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A loss of innocence

Twenty years ago, a cocaine overdose killed Len Bias. Today, his mother makes sure his story isn't forgotten.

By VINCENT THOMAS
Published June 25, 2006

WASHINGTON - When she speaks, her eyes are wide and intense, her gestures presidential and her voice that of a woman on a mission. People call her unusually enthusiastic, but she says it's really just a whole lot of passion. She's emotional, but the range isn't as expansive as one might think for a mother who lost a 22-year-old son on the cusp of greatness. There is rarely, if ever, a soft moment, but Lonise Bias will offer as much enthusiasm, diligence, fervor and persistance as one can handle.

"If I stayed back in 1986 ... I would be in a local mental hospital somewhere on prescription drugs or standing up at Len's grave, crying, saying, "Woe is me' ... and "What happened to my life?' "

She lost Len Bias 20 years ago this month. He was widely regarded as a good kid, an example even. He was an awesome son, very respectful, loved his family and, his mother said, "He was just a wonderful kid." He was a dynamo on the basketball court during his four years at the University of Maryland. People who saw him say only Michael Jordan was in his class as a collegiate player. But Bias, less than 48 hours after the Celtics selected him with the second pick in the 1986 NBA draft, took some cocaine. He took enough to overdose and send his 6-foot-8 sculpted, peak-conditioned body into cardiac arrest. He took enough to die right before, as his mother said, "He was about to grab that brass ring."

Lonise Bias, though, refuses to dwell on that day for anything other than strength.

Purpose, she said, was born out of the tragedy. It has sent her around the world, offering her son's story as a tale of caution. Her life has become, in essence, a reaction to her son's death.

June 19, 1986, rocked the NBA, Celtics and University of Maryland, and its ripples are still being felt. Len's father, James, and sister, Michelle, decline interviews. Teammates, such as David Gregg and Terry Long, who were with Bias when he overdosed, have retreated from public life. Teammate Keith Gatlin says he can't escape the Bias stigma, and Bias' college coach, Lefty Driesell, can't shake feelings of regret.

But what about Generation Y, those who were either not born or not old enough to grasp the import of Bias at the time? New York Times columnist George Vescey marked the one-year anniversary, writing that the warning when dealing with athletes should be "Len Bias" instead of "be careful." There was hope his death would continue to serve as a positive influence for young people, especially athletes. Yet young athletes today seem much less affected.

"Potential. That's what Len Bias means to us," said Byron Jones, a senior guard at Northwestern High, Bias' alma mater in suburban Hyattsville, Md. "Most of us have heard about Bias. ... But it doesn't hold that weight no more. We hear it, but it goes in one ear and out the other and we fall right back into the same patterns."

If you walk into the Lincoln Memorial's welcome center in Suitland, Md., and ask Dianne Waiters to direct you to almost any grave, she has to rifle through one of the big binders sitting in her bookcase, find the name, the plot, pull out a map and navigate a visual path through the 105-acre cemetery.

Not for Bias' grave, though. Waiters knows those instructions by heart, relaying them countless times. Recently, she added to her instructions: "Once you get near the top of the hill, if you look to your left, you'll see a pair of tennis shoes. That's Len Bias' grave."

Sure enough, on top of Bias' bronze memorial that reads "In God's Loving Care" are two gray Nike ACGs with dead grass blown inside them, wet and muddy from a recent rain. The edges and soles are tattered, worn by the weather, and the sun has faded the orange shoe strings to Pepto-Bismol pink. Waiters says she doesn't know who put them there or when. Lonise Bias had no idea they were there until a photographer showed her a picture.

"Now, see, that's nice. That's just wonderful," she said, with a moderate smile.

Next to Bias' grave is his younger brother's. Jay died four years after Len, gunned down after an argument in a shopping plaza. Bias hasn't visited the graves in a couple of years, and she doesn't plan to until she is ready to take her grandkids and recount their uncles' stories. She doesn't know when that will be.

It would be hard to imagine Bias' death impacting anyone's life more than his mother's. Before he died, she worked at the National Bank of Washington. Since his death, her world has become drug education. She owns and runs Bias Lecturing and Consulting, traveling as a motivational speaker. She says it's a calling from God. It also has numbed the pain.

"What I've learned in the 20 years since Len's death, with any situation dealing with grief, is that whatever that loss is, you take that passion and that love for that loss and give it out to someone else, and healing comes from within you," she said. "That does not mean that you have forgotten the grief or that love; it means you are able to live beyond the loss."

Frequently, Bias says, she gets some of that love back, whether it be the flight attendant who slipped her a note telling her she quit using because of Len Bias. Or students and parents telling her they were moved by her message. She says she has hundreds of stories with emotions "as high or as low as you want to go." Emotional for her, too? "No," she said, shaking her head, with a dismissive expression, "no, not for me."

Twenty years after her son died, it seems Bias has turned this tragedy into a platform. She declined an interview in her home, opting for the office of Fleishman-Hillard in downtown Washington, where she sat with two of her publicists. She is articulate and passionate. Her speech more resembles sound bites than that of a mother.

There is a reflective moment, though. When speaking about Len as a son, she remembers his love of art, interior design and music - especially rhythm and blues.

"In fact, he was the one that gave me my message. He gave me my message for what I was going to be speaking about after his death," she said. A sly grin appears, like she is just coming to this realization as she spoke.

"He came up to me one day and said, "Mom, you have to hear this song by Whitney Houston.' I said, "Boy, I don't want to hear this song.' He said, "Mom, you have got to hear this song. It's beautiful."

It was 1985. He was a junior All-American at Maryland, and he wanted his mother to listen to Greatest Love of All. Houston sang: "I believe that children are our future."

Bias chuckled, "He was preparing me for what I'm doing today."

Asked if she can envision what she'd have done the past 20 years if Len had fulfilled his promise, Bias peered at the table with her hands folded.

"I probably ... , " she paused and slowly shook her head. "I don't know. ... I really, really, really don't know. ... I don't know."

Scared Straight was released in 1978. The Arnold Shapiro documentary focuses on a group of juvenile delinquents confronted by convicted felons in maximum security prisons and experiencing, for a brief moment, the harsh and frightening realities of where their current paths could lead. There tends to be hope that shocking events or grim examples can help steer young adults away from trouble and harm.

Five years after Bias died, Driesell held the same hope.

"If somebody wanted me to use cocaine, I'd go, "Hey, I don't want to end up like Leonard,' " he said in a 1991 interview with the Los Angeles Times.

For high school students such as Jones and Northwestern teammate Marcus Wedge, an alum who died of a cocaine overdose 20 years ago is way down the list of life-influencing events.

"We hear about violence and guns and drugs every day. It's sad, but it feels regular," said Jones, standing outside his high school gym. He and Wedge, his backcourt mate, agree that if Bias hadn't died, their gym would be named for him. Instead, the campus' only image of Bias is a black and white poster-size picture nestled in the back of the trophy case outside the gym.

"It's been too long," Wedge said. "We can't relate."

They can relate to Carmelo Anthony and Rudy Gay, though - two recent stars to come out of the Washington-Baltimore area. Wedge said a tragedy befalling a current idol might make an impression on his peers, "that's one of ours."

Jones was less optimistic.

"In a way, it would register. Then again, it probably wouldn't," he said, wincing at what appeared to be a depressing reality. His voice dropped. "It would probably compare to Len Bias because after a while, the kids would still do what they've been doing."

Dr. Arnold Azur, who recently finished a four-year term as chairman of the NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports, said young people have short memories when it comes to such things as tragic deaths.

"One person's death registers as a shock, but that death, although shocking, does not serve to change behavior," Azur said. "What changes one's behavior is their peers' behavior."

The power of peer pressure is what many believe was Bias' downfall: hanging out with the wrong crowd - in his case, convicted drug dealer Brian Tribble. There are plenty who believe it was a single mistake. If anything, that's what Jones says his peers recognize but don't always heed.

"They say guns are the No.1 killer, but I think peer pressure is the No.1 killer," he said.

Jones and Wedge's coach, Greg Moore, met Bias at a summer camp. Moore was playing for Hampton University, and Bias was a skinny high schooler. Bias arrived with Sherman Douglas, who would later break the NCAA's assist record at Syracuse. Moore scoffed at young Bias. Then the games started, and Bias was flying around the court, dunking on people's heads.

"Oh, he was legit," Moore said.

Moore said he heard about Bias' death while driving. He had to pull his car to the side of the road. His eyes glaze as he tells the story.

He doesn't expect his players or any of his kids to feel as he did 20 years ago.

"It's so frequent now. We keep hearing about heroes and drugs," said Moore, citing former Washington Mayor Marion Barry and Barry Bonds, in particular. "But the old guard around here in D.C. and even around the country - we know him and love him. ... And if we're smart, we've taught our kids about Len Bias. ...

"We better have."

And that's Lonise Bias' mission. She crisscrosses the country, preaching her gospel, doing all she can to make sure somebody, anybody listens and remembers. She admitted drug use and drug-related deaths haven't curtailed or reversed. . But this is a life mission she embarked on.

"I'm still on the wall," she says, using her common refrain.

"That means I'm still trying to build. I'm fighting with one hand, building with the other. I'm still out there in the vineyards and believing that change can come."

[Last modified June 25, 2006, 03:33:32]