As one of the oldest Catholic high schools in the Chicago area, Joliet Catholic Academy is known across the state of Illinois for its football prowess. The Hilltoppers have won an IHSA-record 15 state championships, and former longtime head coach Gordon “Gordie” Gillespie was the catalyst in ushering in the winning tradition.
Gillespie coached Joliet Catholic to its first five titles, winning four in a row from 1975-78. Chicago Bears great Tom Thayer contributed to the latter part of that four-peat as the Hilltoppers went a combined 26-0 in the 1977 and ‘78 seasons. Thayer had immense respect for Gillespie, saying that his coach “had so much respect that he was almost god-like,” and “Gordie made everyone feel like a star.”
Coach Gordie informed Thayer that his future was as an offensive lineman and not at running back. He found every player a job and went out of his way to treat them equally. 
“If [Gordie] ever thought you were a star, he would yell at you in front of your peers or he would congratulate you in front of your peers, and I think that was really important for all of us as young and mature high school kids,” Thayer said.
“To understand that we are all going to be treated the same no matter what we are going to do for the football team, what we are capable of doing, or how we are going to help ourselves to make sure that we [were] going to be part of the best team we could possibly be, and I always admired that about Gordie,” Thayer continued.
Attending Joliet Catholic was the “fulfillment of a dream” for Thayer that had begun in grade school. The tradition around him was unmistakable, as people from his neighborhood, friends he had grown up with, and family members had received their education at the all-boys high school (Joliet Catholic High School became coed Joliet Catholic Academy in 1990 after merging with all-girls St. Francis Academy). Thayer’s older brother even enjoyed a “super successful” career with the Hilltoppers, having also won a pair of championships.
After playing with the likes of Joe Montana at the University of Notre Dame, Thayer was able to fulfill another dream by playing for the Chicago Bears, his hometown team. Chicago selected him with the No. 91 pick in the 1983 NFL draft, a draft best remembered for the first-round selections of future Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterbacks John Elway, Jim Kelly, and Dan Marino.
Rooting for Chicago meant that Thayer would endure the hardships of supporting a team that had little success on the field for much of his early life. Eventually, the Bears began picking up steam, aided by the most iconic figure in franchise history — Walter Payton. Thayer recalled hero-worshipping Payton and what it was like to share the huddle with someone he idolized.
“That was the greatest challenge, because I was a fan, but now I was a member of the team. I’m hero-worshipping in the same huddle that I’m trying to earn a spot in. So you put that mixture inside your head and it’s a crazy time in life. And then to have everything work out the way it did and be part of a successful team, it was just the ultimate prize you could possibly earn,” Thayer said.
Thayer was a member of the 1985 Bears, largely recognized as one of the greatest teams in NFL history. Chicago went 18-1 that season and demolished the New England Patriots 46-10 in the 1986 Super Bowl. In a team littered with alphas and larger-than-life personalities like Dan Hampton, Steve McMichael, Otis Wilson, Mike Singletary and Payton, coach Mike Ditka was the undisputed “king” of them all.
Ditka ruled with an iron fist, and Thayer saw parallels between the Bears coach and Gillespie.
“I always felt if I could play professional football for a guy like Mike Ditka, it’s going to be because of my upbringing through a Gordie Gillespie,” Thayer said. “But if I could play for Ditka, I was really accomplishing something because he held everybody to a higher set of standards, and you had to meet those standards in order to play for a guy like Mike Ditka.”
As part of the Bears’ centennial celebration in 2019, Thayer was listed among the 100 greatest players in team history. That honor was not lost on him as he joined Payton and other players with Chicagoland ties like Dick Butkus and Gary Fencik who grew up as Bears fans.
“It was a huge honor, you could never deny that fact. It meant a lot to me, and just to be on the list of all those other guys you talked about [watching the game],” Thayer said. “Even some of the guys that had come decades before me that I would hear about just being around the Bears…it’s a huge honor.”