Family matters: How the memory of an uncle, being an uncle himself drives Notre Dame DB Thomas Harper

Brad Taylor has hundreds and thousands of former players who could have come to mind when he heard a quote while watching the most recent rendition of HBO’s Hard Knocks. He chose Notre Dame defensive back Thomas Harper.

The head coach at Karns (Tenn.) High School just outside of Knoxville for seven seasons, Taylor had Harper for three. When Taylor heard New York Jets wide receivers coach Zach Azzanni say an undrafted free agent who made the Jets’ 53-man roster “has a high ‘give a shit factor,’” he instantly thought of Harper.

God gifted Harper with qualities of a “natural-born leader,” declared so by Taylor’s predecessor and Karns’ athletic director for the final three years of Harper’s high school career, Tobi Kilgore. But some traits, like giving a s***, are learned. When you see others do it, it makes you want to do it yourself. That’s how it was with Harper and his Uncle Mike.

Harper and his older brother, Devin, learned a lot from their mother’s brother. From basketball in the driveway to football and baseball in the yard, Uncle Mike put the Harper boys through the ringer — in a good way.

Right up until May 2, 2020, the day he died of myeloma, cancer of the plasma cells.

A day Thomas won’t ever forget.

“It was hard,” Thomas told Blue & Gold Illustrated. “He was the life of the party. He was always happy and always had a smile. It hit us hard. It hit the whole family hard.”

When Uncle Mike died, a piece of the Harper boys’ childhood went with him. But it didn’t all disappear. The memories linger in perpetuity. The profound effect Uncle Mike had on the Harpers won’t ever fade, so long as they keep tapping into it.

They sure have.

“My brother was very competitive,” Alacia Harper, the Harper brothers’ mother and Uncle Mike’s sister, told Blue & Gold Illustrated. “He’d do anything to win. He’d play hard. With him being that way, it just made Devin and Thomas even more competitive. They all want to win so bad. It rubbed off on them.”

It sure has.

Thomas parlayed a successful four-year stay at Oklahoma State into a graduate season at the University of Notre Dame. Not bad for a 5-10 ⅝, 195-pound defensive back who once thought his future was Division I basketball until his brother bluntly told him he was too short. That took some coming to terms with for Thomas, and he didn’t really achieve that until he was a junior in high school. But once he did, he turned himself into one of the best football players Karns has ever seen — and that includes his brother.

Thomas was the first player in Karns history to exceed 1,000 receiving yards in a single season. Then he did it again, breaking his own record, with 1,279 receiving yards and 18 touchdowns as a senior. He also had 92 total tackles that year. The switch Thomas flipped from 2016, Taylor’s first season as head coach, to 2017 was unlike anything Taylor had ever seen.

“You could literally see it in his eyes that something clicked in his brain,” Taylor told Blue & Gold Illustrated. “‘This is what I’m going to do, and I’m going to go do it.’”

Thomas played in 35 of Oklahoma State’s 38 games from 2019-21, including 12 as a true freshman. He played in seven in 2022 before injuring his shoulder and transferring to Notre Dame. He made his first Notre Dame start in Week 1 in the Fighting Irish’s home opener, totaling three tackles, including a tackle for loss.

Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman said Thomas is someone Notre Dame will lean on quite a bit throughout 2023.

“He’s a guy that comes from a lot of experience,” Freeman said. “We’d heard really great things when we started recruiting Thomas. He’s done a great job in the nickel position for us.

“We didn’t see a lot of him during the first game because we weren’t playing a lot of nickel defense, but he’s really done a great job of transitioning from Oklahoma State to here and he’s been practicing at a high level.”

Devin, meanwhile, spent six seasons at Oklahoma State. He had 96 total tackles with 10.0 tackles for loss and 6.0 sacks as a super senior in 2021. Ironically, 10 of those tackles and 1.0 of the tackles for loss came against Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl. He was selected by the Dallas Cowboys in the sixth round of the 2022 NFL Draft.

That’s something Uncle Mike would have loved to see. A former high school running back in Winnsboro, S.C., Uncle Mike would have loved to see Thomas slip on a gold helmet and play for one of the most prestigious college football programs of all time, too.

Now he has a bird’s eye for what he already saw coming.

“He knew they had the athleticism,” Alacia Harper said. “Every time he talked to them, he always kept encouraging them. ‘You’re going to make it. You’re going to do good. Just keep focusing, doing what you’re doing. Work hard.’ All the positive things. He just knew. I mean, he just knew.”

A Call Away

What Uncle Mike did see, in real life, was Thomas becoming an uncle of his own. And that meant, of course, Devin becoming a father. Camden Ryder Harper, Devin’s son and Thomas’ nephew, was born on Aug. 9, 2019, 267 days before Uncle Mike died.

Thomas knows what it means to be a good uncle. He had one in Mike.

Now he’s making out of himself.

“Every time I see Cam I want to make him feel good and have a smile on my face,” Thomas said. “Be positive. Just love on him. Make him understand he has me in his corner and if he ever needs anything or anything like that, he can always call me.”

He’s barely 4, but he’s already taking Thomas up on that.

“Cam loves him to death,” Alacia Harper said. “Every time he’s with me, which is at least once a week now, he wants to call Thomas. He says, ‘Let’s call Thomas.’ After he talks to his dad, he wants to talk with his uncle. Every time. Never fails.”

That’s the kind of impact Thomas made on youths dating back to his days as a record-setting star at Karns, according to Kilgore. It was never about Thomas. It was always about those around him.

“Little kids are always looking at older individuals whether you know it or not,” Kilgore told Blue & Gold Illustrated. “There is always going to be that perfect example mixed in with the bad ones. The perfect one stands out. That’s Thomas.

“He’s very encouraging to others. He excels at all areas he puts his mind to. From academics to athletics and all that, he’ll definitely be someone to help mold that young man. He’s got the right traits that his little nephew is going to pick up on for sure.”

Thomas is an avid book reader. He made the Notre Dame media aware of that in his first interview session way back in February. Some of his conquests include “The Servant: A Simple Story About The True Essence of Leadership” by James C. Hunter and “How To Win Friends And Influence People In The Digital Age” by Dale Carnegie.

Those aren’t leisure novels. Those are purposed to better oneself. They’re purposed to ensure one is doing everything he can to be the best son, brother, uncle and teammate possible.

Thomas has always been about that.

He’s a guy who routinely worked out at 5 a.m. before school, once again during school with his team and one final time after school with his brother all because he knew he had to go the extra mile to make it as a slightly undersized but still “unbelievable” athlete, as Taylor put it.

Part of that came from Devin. It helps to see someone from your own school in Tennessee play Power Five football for a program as widely-recognized as Oklahoma State and then get drafted by the Dallas Cowboys. It helps even more when that someone is your own brother.

Devin is on his own path and Thomas is on his, but the latter often follows the former. That traces back to Uncle Mike and the everlasting imprint he made on the young boys he used to toss the ball with in the yard. He saw the best in both of them.

And apples don’t fall far from trees.

“It’s a family I still talk about with other kids and families about how to do things the right way,” Kilgore said. “It’s easy to pull up a picture of Devin or Thomas and say, ‘This is what you can do and the opportunities that are out there if you work hard and do things the right way.’”