Charlie Desnoyers: ‘Smart, innately curious and genuinely excited about research’

Charlie Desnoyers is not your typical “legacy” student. Sure, his grandpa, Henry Desnoyers, was a Notre Dame alumnus. But to a young Desnoyers growing up in south suburban Chicago, Henry Thomas Desnoyers — “HT” to his friends — was just “Pop,” second-generation proprietor of Desnoyers Hardware, the oldest family-owned hardware store in South Dakota. “I didn’t realize he went to Notre Dame until I was in high school, because he passed when I was 8 years old,” Desnoyers said of his father’s...