Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 27, 1990 TAG: 9006270085
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK SPORTSWRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
For instance, she saw him a hundred times over Tuesday afternoon at Roanoke's National Guard Armory, in the faces of the children at Gary Clark's "Say No to Drugs" camp.
In the draft four years ago, Len Bias reached his pinnacle as a basketball player. About 36 hours later, he was dead, a victim of cocaine intoxication.
"That," Lonise Bias said, "was the pinnacle for a nation. I think we'd be a lot worse off if Len were living. It took his death to make the nation realize how big this problem was."
Since that day - June 19, 1986 - the basketball program at the University of Maryland, where Bias played, has been in shambles. The Boston Celtics, who made Bias the second pick in that draft, haven't been quite the same.
In a televised interview Sunday night, Celtics president Red Auerbach told ESPN that Boston just didn't lose Bias for a year, but for 10.
"We lost him for life," said the player's mother.
She had more than an anti-drug message for the audience, which was stunned by her forceful personality, her emotion, her hand-clapping and her unapologetic preaching.
She took the message to people she called "our babies" like her son went to the basket. A power forward in heels.
"I've been termed as being abnormally enthusiastic," Lonise Bias told the group of about 200, which, when not hushed was silenced by the speaker's disciplinary message. "I'm not abnormally enthusiastic, I'm just intense.
"If I seem out of control at times, it's because I'm trying to reach all of you . . . If I only reach one, I've done nothing."
Bias spoke of drugs, but her message was deeper. It dealt with self-respect, discipline, love and dignity. She touched on kids' increasing enthrallment with the right shoes, the right shirts, the right equipment.
"What good is a $200 hat on a $20 brain?" she wondered.
Bias said she knew some parents would wonder why she, the mother of a child who died after using drugs, had the right to lecture their children.
"It is my great belief," she said, "that God took one man to save millions. Len has done far more in death for the nation than he would have done in life."
Bias calls herself "a very spiritual woman." Her background includes Bible college studies. Maybe, she admits, she was carrying her message inside her before tragedy struck the family of six in Hyattsville, Md.
"Before Len's death, I was just like many other apathetic parents," Bias said after her 35-minute talk ended with her listeners surrounding her for autographs, kisses and hugs. "I remember when Mrs. Reagan started her "Just Say No" campaign, I said, `I hope it works out real well.' That was it.
"I was one of those just worried about our home, and keeping the family together. Then, boom, your life's turned upside down. I'm a firm believer that after it happened, God wanted me to go on a mission and help other young people.
"The problem we have is very severe. If it hadn't been for Len's death, I'm sure I wouldn't be doing this. I had no idea drugs had infiltrated society to the level it had."
The end of her oldest son's life brought a beginning for her, and Lonise Bias knows why.
"He is definitely a hero," Bias said of her late son, one of her four children.i
"Sports is so visible. It's entertainment, and some people try to make entertainment into life, but it's only part of that.
"Sports heroes are there to entertain people. That is their mission, and that's fine. But Len's mission was another. He died to save young people, and it is up to me and others to help him."
It's been four years and one week since Bias returned to Maryland after being drafted by the Celtics. It could have been a dream frontcourt, Bird and Bias. Instead, it went from a nightmare to reality for Lonise Bias.
"This week will always be the toughest week for as long as we live," she said.
"The last time we were all together as a family was that Father's Day. Then there was the draft a couple of days later, then the next Sunday - at the exact time we were celebrating the week before, a stretch limousine drove up and the man said, `It's time to go see your dead son.'
"Then, the day after Len died, June 20, is our son Jay's birthday. So this is always a low time.
"I won't watch the NBA draft. I don't know where I'll be, but I'll try to be out, away from the TV. And this time of year I don't read the sports page much because there are reminders there. It's something we're still trying to learn to live with, but it's still hard."
It's therapy for her, and it's advice for those "beautiful babies," the kids in the caps and T-shirts and gym shoes that her son could have been, the children that were blessed by her presence, if only for a half hour.
"I care absolutely nothing about what everyone thinks about me," she told her audience. "There's a lot of work to be done and some people won't get involved because they're worried about what others will say about them."
The poignancy was perfect. She was standing on a basketball court. She was scoring points.
Certainly, not the first Bias to do that.
by CNB