“A Product of My Mom and Dad”
In 2001, I was in Boston at the same time Michael Jordan and the Washington Wizards were playing the Boston Celtics. Before the game, I went down to the locker room to visit with Jordan.
“Hey, Williams,” he said, “I saw you on television this morning talking about the book. You know, you’re telling all my stories!”
I grinned and said, “You know, Mike, your stories are getting raves from readers all over the country. People say, ‘When you see Mike, thank him for being a role model.’”
He grinned and said, “I’m just a product of my mom and dad. Everything I am today is a result of the way James and Deloris Jordan raised me and all the things they taught me.”
A Comforter in a Crisis
On Memorial Day weekend 2000, a terrible tragedy invaded Julius Erving’s family. The family was having a cookout, and Erving’s youngest son, Cory, went out to the store to buy bread—and never returned.
It was every parent’s worst nightmare. Cory had simply disappeared without a trace. Was he the victim of a crime or an accident? Had he run away without leaving word?
Erving went before the news cameras and pleaded for his son to come home and for anyone with information to bring it forward. He also asked me to be the family spokesperson in dealing with the media, which I readily agreed to do.
On July 6, more than a month after Cory was last seen alive, his body was found in a car submerged in a pond less than a mile from the Erving home. He had taken a shortcut along a dirt road—a route he had taken many times before—and had lost control of the car. He was either killed outright in the crash or was unable to escape.
Cory’s funeral drew hundreds of friends of the Erving family, including Oprah Winfrey. As part of the Erving family contingent, I was with Julius, his wife Turquoise, their children, and Oprah. The woman known as “the queen of all media” was not there in a public capacity but in an intensely intimate capacity. She was there as a comforter.
I was very impressed and deeply moved to see Oprah in that setting, helping Julius and his family process their raw emotions. She spoke to them, embraced them, and wept softly with them. She set an example of how to handle oneself in a crisis with hurting people.
I talked to her briefly, but she devoted herself to reaching out to the Erving family. I came away from that experience with a new respect for the depths of Oprah’s empathy and compassion for others.
Bill Bright
“Don’t Forget the Love”
When our children were of school age, I had dinner with Campus Crusade for Christ founder Bill Bright and his wife, Vonette, after they had moved their headquarters to Orlando. Bill was fascinated by our large brood—at that time, four birth children and fourteen children by international adoption. He wanted to know how we managed our big household.
I told Bill about some of the rules and discipline we had instilled in order to keep our big family functioning smoothly. Bill listened patiently.
Then, very gently, he said, “That’s all very good, Pat, but don’t forget the love.”
I always remembered that wise advice. Yes, a household needs order, but kids need love. While setting up your rules and discipline, don’t forget the love.
The Fundamentals of Life
I once had former Knicks and Pistons shooting guard Allan Houston as a guest on my Orlando radio show. He told me he learned the meaning of fatherhood and manhood from his own father—and from his son.
“Every son wants to be like his dad,” Houston told me. “My seven-year-old son has a toy shaving kit he brings into the bathroom when I’m shaving. He takes off his shirt and stands in front of the sink next to me and pretends to shave. That’s a reminder that he’s watching me and learning what it means to be a man. And it reminds me that I learned all about being a man from my own father.
“My dad was a basketball coach, and he’s not shy about telling people where I got my jump shot! He taught me the fundamentals of the game. He knew I’d have an advantage against my opponents if I was prepared and knew what to expect on the court. And he taught me the fundamentals of life so I’d be equipped to deal with every situation life might throw at me.
“My father taught me that making money is not as important as how you treat people while you’re making it. He taught me the fundamentals of life, and now I’m teaching them to my son.”
A Father’s Legacy
Jameer Nelson is the starting point guard for the Orlando Magic. He grew up in Chester, Pennsylvania. His father, Floyd “Pete” Nelson, was a welder who maintained tugboats at a shop on the Delaware River. In 2007, Pete Nelson was reported missing. Jameer went home to take part in the search for his fifty-seven-year-old father.
Had his dad been kidnapped? Would there be a ransom demand? Had his dad suffered heatstroke or a heart attack? Had he fallen into the water? The hardest part was not knowing.
Two days after Pete’s disappearance, fishermen found his body in the river. The cause of death was never determined. Pete was a retired Marine, a Vietnam combat veteran. Jameer and his brothers called him “Pops.” They were going to miss their dad’s incredible barbecue, his wild tall tales, his laughter, and his wisdom.
One of the most important lessons Jameer learned from his dad was a strong work ethic. After Jameer achieved stardom in the NBA, he tried to talk his dad into retiring. “Why keep working so hard, Pops?” he said. “Why not let me make things easier for you?” But Pete liked working with his hands. He wasn’t ready to retire. That relentless work ethic spoke volumes to Jameer.
Pete’s funeral was held at St. Luke’s Community Christian Church in Chester. Jameer’s teammates and the Magic staff went to Chester for the funeral. One of Jameer’s Magic teammates, Dwight Howard, told the congregation, “We’ve come to show that we’re a team, we’re a family. Jameer may have lost his earthly father, but nothing can take away his heavenly Father.”
The officiating minister, Bishop Anthony Hanna Sr., was Pete’s son-in-law. He said, “We’re all asking, ‘Why did Pete Nelson have to die?’ I’ll tell you why. If he hadn’t died, you wouldn’t be in church today, would you? He died to make you better, to make you stronger, to make you wiser. And the only way for you to be better, stronger, and wiser is through Jesus Christ.”
After the funeral, Jameer told reporters, “My dad is still with me. He’ll always be with me.” When Jameer’s father died, he left behind a life-changing legacy that lives on.
Doc Rivers
An “Unrealistic” Goal
Before Glenn “Doc” Rivers became an NBA coach, he enjoyed a thirteen-year career as a point guard in the NBA. His parents, Chicago policeman Grady Rivers and his wife, Bettye, taught him to believe in himself and his dreams. When Glenn was in the third grade, his teacher tried to shrink his dreams down to size. The teacher had the students come up to the chalkboard and write what they planned to be when they grew up. Young Glenn took the chalk and wrote “professional basketball player.”
The teacher told him that was an unrealistic goal. She erased the words Glenn had written on the board and said, “Think of something else you’d like to do and write that on the board—lawyer, doctor, shoe clerk, anything.”
Glenn took the chalk and again wrote “professional basketball player.”
The teacher erased his words again and gave him one last chance.
Glenn wrote—well, you know what he wrote. So the teacher sent him to the principal’s office. After hearing the boy’s side of the story, the principal sided with Glenn. So did his parents.
And maybe that’s why Doc Rivers has had such a long NBA career.
Laura Bush
A Dad-Shaped Hole in the Soul
In April 2005, the National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI) honored country music star Buddy Jewell, Fox News analyst Fred Barnes, Atlanta Falcons defensive back Allen Rossum, and me at its annual Fatherhood Awards Gala. It was an award for dads who exemplify committed fatherhood.
I figured someone at NFI had heard about my nineteen kids (four birth kids, fourteen adopted, one by remarriage) and said, “Well, Pat Williams at least deserves an award for quantity, if not quality.” As I contemplated the award I was about to receive, I was keenly aware of the times I had failed as a father, times I should have been more strict (or less), times I should have listened more, and times I should have given better advice.
The event was held in the grand ballroom of the Willard InterContinental Hotel in DC, just two blocks from the White House, and our speaker for the evening was First Lady Laura Bush. I looked around the ballroom and thought, What am I doing here? I’m a pair of old sneakers in a roomful of tuxedoes!
It was quite an emotional evening. R&B star Cincere performed a song called “Daddy” with a kids’ chorus that sang, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, come home!” I had to dab at my eyes during that one!
Then Laura Bush spoke. “Across America,” she said, “twenty-four million children live apart from their father. Forty percent of these children haven’t seen their father in the last year. As Roland Warren has said, ‘Kids have a hole in their soul the shape of their dad.’ Statistics show that when children grow up without a mom and dad at home, they’re more likely to fall behind in school, more likely to experiment with drugs and alcohol, and more likely to be in trouble with the law. . . . The evidence is clear: Children need fathers in their lives.”
She also talked about a Milwaukee program called Today’s Dads that mentors teen fathers to become good fathers, and she talked about a young man she had met named Ken. He had grown up with drug-addicted parents and surrounded by crime. When his girlfriend became pregnant, Ken decided to give his little boy a better life than he’d had. With the help of the Today’s Dads program, Ken walked away from the drug trade and took a job delivering pizzas. By working nights, he was able to stay home with the baby during the day. Selling drugs was easy money; delivering pizzas is hard work, but, said Laura Bush, “Ken wants to be a man and a father.”
Kids deserve hands-on, committed fathers. No matter what a man does for a living, if he has children, fatherhood is his number one job.
Paul Simon
The Poet and His Son
In January 2014, I was at the arena for a home game when word spread that musician Paul Simon was in the building. In my younger days, Simon and Garfunkel were my musical heroes. Songs like “The Sound of Silence,” “Mrs. Robinson,” “Bridge over Troubled Water,” and “The Boxer” formed the soundtrack of my early adult years. There has never been a musical duo like Simon and Garfunkel, and their songs, with their beautiful harmonies and powerful messages, never age.
Somebody pointed Paul Simon out to me and said, “There he is in the front row—the guy in the blue ball cap.”
During a time-out, I slipped over to where he was seated and introduced myself. He greeted me warmly and introduced his teenage son seated next to him. He explained that he and his son were huge NBA fans and were visiting NBA arenas across the country.
“I grew up with your music,” I said, “and it’s a real treat to have you in our arena.”
“Thank you, Pat,” he said. “I’ll be back in March. I’m doing a concert in this very building.”
Our chat was brief, and the most important part was not what Paul Simon said to me but what I saw with my own eyes: an involved, committed father, investing time in his relationship with his son. I never get tired of seeing a dad doing what he was put on earth to do, being a guide, friend, and hero to his son.
John Maxwell
Learning Leadership in the Home
John Maxwell’s name is synonymous with leadership. The author of more than sixty books, including The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, Maxwell has devoted most of his career to teaching the principles of leadership through his speaking and writing. In 1985, he founded the INJOY Group, which produces leadership seminars and conferences. I once asked him how he came to be fascinated with leadership.
“I learned about leadership in the home,” he told me. “My father believed in personal growth and leadership. When we were little, Mom and Dad read to us constantly. At each stage of development, my parents introduced us to new books. By the time I was in the third grade, I was required to read for thirty minutes every day. At first, I read stories from the Bible. As I grew, my parents gave me other books to read, such as The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale and How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.
“My parents picked the books, and they paid me part of my allowance to read them. Each night at dinner, we discussed our reading. We were encouraged to share not only the facts we had learned but also our opinion. I read every weekday until I graduated from high school.”
Mike Shula
Age Isn’t Important
I first met NFL coach Don Shula in 1958, when I was a high school football player and Shula was an assistant coach at the University of Virginia. Today, Don’s son, Mike Shula, is the offensive coordinator for the Carolina Panthers. During an interview with Mike, he told me how he learned the fundamentals of leadership.
“In grade school, we would choose sides for pickup games,” he said. “I always did the choosing. The desire to be a leader came early in life, and my father and brother taught me how to be a leader in football and in life. Most importantly, they taught me how a leader should treat people.
“I started coaching at age twenty-two, and the guys I coached were as old as thirty-three. It took me ten years to reach an age where the people I coached were younger than me. I quickly realized that your age isn’t nearly as important as the type of person you are. If you have wisdom, confidence, and experience, people will place their trust in you and follow you anywhere.”
Harry, Skip, and Chip Caray
A Family Legacy
I feel like I’ve known the Carays all my life.
I grew up as a baseball fan listening to the great Harry Caray, the voice of the St. Louis Cardinals on Radio KMOX, a station that boomed out all over the country. When I was with the Bulls in the early 1970s, Harry was the voice of the White Sox. I got to know him and always enjoyed the times I spent with him.
I left the Bulls in 1973 to serve as the general manager of the Atlanta Hawks. And who was the radio voice of the Atlanta Hawks? None other than Skip Caray, Harry’s son. I was in Atlanta for only a year, but I enjoyed getting to know Skip and hearing him do the play-by-play for the Hawks.
After a twelve-year run with the Philadelphia 76ers, I moved to Orlando in 1986 to build the Magic from scratch. We started acquiring players, designing uniforms, and auditioning broadcast announcers. One of the announcers who applied was twenty-four-year-old Chip Caray—Skip’s son, Harry’s grandson—and we hired him.
Chip had a deep love for his legendary grandfather. “I didn’t get to be with my grandfather as much as I would have liked,” Chip once told me. “He was in Chicago, and I grew up in St. Louis, but when I’d see him on television, I felt like it was personal, like I was getting a grandfatherly hug from him. He was the ultimate fan, shouting ‘Holy cow!’ at every homer, singing ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame,’ and signing autographs. I learned the love of the game from Granddad.”
One time, all three generations of Carays—Harry, Skip, and Chip—were in the broadcast booth at Wrigley Field in Chicago announcing a Cubs game. Having a father, son, and grandson all announcing the same game had to be a first and only in the annals of baseball.
One night in February 1998, Chip was on the far side of the arena, getting ready for a Magic broadcast. He saw me and sent an intern over to me with a handwritten note. I took the note from the intern, unfolded it, and read, “Granddad passed away today.” That’s how I learned that Harry had left us. Living in retirement in Palm Springs, he’d taken a bad fall in a restaurant, striking his head. He died just a few days short of his eighty-fourth birthday. He is missed, but he has left us a legacy through his son and grandson.
“Isn’t Sports Great?”
I have two friends named Robin Roberts. One is the cohost of Good Morning America on ABC. The other Robin Roberts was a boyhood idol of mine—a pitcher who played most of his career with the Philadelphia Phillies. He and I became good friends after he retired to Tampa. He passed away in 2010.
Roberts had a great enthusiasm for sports and for life. One Monday morning, he called me up. It had been an incredibly rich weekend for sports fans. Northwestern had upset Notre Dame in football. There had been a number of great NFL matchups. The baseball pennant races were raging. So Roberts said to me, “Patty, isn’t sports great?!”
And I thought, He’s right. Sports are great!
Sports keep the temperature of America up high. Sports fill us with enthusiasm for our teams. We root for our hometowns, our schools, our teams, our heroes. We rejoice when our teams win. We get mad when they lose. Our passion for competition helps make us who we are as a uniquely American people. Before every game, we sing the National Anthem and cheer for our American ideals. Sports bind us together in our love for the game, whether the game is baseball, basketball, football, hockey, soccer, tennis, or golf.
The late Nelson Mandela put it beautifully: “Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does. It speaks to youth in a language they understand. Sport can create hope where there was once only despair.”3
Roberts loved not only sports but also his wife, Mary, and their four sons. One day, Roberts chatted with his friend Pat Peppler, who had a long coaching career in the NFL. They talked about the life of a professional athlete, with all the temptations of playing on the road. They recalled some of the players they had known who had destroyed their marriages by yielding to those temptations.
“Those vices are all around you when you’re on the road,” Roberts said. “It’s all within easy reach. But that’s not for me. I couldn’t do that to Mary.”
Roberts was as devoted to his family as he was to baseball. When he died at age eighty-three, he left a legacy of faithfulness and honor to his sons—and to us all.
Brian Shaw
An Inner Strength
Brian Shaw is the head coach of the Denver Nuggets. He spent four years of an exciting fifteen-year playing career as a guard for the Orlando Magic. His alley-oop passes to Shaq were sheer poetry.
Early one Saturday morning in June 1993, Shaw’s father, Charles, was driving the family’s Jeep Cherokee along Interstate 15 south of Las Vegas. Also in the car were Brian’s mother, Barbara; his twenty-four-year-old sister, Monica; and Monica’s one-year-old daughter, Brianna. Either Charles fell asleep or the Cherokee was run off the road by an unknown driver—no one knows for sure. The car flipped off the road and landed upside down. Shaw’s dad, mom, and sister were killed; only his little niece Brianna survived. In that instant, Shaw lost nearly all of his family.
Almost two thousand people packed the six-hundred-seat Taylor Memorial United Methodist Church in Oakland for the memorial service. Shaw stood before the packed sanctuary, and in a voice that was firm but emotional, he delivered a moving tribute to his parents and his sister. The other mourners both laughed and cried along with this courageous young man.
“My family gave me an inner strength to deal with this,” he later said. “I try to be positive about the memories, the many good times. Those thoughts are uplifting, even with the physical separation. I feel like my family is still present with me, watching over me. And I really want to make them proud.”
Brian Shaw is a warm, gentle, humble human being in a business in which overstuffed egos are the norm. It’s a privilege to know him and to watch him coach and live this life. He is a living legacy and a tribute to his family.
A Friend I Can Trust
When my first marriage was crumbling in 1994, I was utterly devastated. I felt an overwhelming sense of shame and humiliation, and I kept our separation a secret even from my closest friends.
In July 1995, I was in South Carolina for a speaking engagement. I stopped in Sumter to have dinner with Bobby Richardson, Yankees star second baseman from 1955 to 1966, and his wife, Betsy. I first met Bobby when I was a young Minor League Baseball executive in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and he had always been a friend and encourager.
After dinner, we were talking, and I felt God urging me to open up and tell my friends about my collapsing marriage. As soon as the thought occurred to me, I began arguing with myself: No! Don’t say anything! It’s too embarrassing! What would Bobby and Betsy think of me if they knew I was heading for divorce?
But then I felt God’s Spirit saying to me, “It’s okay. Trust them. Trust me. Tell them.”
So I took a deep breath and told them that my wife had left me and that I felt completely shattered. I was amazed at their response. Instead of the rejection or disappointment I feared, they surrounded me with acceptance and encouragement. They prayed with me, and I left their home feeling completely uplifted by them—and by God.
I had a similar experience in 2011, after I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. I hadn’t announced the diagnosis publicly yet. Bobby came to town on business, and some mutual friends invited Bobby and me to dinner. Boy, did I need that!
I told Bobby about my diagnosis, and once again I felt surrounded by Christian love and prayer. It meant so much coming from Bobby Richardson, who was not only a great baseball player I admired but also a great friend I could always trust.
Linda Evans
If You Don’t Have Peace Within . . .
A few years ago, I was in Birmingham, Alabama, in a building complex with half a dozen radio stations lining the hall. I finished my interview at one station and was heading toward the elevator when a door opened and who should be standing in front of me but the lovely Linda Evans, star of television’s Big Valley and Dynasty. I fumbled and stammered and introduced myself, and she could not have been sweeter.
Sometime later, Linda wrote her memoirs in an ingenious way, merging her life story with a cookbook—all her favorite recipes. I invited her to be a guest on my radio show, and we had a fascinating conversation about her show business career and cooking.
During our chat, she shared a powerful insight, saying, “I’ve seen so many people chasing happiness through success in show business. But if you don’t have a peace and satisfaction within, all the money, fame, and success won’t give it to you. There are a lot of people in Hollywood who seem to have it made, but being successful doesn’t mean you have it made. Happiness comes from within.”
She put me so completely at ease that I surprised myself by boldly inviting myself to her home! “Linda,” I said, “if I’m ever out your way, I’d like to come over for dinner.”
“Well, you just do that!” she said. “I’ll cook you up a real nice meal.”
I haven’t taken her up on it yet, but one of these days I will!