It’s rare to find Zoltan Mesko without a smile on his face these days.

Ask anyone who knows him — his family, teammates, current and former coaches or any of his classmates in the Ross School of Business. They’ll all agree.

But for Mesko — Michigan’s all-time leader in total punts and punt-yardage — life hasn’t always been something to smile about.

Mesko was born in Timisoara, Romania, a town of about 300,000 on the westernmost tip of the country, during a time of great turmoil. The country had been under communist control for more than 40 years, and anger against the regime had sparked an outright rebellion.

Mesko even recalls having to dodge bullets with his parents.

“For the kids, life was very tough,” said Michael, Mesko’s father. “The food was very limited. The gasoline was also limited. To play a game, a ball game, you have the streets and one ball for many families.”

Despite the hardships, Michael and Elizabeth — Mesko’s mother — tried their best to provide for their son, sacrificing much for him.

“For growth for Zoltan, milk (was) very important,” Michael said. “I needed to go very early in the morning (to wait in) line when the store was opening because maybe other people got the milk. If you (were) last in the line or too late, you (were) going home with no milk.”

Mesko recalls his mother waiting in line for three hours to purchase eggs for a birthday cake for her son. On the way home, she tripped on a curb and dropped the eggs she had worked so hard to obtain. “She cried for another three hours,” Mesko said.

“It was always a fight,” Michael said. “To have some things, you need to sacrifice. We just (ate) to survive one day to another day.”

When Mesko was 11, his parents entered the green card lottery and were some of the 55,000 chosen to receive a green card out of the 200,000 that applied.

Luckily for the Meskos, they had friends who had won the lottery the year before to help the family settle down in Twinsburg, Ohio.

Having learned English in school in Romania, 11-year-old Mesko found the transition much easier than his parents.

In Romania, Michael had been a mechanical engineer and Elizabeth a civil engineer. When his family first came to the United States, Mesko’s mother cleaned houses and his father assembled door locks to earn minimum wage.

Since then, things have gotten much better — Michael is currently a quality control engineer and Elizabeth is a geotechnical engineer with a client list that has included NASA and the Cleveland Browns. Though they’ve been busy, Mesko’s parents haven’t missed a single Michigan football home game in the last four years.

And their son has not disappointed in his five years at Michigan, working hard both on the field and in the classroom. He graduated from the Ross School of Business last year with a 3.65 GPA, breaking nearly every Michigan punting record along the way.

“You talk about the American dream — he is (it),” former Michigan head coach Lloyd Carr said of Mesko, whom he recruited out of high school. “He’s not just a football player. He’s a guy that’s making the very most of all of his opportunities here.”

But no matter how busy things got, Mesko always worked to keep a smile on his face and on the faces of those around him.

“He always had this sense of humor,” Michael said. “The whole population in Romania has this spirit, this humor spirit. We are joking, we are laughing. Because this is how you need to take life, seriously, but you need to smile.”

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In two weeks, Mesko will probably have one more reason to smile. On April 22, the 2010 NFL Draft will commence and Mesko is widely believed to be one of the top punters available.

It’s a rare feat for a punter to be selected, and many project Mesko will be one of the only punters in this year’s draft.

Despite the excitement surrounding the upcoming weeks, Mesko admits he didn’t always want to be a football player. Growing up in Romania, he mostly played soccer with his friends, and Michael remembers a stadium across the street from their apartment where Mesko and his friends would sneak in to play.

They would climb the 10-foot high cement fence to enter, careful not to cut their hands on the shards of glass at the top. Sometimes guards with dogs would chase them out, but they always went back.

The change to football came one fateful day during gym class in Ohio. Mesko was in the eighth grade and the class was playing kickball. When it was his turn, he kicked the ball so hard it knocked out a light on the gym ceiling.

Mesko’s gym teacher, Mr. Springer, who was also the high school football coach, decided to give the big leg an ultimatum — pay for the light or play football next year.