’t steal the one from Granville Towers,” Chesser said.

The same rules applied: Maintain continuous contact with the Lucky Couch, except during halftime, to ensure a Tar Heel victory. “We were the kind who, through superstition and tradition, crossed our fingers, sat on the couch, wore the same clothes, did the same things. Like Woody Durham [Carolina’s longtime play-by-play radio announcer] said, ‘Go where you go and do what you do.’ We did that and we had a really close-knit group.”

Lucky Couch III hosted many watch parties, but it’s long gone, worn out by the years and three children.

The Chessers remain close to friends from their Carolina days. In fact, Chesser and her college roommates connect by FaceTime during some basketball games. “We’re not the most savvy about athletics. It’s more like love and support. We’re just Carolina through and through, especially for Duke-Carolina games.”

Who knows; maybe the Chessers will christen a Lucky Couch IV in time to work its mojo tomorrow when the Heels play at Duke.

“I’m part of something.”

Jimmy Smith’s Excellent Tar Heel Fan Adventure would make great cinema.

The camera follows him to Kenan Stadium as the crowd and its fervor grow. With a Carolina Blue sky overhead, he passes the Morehead-Patterson Bell Tower. He lets out a whoop when he hears the band play “Here Comes Carolina.” Finally, he enters the stadium’s bowl to see the football team warming up on the field below.

For Smith, a housekeeper at Carolina’s Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City, his trips to home games are only part of his 24/7 love for the Tar Heels. It’s on display every day as he wears Carolina Blue, a hoodie and shorts with signature Carolina argyles.

Smith’s devotion grew as he grew up during the late 1960s and 1970s in the Pamlico County town of Alliance, about 12 miles west of New Bern. Like most children, he learned by example.

Back then, folks could watch only three major network TV channels. “It was a small town. On Saturdays and Wednesday nights, everything shut down to watch basketball.” He watched basketball and football with his mother, but football eventually became his favorite.

By then, he had heard his 92-year-old mother describe her 1947 high school trip from Alliance to Chapel Hill for a Carolina football game that featured Charlie “Choo Choo” Justice, a two-time runner-up for the Heisman Trophy. With that pedigree, it’s no wonder Smith follows football.

Jimmy Smith in his workspace at the UNC Institute of Marine Sciences, wearing his Carolina Blue gear and showing off the posters on the wall. (Photo by Sally Dowd)

“It really started with me in the early ’70s with football and progressed from there,” Smith said. Gator Bowl wins in 1979 versus Michigan and in 1981 over Arkansas cemented his place among the Carolina faithful.

Forty years later, Smith relishes every football game day. Televised away games require proper preparation before he settles in to watch. “On those days, it’s like my whole life resonates around the game. I’ve got to make sure I have things like errands and shopping done before the game starts.”

At kickoff, his focus narrows. “I rarely eat during a game because I’m too busy coaching and watching.”

For TV games, he wears an Under Armour Carolina shirt, gray sweatpants and black socks. “As long as they’re winning, that’s what I wear,” he said.

For home games, Smith steps up his game. It takes three hours for his gray Dodge Dart (“IAM4UNC” license plate) to reach the University’s Friday Center, where he tailgates with friends. As he nears Chapel Hill, his excitement intensifies when he hits I-40’s exit 273A. “That’s when I start losing it,” he said. “At the Friday Center, the first thing you see is our group. We can have anywhere between six-to-ten folks who’ve met each other over the years.”

They bring heaps of food, with morning tailgates featuring Smith’s breakfast pizza, bacon and eggs and doughnuts.

“It’s fun, especially when you’ve been working hard all week,” he said.

After tailgating, Smith rides a shuttle bus to join the jostling fans that sweep him past the “Choo Choo” Justice statue and into the stadium.

“I get very emotional in an excited way to where, I don’t want to say I’m teary-eyed, but it feels like I’m part of something,” Smith said.

When a Nobel Laureate cheers you on

When Dr. Aziz Sancar was a boy living in rural Turkey, he dreamed of becoming a goalkeeper for the Turkish national soccer team.

Instead, he settled for a Nobel Prize.

Sancar (top row, second from right) as goalkeeper for the 1962 Mardin Lisesi high school team. (Courtesy of Aziz Sancar)

Sancar, a molecular biologist at Carolina, won a 2015 Nobel Prize in chemistry for mechanistic studies of DNA repair. He still participates in soccer, but as a dedicated fan of Carolina’s powerhouse women’s soccer team.

His long-ago dream ended when he realized he wanted to attend medical school. “I had to make a decision between education and sports, so I decided to concentrate on science,” he said.

Now, he’s the Sarah Graham Kenan Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics. Sancar came to Carolina in 1982, one of the most memorable years for Tar Heel athletics as the women’s soccer team won the NCAA championship and, oh yeah, the men’s basketball team won a national title.

The championship was the first of the soccer team’s 21 NCAA titles, all under Head Coach Anson Dorrance. Since then, Sancar’s appreciation for the team’s amazing accomplishments has grown.

“I love all sports at Carolina, but soccer is my true love,” Sancar said.

Dorrance said that he knows when Sancar attends a game and will often speak with him afterward. After Sancar won the Nobel Prize, he met with the team, which gave him a framed Carolina jersey with the handwritten inscription “In honor of our Nobel Laureate.” Sancar also received a U.S. National Team jersey autographed by former Carolina star Mia Hamm. He described that day as “one of the happiest times of my life.”

Sancar wears a mask made by Tar Heel superstar Heather O’Reilly from her U.S. National Team jersey. (Courtesy of Aziz Sancar)

Sancar has found ways to blend his love of science with his love of Tar Heel soccer. For an article in his favorite research journal, he promoted the team by including a photo of himself wearing a pandemic face mask made by one of Carolina’s most famous players, three-time Olympic gold medalist and World Cup winner Heather O’Reilly. It’s not your average handmade face mask. O’Reilly sewed it using fabric from her U.S. National Team jersey.

In his Nobel autobiography, Sancar describes working on his family’s farm, his admiration for his illiterate yet intelligent mother and that shoes were a luxury. “Like every boy throughout most of the world, I grew up playing soccer,” he wrote. He played goalkeeper for his high school and two club teams. “I was very good because I had fast reflexes and was fearless.” He sometimes made critical saves to help win games and his teammates carried him of the field on their shoulders. Sancar was invited to regional trials for the Turkish under-18 team, but decided his height and weight were not sufficient for a national-caliber player. He stopped soccer after the 10th grade.

“My love of the game remains, and I am an ardent supporter of Turkish and American national teams, the Galatasaray Professional Turkish soccer team and the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill Women’s Soccer Team.”

Look for a future installment about Carolina super fans featuring a Russian history professor who earned championship bling, a School of Education associate professor who makes women’s basketball a family affair and a School of Government staffer who has attended every Tar Heel baseball opening day since 2002.