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UNC TV
Episode #2126
A Child's Life, With Cancer
Lewis: Student athletes are often challenged to show their good nature in communities through voluntary service. But once they’ve graduated, society becomes more understanding about their time demands. One group of athletes has decided they want to apply the pressure to themselves to serve the community. We’ll find out how they’re doing it next on Black Issues Forum.
[INTRO MUSIC]
Voiceover: Quality Public Television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting UNC TV.
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Lewis: Welcome to Black Issues Forum, I’m Mitchell Lewis. For many collegiate student athletes, getting back while giving back to the community is about as intense as their commitment to athletics. However, for some, once they leave the university setting the professional world of athletics and business creates a shortage of time for volunteering. But there is an organization in Chapel Hill that seeks to continue the commitment to community. Our guests today represent Carolina Pros Incorporated. A non-profit group that helps former collegiate athletes continue their connection to the community socially, as well as financially. We will get to our guests in just a moment. But first, producer Debra Holt profiles the giving nature of one elite member of Carolina Pros. known to many as The Big Smooth Sam Perkins.
[CAMP FOOTAGE BEGINS]
Perkins: Today these kids are loosing insight on what basketball is really like, and they emulate so many players that they see that they lose the concept of all the fundamentals that they need to have when they play this game, so in effect, I tried to start a camp, basically on that purpose.
Holt: Sam Perkins has been where a lot of these kids aspire to be. He was a college basketball standout at UNC Chapel Hill during the years 1981 to 1984, and went on to play in the NBA. In fact, most of the coaches at his summer basketball camp share that beginning, and each year they return to North Carolina from their respective homes all over the globe to volunteer at Sam’s Carolina Alumni Basketball School.
Perkins: Well, it feels great, you know, just bringing back so many great memories and being a part of this camp and working the kids is just a great feeling. Just a fun thing to be a part of.
Williams: Take your time, take your time. This ought to give them basketball lessons and lessons about life. And just let them know that to take this as a good opportunity to come to a camp like this. To learn about basketball, to meet some of their favorite Carolina basketball players, and we just sort of let them know that it’s possible to have basketball dreams.
Holt: Donald Williams graduated in 1995 and has played eleven seasons in Europe. And as he shares with the kids, they keys to unlocking his basketball dreams were more than technical proficiency
Williams: Are you dedicated? Are you trying to become a basketball player, and your attitude, you have to have a good attitude. Because across this country, across the world, you’ve got players just as talented as you. So its probably going to be the small things to get you over that edge.
Holt: And those small things include discipline as well.
M: Down in back. (whistle)
M: ‘Cause Sam said “Pick up the cups, and they didn’t do a very good job,” so we all had to run.
Holt: The camp is open to kids with varied levels of interest in basketball. But a lot of them already made up.
Wood: I would like to play, I’ve been playing since I was about six, you know, it kind of runs in the family, so I wanted to get a better basketball experience and to learn from my dad.
Holt: You guys want to play ball when you get older?
Rowell: Yeah.
White: I do too.
Holt: For whom?
Rowell: Uh, Carolina
White: I don’t really care, somebody.
Holt: Sam’s summer camp is part of a larger coordinated effort involving not only Tarheel Basketball Alumni, but athlete alumni from all sports, and from other North Carolina schools.
McKoy: Most of us actually were able to participate in several endeavors while we were athletes in University. We might visit Children’s Hospitals, we might go to schools and speak to students, we might take part in Juvenile Diabetes Walks. So we decided we would find a way to bring those same community actions together after we left the University. And so, really Carolina Pros is about how you can collegially come together and hope we make an impact on the State of North Carolina.
Holt: Their presence has already had an impact on two brothers. Were it not for the help of Carolina Pros, Ontae and Kormane Fairley [ph] might not have been able to participate in Sam’s camp.
Fairley: We came a long way, all the way from Garner. Just to come to learn some new things and meet new people.
Lee: The phone rang here one day, and Ms. Fairley was on the other line, and she had seen pictures, and she had read about Carolina Pros, of all places, from the Raleigh Telephone Directory. When we talked about Sam’s camp and the guys who would be involved with it, and just the fine mentoring as well as basketball teaching they could get by just being around these guys, she was extremely interested, but as a single parent with three kids, she just really could not afford to sent them to camp. However, she committed to get them from Garner to Chapel Hill everyday, if they could just get to the camp. So, Carolina Pros subsequently sponsored the boys to the camp, the two oldest ones. And I think they have had a delightful time.
Holt: Through camps like Sam Perkins’, Carolina Pros is bring to focus of its two founders, Rick Fox and King Rice.
Lee: Rick and King felt they had such a good support system, not just from their biological families, but through the Carolina Basketball family, that they thought it would be only fitting that they embarked on their careers, they would be able to provide support for others. So, they ended up coming up with a mission and a plan and they incorporated Carolina Pros in 1998.
Williams: I’m not in it for the money, or anything like that, and you don’t make money in camps. In North Carolina, there’s pretty much one place I just wanted to give back since I haven’t been here in a while. I’d come back and visit.
[CAMP FOOTAGE ENDS]
Lewis: Joining us today is Angela Lee, President of Carolina Pros Incorporated. She was a member of the support staff of the UNC Basketball Office for several years, working with coaches Dean Smith and Bill Guthridge. Eugene “Tinkerbell” Banks is a member of Carolina Pros. Gene is a former basketball athlete and 1981 graduate of Duke University. While at Duke, he earned the title ACC Rookie of the Year and went on to play professional basketball for the San Antonio Spurs and Chicago Bulls.
Henry McKoy, Jr. is Chairman of the Board of Directors for Carolina Pros, he is President and CEO of his own consulting and information technology firm in Research Triangle Park. Henry ran track at UNC Chapel Hill, twice winning First Team All-America honors, while running as part of the four by 400 relay team that won a National Championship and was ranked at number one in the world. And to the three of you, welcome to Black Issues Forum.
All: Thank you.
Lee: It’s good to be here
Lewis: Angela, I’ll start off with you. What is the mission of Carolina Pros, and it just seems like you are so passionate about this, why?
Lee: I’m not really sure – no. Our mission is two-fold. One to team up to help others by giving back through community service events. The two gentlemen, the two former basketball players, Rick Fox and King Rice, who founded Carolina Pros envisioned Carolina Pros serving two functions: one, to provide a vehicle through which former student athletes could come together socially, long after their basketball days were over at Carolina, and two, to provide a vehicle through which they could collectively give back and as the organization has come together and grown, of course, we have expanded.
We consist of, but we are not limited to former student athletes who played basketball under Coach Smith and Coach Guthridge at UNC. As you see, we have a former Track and Field athlete as well as a non-UNC graduate – we love him anyway. And we have other athletes represented in the organization, men and women. So, while individually a lot of former student athletes give back through charities, through organizations that they have developed, through other means collectively, we feel that the network can achieve so much more.
McKoy: Henry, as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Carolina Pros, how do you see your roll, and why did you decide to get involved?
Banks: Well, Carolina Pros really is something that is near and dear to my heart. It really represents the best of what it means to be, I think, a student athlete and someone who wants to contribute to the community. I see my roll as Chairman of the Board, as really helping to get the message out and to look for bringing in partnerships and things of that nature that will allow us to really do the things we want to do in the community, and leverage this brand that we have.
Lewis: Gene, I’ll bring you in because it seems like the first salvo has been fired anyway. Being the lonely Duke member here on the [LAUGHTER] Why did you decide to get involved with the Carolina Pros?
Banks: I don’t know, something just bopped me in the head and I went astray, but pretty much, Angela is the main key to this, and I saw the passion that she’s done. She is certainly material in things. And I’ve also witnessed and been involved in some of the programs that she’s doing. It’s just phenomenal. You can’t find people that today, there are a lot of them, but then there are so few and far between that want to give back to the community. That’s what I’ve always been about and this is a program that once everybody understands what it’s all about , it can just move mountains, and it has.
Lewis: And Angela, although you’ve got Tink here, as well as other Carolina graduates, and not all of them decided to go into pro sports, you have a variety of folks. Talk about some of the people who are involved.
Lee: We’ve had athletes who were walk-on. Student athletes who earned scholarships after they arrived. We’ve got athletes who are currently playing professionally. Oh course Rick Fox was a - was fortunate to win three titles with the MBA Championship Lakers. And King, who co-founded Carolina Pros, played professionally overseas, but he did not pursue a professional career beyond that – he is coaching, currently. We have Sam Perkins. You all referenced Big Smooth earlier. George Lynch, Shiman Williams, Web Tindall, who’s from Kinston. Jerry Stackhouse’s hometown. And Web is a tremendous person who was fortunate to play as a walk-on at Carolina. He is a member of our Board of Directors and we are real fortunate to have him. Web is a business person, he is not the professional athlete. We have Antwon Jamison, Rasheed Wallace, Ed Gaut, Chickee Yonaker, Phil Ford, Walter Davis. We’ve had Jeff Cable, who’s a fellow Duke Alum of Gene’s, who is currently coaching at the college level. We’ve had, oh my gosh help me out, did I say Vince Carter? Jerry Stackhouse who has …
Lewis: You’ve had plenty though.
Lee: We’ve had a lot of athletes, and Bill Chamberlain to Charlie Scott, so athletes who have played more recently and athletes who played, you know further back.
Lewis: Henry, while you were at Carolina especially as a track star – was it during that time that Carolina helped to mold your mindset towards community service?
McKoy: I think it definitely was, Mitch. I’d always, I’m from Fayetteville originally, and I tried to do a lot of community service while I was coming up through high school and things of that nature, but when I got to Carolina – the institution really is about public service. Carolina actually has, as part of the Atlantic Coast Conference, a program called ACC Outreach, which weaves together the student athletes at particular universities to do community service in the town where the college is. And so for two years, I was the Vice President of ACC Outreach and during that time I think I really cut my teeth on community service and how the power of the Carolina brand as well as the athletic brand can really make a difference.
Lewis: And Gene, you’ve had a lot of experience in community service – how did you get your start, what led you to become more involved?
Banks: Pretty much my, all credit goes to Sonny Hill in Philadelphia, also a young man by the name of Deacon Thomas Shane. In Philadelphia, we’ve had, we had a lot of programs that, in every recreation center, almost every corner. We were playing almost like six or seven leagues on the summer, so there was always something for us to do. It was always that one person that would, lived in that community, a Mister Johnson, or a Mister Jackson would get the kids together - there was always that all the time, so I was very fortunate to have it. But Sonny Hill was one of the ones, and also the people that I mentioned, they instilled it in me, and I carried it in me wherever I go, even when I went to San Antonio. I drove around, and there were areas of San Antonio there was nothing going on. And my thing is if there is nothing going on, something needs to be done for these young kids. It’s not so much basketball, sports – its just a hook, you know, you want to get them in it because they need that love, and that compassion, but you also get a chance to talk to them about a lot of other things too.
Lewis: Henry, you excelled at track over at Carolina, two records still stand today. You could have easily gone into, like, the pros, or the Olympics. Why you decided not to do that?
Banks: Well really, for me Track and Field was a vehicle to an end, it wasn’t the end to me. I really always have loved business and community service and how the two can mesh, and how business can be used as a vehicle for changing communities for creating wealth, for really doing some great things and so for me, I had began running when I was twelve years old on a national level and by the time I finished college, that was a long enough career for me. I really felt like I was ready to take the next step in my career for me, which was going into the business world.
Lewis: And Gene, of course, being with the San Antonio Spurs and the Chicago Bulls, did that have an impact on your trying to balance that pro career along with volunteerism?
Banks: It becomes difficult. But if you have a passion and it is in you, it’s instilled in you, you go ahead and do it anyway. Money and fame and all those things don’t matter much unless you can give back to the community. And if you don’t do that, then you are on the short end. You are not doing God’s work, you are not the communities work. Not doing what your parents and people before you have done. Even, you look at our great history of Martin Luther King, and Rosa Parks, and you can go down the line. If they don’t give an effort to give back to the community, what do you have? You have nothing.
Lewis: And Angela, I’ll get you back into this conversation. Of course Caroling Pros focuses a lot on some of the basketball camps, but there is also much more to Carolina Pros. Talk about some of the other initiatives and incentives that you have.
Lee: Well we do have several initiatives, but they all fall under one of three areas; and these areas are Health, Education, and Economic Development. These are the areas on which Carolina Pros focuses its’ efforts and places its’ resources. As Gene said, if we don’t pick up the torch and carry what we were instilled with by our parents and grandparents, and people around us, then, kids to come, future generations will not benefit from what we, you know, what we were blessed with. So under those three areas, there are so many things you can do. Whether its helping kids with financial literacy issues, whether its mentoring programs, or scholarships or technology, bridging that digital divide. These are things that are pertinent to everybody, you know, all of our kids and all of our communities and we have got to be proactive. We have got to provide programs, as Gene said, if they don’t exist, but we’re not trying to reinvent the wheel. If we can partner, remember, team up to help others, if we can partner with organizations that are really trying to do the same thing that we are trying to do and trying to do it in the same way that we’re trying to do it – then together, we can get it done. We can have an impact.
Lewis: Henry, as Board Chairman, what are some of the initiatives that you’re focusing on the most?
McKoy: One of the huge initiatives-of the folks of our education, we actually partner with the Chapel Hill – Carrboro School System to create a new class called Show Me the Money. What the purpose of that class is, is to introduce young people to financial literacy, while being able to interact with professional athletes. And the ideas that you train the young people to really understand, financial literacy and credit and things of that nature, and have a little fun with it and in the process, they get to interact with the athletes and also tie into the community. The purpose behind the class is to really get students to think critically about what they are doing. We are looking for a way to really connect the class to the community by putting us out a pool of real funds, at the end of the day, that the students will have to decide on what community service organization to give that pool of money to. So, that is one of our big ones is around education.
Lewis: And Gene, especially with your involvement in community service – and you touched on this a little earlier - how important is it to impact on the African American community, especially when it comes to community service?
Banks: Well, its really major. Because there is so much going on now with a lot of the kids, you look at the SAT scores, and academics and so forth. So down the line – we are looking at a decade or two of some kids having kids early. With economics now, people have to work, so a lot of the kids are raising themselves. You’ve got this tag of disenfranchise - forget all the tags, the bottom line of it is that we have to take a strong concept of back-to-basics. What did our grandparents and parents do to us? And make us be where we are to have this in our hearts. And we have to give those things back. Once we do that, we’ll be a better; we won’t look for the government to help us. We won’t look for all these people – what we’ll do is, do what we have to do strongly, and people will see what you are doing, and they will come on board. That’s not easy, I honor them, you know, Angie Lee, and this brother here – he’s doing a wonderful job. They are great – right there in the front, look at what they are doing. But people don’t know what they are really do behind the scenes, it’s not easy. It’s very, very hard, and it’s heartfelt. And it’s hard, it’s a hard job. But somebody has to do it and if you don’t, our kids will be lost.
Lewis: Looking at it as a whole, and I’ll address this to either one of you – what are the challenges that young people are facing, that you are seeing as you go around and you have these seminars and other types of events with these young folks? What are some of the challenges that you see?
McKoy: Well, I think that we are in the twenty-first century now, and that means that everything operates faster, that means that globalization there that means that no longer competing just against the child beside them, but the child overseas, the economy overseas, and I really see the – as you look at any economy, there’s sub-section of the economy - African American s are one of the sub-sections of, for instance, North Carolina State economy. In order for the North Carolina State economy to really flourish and be strong, the African American community is going to have to be strong as well. So when our initiatives focus around education, economic development, and health care – we see those things as really being interconnected. A lot of people look at them as ____, but they really are connected - economics depends on, a lot of times, how healthy you are, how educated you are. And then it’s just a continuous cycle, so kids today are faced with so many different things in this twenty-first century that they are going to have to learn to think critically, to make decisions on their feet, to really be in a knowledge based society. So that’s really the huge challenge and our African American kids are really going to have to be trained do compete on a global stage, not just a local one.
Lewis: Angela, I understand that Carolina Pros have a very unique series of events to take place, tell us about those events.
Lee: We did, yes. We had what we called Stars ‘n Caviar Evening. We held, on campus at UNC, at the Carolina Club an evening that consisted of a Silent Auction, nice sit-down dinner. Casino Night with Vegas style entertainment, we had a stand-up comedian, and enjoyed a few hours of fun with faux money. And ended the evening with dancing. A full evening, and it was an opportunity to not only bring athletes and community together to have fun, but also to let folks know more about what we’ve been doing, what Carolina Pros has been doing. What our plans are, what we are going to be undertaking in the near future and hopefully in years to come.
Following that, the next day, that Saturday afternoon, we had a Youth Clinic at the Smith Center on campus. And the Youth Clinic was one that we were particularly pleased to conduct this year for the first time. We did it in partnership with the Chapel Hill – Carrboro YMCA, the UNC School of Medicine, Healthy Kids Foundation, and some of the students in the Sports Medicine department at North Carolina Central, and a few other folks, and of course – athletes. The purpose of it was to demonstrate to kids and to adults, the importance of the total package of fitness. Physical activity, Nutrition, and really what rest is and how important it is in the overall scheme of things. Henry referenced the Show Me the Money financial literacy class. What’s really exciting about something like that is, you’ve got kids who during the span of an hour – 55 minutes, they are wheeling and dealing with finances, but it’s so important even to CEOs, you know, we’ll take a break and stand up and stretch, or just take that little break, or that physical break – if its five minutes or 60 seconds, the total package to show that in order to be at your best, to achieve optimally, you’ve got to do it all, you’ve got to pay attention to exercise, nutrition, and rest.
Lewis: And we are down to about a minute and I wanted to ask this question to the both of you, especially being involved in athletics, because kids now, many of them, starting at a young age, they have this belief “I’m going to go and play professionally in sports”. I’ll start off with you Henry – what advise would you give them, especially as it relates to academics vs. athletics?
McKoy: Well, I would say that students should take education very seriously. It doesn’t matter where you want to end up – education is going to help you get there. So I always try to impart on young people that - begin to learn how to love to learn. Figure out where you want to go – set goals – set aspirations – set dreams. Then love to learn how to get to that point.
Banks: Same thing, when we practice playing basketball on the courts, even if it is in the season to playground for two or three hours. They have to take the same attitude with academics, you know, just taking it out the time, for two or three hours – studying, reading. The computer age is here, but bottom line of it is you have to read, you have to digest all that stuff. And that’s key.
Lewis: And I guess we’ll have to stop it here and thank you so much for being here on this program, and continued success to all of you. I would like to thank Angela Lee, Gene Banks, and Henry McKoy, Jr. for joining us. If you would like to get in touch with our guests, or obtain a copy of transcript of this show, visit us online at UNCTV.org/bif, When you visit be sure to give us your comments and program suggestions. You can also call us on the BIFline at 919-549-7167. For Black Issues Forum, I’m Mitchell Lewis. Thanks for watching.
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