Dr. J

by Julius Erving

  Along with Cheo, Cory had been detained by the police when he was seventeen for being in possession of a crack pipe and burglarizing a car over in Altamonte Springs. But it was easy for me to rationalize that he had been under Cheo’s influence.

  As I watch Cory drive off that evening, I try to tell myself, as I have at least a dozen times before through his life, that this time maybe it’s different; this time maybe he really has changed.

  But when he doesn’t come home that night, Turquoise and I do our best to struggle through a social evening while exchanging knowing glances that Cory may be out on a drug run. I’m angry, first that he could be so irresponsible about an errand we’ve asked him to do, and so thoughtless as to his family and our worries about him. We go to bed that night, sharing our frustration that Cory hasn’t become more responsible, more mature, and when he is still not there the next morning, I’m thinking of what I have to do to make Cory grow up. I had been hoping that being around mature young men like Corey Maggette would wake him up, but now I see that I was naive.

  In my office that Monday, I’m trying to focus on work, but throughout that day, there is a rising sense that something is very wrong, that Cory isn’t out partying. I check in with Turq at home a couple of times. This is not like him. He doesn’t just drop out of sight. Or if he does, he will be with Cheo or some of his other friends, and maybe they are up to no good, but we have an idea of where he is. To just get in his car and drive away? This doesn’t sound like Cory.

  Finally, after another long night, we call the police. They retrace his steps, confirm that he stopped to buy bread, and subsequently stopped at a fitness center in the same shopping complex. That was the last anyone had seen of him. From there, it should have been a straight shot back to our house. Because of the circumstances, and Cory’s own history, the police start to suspect foul play. After a few days of news reports about Cory’s disappearance, we have thousands of tips: someone who has seen Cory in a 7-Eleven, another who saw him buying drugs down in Altamonte Springs, another who saw him at a movie theater. None of them pan out.

  I remember the feeling of our team falling behind in a conference finals or NBA finals, that sense that we are simply not doing enough to win, that despite our efforts, Boston or Los Angeles is pulling away. However intense those feelings were, they are nothing compared to what I am going through now, this sense that Cory is out there, somewhere, perhaps in pain, perhaps suffering, and there is nothing I can do to help him, there is nothing I can do to even find him. This is what defeat feels like, forget losing a basketball game.

  There are advantages to being Dr. J, and one of them is that I can use to my advantage the same media that sometimes is so bothersome. I appear on Larry King Live to talk about Cory and to ask America to help find him. President Clinton, whom I met a few weeks earlier at a Medal of Freedom ceremony for Nelson Mandela and F. W. de Klerk, sends Secret Service agents to help with the investigation. We’re having prayer meetings, vigils. We hire a psychic who handles some of Cory’s possessions and tells us she sees him surrounded by water. We have local lakes and rivers dragged. But nothing. We’re checking every body of water in the area.

  There are mornings when I sit in my car and cry, when I can’t bear to look at Turq because it reminds me of what we are missing. A hard silence descends on our house. Cory’s brothers and sister come, and then go, after a few days of searching with no results. What can they do? To drive around aimlessly, calling his name out a car window as if looking for a missing dog? There is nothing but to stumble through our daily routines, of answering calls, of going to supermarkets, all while wondering where he is.

  There is a break in the case after thirty-eight days, when a gate attendant at a neighboring development says that Cory used to come driving past his guardhouse all the time, taking a sort of back road to our place to the west. The attendant actually thought Cory lived in that development instead of Alaqua.

  There is a cat road that cuts over, through some land that is being cleared for development. The development is marked by some cones and pilings from freshly cut trees. The cones and pilings are moved around by the crews, depending on where they are working and how much progress they are making. Next to this cleared area is a retention pond.

  The police look at aerial photographs of the area and notice the pilings had been shifted, so that previously there had been room to drive between them and the pond, but about a month ago, they were so far to the right that the road actually went to the left of the pilings. This is an open area, a sort of depression before a slight rise, and if you are driving fast, you would use the pilings to set your course, the pond being almost invisible as you approach.

  The pond is only eight feet deep and they find Cory’s car barely submerged. Cory’s body is in the passenger seat. He drove right into the water, his engine pulling the car down, the water pressure preventing him from opening the doors.

  I listen to the sheriff explain how Cory died. The details about how cars sink, about how Cory was thrown forward when the car hit the water. I think about the panic he must have felt, the car sinking, my boy struggling to open the door, the slow suffocation. I think about the fear, about how his last feeling must have been fear.

  About how alone he was.

  15.

  I look at photos of my children and I can barely remember: When did I play with them? What did we play? Go fish? Memory? Checkers? We must have played. I look at photos of Cory. He’s a beautiful boy. Did I play enough with him? Did I spend every minute with him I should have? Why didn’t I stop everything, drop all plans, hold all calls, cancel all subscriptions, and turn off all televisions, shut down computers, switch off cell phones, turn off engines, and tell the post office to hold my mail. Why didn’t I quit basketball, quit society, quit the world, and quit everything and everyone so I could play one more game of checkers with Cory, tell him once more that I am his father and I care about him, sit with him just one more time and lie to him that everything will be all right?

  16.

  Marky, Freda, Bobby, Wendell, Tonk, Cory. Our lives are also the stories of our loved ones’ deaths.

  But our lives must also be the celebration of those lives.

  17.

  The years after Cory’s passing are a blur, a period of mourning during which I try to fulfill my professional obligations. I’m physically present, at work, in my marriage, but emotionally, I’m gone.

  We survive infidelity, lies, fights, disdain, disrespect, and cruelty. But Turq and I can’t make it past the death of our son. Like so many before us, we become a statistic and end up filing for divorce.

  18.

  I take into my business life the same philosophy I tried to take through my basketball career. The words of Don Ryan, Earl Mosley, and Ray Wilson continue to be those that I apply in my daily life. I don’t believe in those Art of War mantras that so many modern executives seem to try to do business by. I’m trying to build a legacy by doing things the right way, making deals and investments where I can leverage my name while also trying to make a difference. With Bruce Llewellyn, we build the Philadelphia Coca-Cola Bottling Company into one of the largest minority-owned businesses in the United States, with over twelve hundred employees and $540 million in annual revenue. I’m a co-owner and board member. And from Bruce I learn to empower employees and incentivize them so that their interests are aligned with the business.

  Bruce shows me the way in so many areas. In 1985 we join together with Essence Communications’ founders Edward Lewis and Clarence Smith, and several other investors to buy a television station in Buffalo from Capital City Communications, who got a substantial tax benefit by selling to a minority buyer. As a result, Bruce was able to put up less for WKBW, and when we turn around and sell the station to Granite City, I more than double my investment.

  After my retirement, he puts together another syndicate to buy the New York Times Cable Company, which serves over 170,000 homes in New Jersey. Bruce and I are part o
f a team that puts up $55 million in cash as part of the $420 million purchase. We get in and get out within five years, again making a great return.

  One of my proudest achievements is starting the first minority-owned NASCAR racing team, with former football great Joe Washington. The Washington-Erving Motorsports team includes drivers like Mark Green and Tony Roper.

  I am a member of the board of directors of Converse, EA Sports, Saks Fifth Avenue, Darden Group, and Sports Authority. I continue to work with and appear in endorsements for a number of brands, including Dr Pepper, Crown Royal, and Converse.

  We are always seeking out new investments, with varying degrees of success. Yet one of my biggest investments turns out to be my costliest. I first met Chuck Watkins at Kathryn Crosby’s golf tournament in North Carolina—she’s Bing’s widow—and we hit it off and he became a close family friend. I partner up with Chuck, and we buy a prime golf course up in Tucker, Georgia, called the Heritage, a beautiful twenty-seven-hole operation with old-growth trees and rolling hills. I’m going to be putting up $3 million and borrowing the remaining $11 million from the bank. (At the peak of the market, this place was valued at $22 million.) But even if it never gets back to those numbers, the course makes sense operationally. I have Ken I. Starr review the deal and he says it looks kosher to him. It will turn out that Ken was preoccupied with some other matters, as he was soon to be indicted on twenty-three counts of fraud and money laundering. Luckily, none of my assets were tied up in that scandal.

  The golf course revenue model is both private memberships and daily play. Chuck knows his way around a golf course, so this business seems like a smart way to leverage capital, investing $3 million to add a desirable $14 million property to my portfolio, and one that will more than pay for itself. The idea is that Chuck will put in sweat equity and also raise some private placement investors from his circle of contacts in Atlanta.

  Well, we run into some problems pretty quickly, and I’m lucky that I have a new partner, my true life partner, my wife Dorys.

  19.

  I’m standing at baggage claim at Orlando International Airport for over forty minutes waiting for my bags. That’s a long, long time, but as I’m looking around at my fellow passengers, I see a beautiful brunette and I figure I might as well kill time as pleasantly as possible by striking up a conversation. I admit that I’m making a little bit of a move, but hey, those bags are taking an awfully long time.

  I introduce myself and give her my Orlando Magic card and extend a standing invitation to an Orlando Magic game. “Get some friends. Call me if you feel like coming.”

  A few weeks later she calls me. She’s not a basketball fan so she had no idea who I was when I gave her my card. She’s since shown it to her friends. “They said you’re called Dr. J. What kind of doctor are you?”

  She comes to the game with a few friends, and I visit with them at halftime, and after the game I ask Dorys if she would like to go the movies.

  A few nights later we go to see the movie Soul Food, and we hit it off.

  Dorys is an independent woman. She left Honduras at sixteen to model in Europe and then lived in Canada for a couple of years. She worked in a jewelry store for a while in Orlando before starting her own gift shop in one of the hotels downtown. She’s a serious, driven woman, and gorgeous as well. That’s a combination that always worked on me.

  I’m not looking for a serious relationship, yet I find that Dorys becomes a part of my life.

  Let me be honest here: I meet Dorys while I’m still with Turq, during that period when she is living in Philadelphia and I am in Orlando. We have our first son, Jules, before Turq and I split up for good. I’m not proud of that—I am, of course, fiercely proud of Jules—but that’s the truth and I’ve promised to tell my whole story. Whatever shame I feel at having sired children out of wedlock is balanced by the fierce pride I take in them, in all of them.

  When Turquoise moves down to Orlando, I tell her about Dorys and Jules, and I make arrangements to take care of them, but I know it makes reconciliation that much more difficult.

  As I say, mine is an American life, fully lived, and I am not above reproach for my shortcomings. I hear my mother’s stern voice and still feel her disappointment.

  In the bad winters of the ’90s, I encourage my mother to move down to Florida. In 2000, she finally closes down her hair salon and leaves Long Island for good.

  Mom moves in with me and spends the last few years of her life living in Orlando. She’s in and out of the hospital with respiratory problems. She has bursitis, arthritis, all the itises that happen to our seniors. Over a period of two years, from ages seventy-eight to eighty, she deteriorates before my eyes. I lose my mother in 2004.

  20.

  Marky, then Freda, then Callie Mae.

  Now there’s only me.

  21.

  I’m living in St. George, Utah, with Dorys and our children. In addition to Jules, there is my younger son, Justin, and his little sister, Julieta. Julieta was born a year after Callie Mae passed. She has my mom’s soul. My new family, my second wave of children. I am present for these kids in a way I never could be while I was an active basketball player. The only rivals for their affection are the golf course and my business. Dorys is a fierce, proud, intelligent woman who is homeschooling our children. I am the father I could never be with my older children. I’m more mature, more present, more aware of the passing of time, of how precious these years with young children are. I have the harsh lessons of Cory (and Marky), of how fleeting a life is and how each day with our children is unique, because by tomorrow they have become someone new, still beautiful, but new.

  We moved to St. George, nestled against the Nevada border, because I wanted to try living in the American West. I’m one of two African-Americans in town; the other is former Utah Jazz forward Thurl Bailey, and I find the climate and area agreeable. And for my young children, it’s suburban in ways that remind me a little of Hempstead, but Hempstead when I was a boy, not today.

  This could be the life, a beautiful wife, great kids, and a steady income from the golf course and my other investments. That’s the plan, anyway, only I start receiving phone calls from Chuck asking me for additional capital.

  “Additional capital?” I say. “There isn’t any additional capital.”

  He tells me that he can’t make payroll, can’t make the note on the lease.

  I’m thinking, What the hell is going on there?

  Dorys knows Chuck, and she’s a keener judge of character than I am, and she immediately senses that this is trouble.

  I send Ray Wilson up to see what’s going on. Ray is pushing seventy, but he’s still sharp and he goes up there and he immediately suspects that Chuck isn’t being straight. For one thing, Chuck has bought a new $900,000 house. And where would he get the down payment for that? It turns out, as he admitted to me and to the district attorney, that he took it out of our corporate funds as an advance compensation.

  Also, we have a large Korean and Japanese clientele, and these guys like to pay cash. Chuck has been setting that cash aside and it never makes it into our corporate accounts.

  Ray tells me what’s going on and I fly to Atlanta to confront Chuck, laying out the details of what we know.

  He explains that all of this, the cash, the down payment on the house, that was advance compensation. Our deal was that he gets $4,000 a month to run the place and a substantial equity share in the business. There was no provision for advance compensation.

  I call the district attorney, and we set up a meeting, where we tell Chuck that he has two options: either relinquish all claims of ownership or go to jail.

  And in this meeting, Chuck is still arguing that this is advance compensation, that it was all legit, and I’m like, Chuck, we got you by the balls, now walk away.

  We have to move to Atlanta to run the golf course. Dorys doesn’t even blink. Her attitude is that we roll up our sleeves and make this thing work. It’s our money, it�
��s our family’s future.

  Now I’m stuck running a golf course—I feel like I’m back in that jewelry store basement—and I don’t know the first thing about it. Chuck has let the place fall apart, the bank is hounding us for its note, suppliers and vendors are already fed up with our operation, and the staff has long since given up on us. I have an office on-site, I bring in a few trusted associates, sons and nephews of former teammates, and even Cheo comes in and becomes our gardener.

  I’m there every single day for two years. Dorys is right there with me. But we just can’t make it work. The numbers don’t add up. Additionally, another supposed friend of mine has run out on a $150,000 debt he took out in my name. He was a member of my church. Dorys and his wife are good friends. His children and my children are playmates. When I was looking for a line of credit for the golf course, he introduced me to a bank that set up the collateralized loan. My friend asked me to cosign a loan for another $150,000. I thought, This guy is a friend, a fellow churchgoer. What could go wrong?

  He never pays his debt. And that gets thrown on my balance sheet. Now I’m financially upside down with a failing golf course that has me owing $3 million to the bank. The bank forecloses. I’m underwater. I’m living month to month.

  I feel so ashamed at how I’ve let my family down. But Dorys won’t take any pity on me. She fixes me with that fierce expression. “Don’t worry, honey, we’re gonna be all right.”