THOMAS KEEPS PROMISE TO MOM
by Ira Berkow, at the New York Times, Published May 11, 1987In honor of Mother’s Day, we wanted to share one of our favorite articles about Mary Thomas.
In April 1981, Isiah Thomas, with some trepidation, told his mother that he planned to leave college. Mary Thomas, who raised nine children alone in a Chicago ghetto, protested. Isiah knew it was her dream that he, her youngest child, should earn a college degree, and become the first of her boys to do so.
”Mom, I’m only leaving college basketball for pro basketball,” said Isiah, then 19 years old. As a 6-foot-1-inch sophomore point guard, he had recently led Indiana to a national championship, and was entering the National Basketball Association draft. ”I’ll go back to school, I’ll get a degree.” ”You promise?” she said. ”I promise,” said Isiah. ”O.K.,” she said, ”put it in writing.” And a legal document was drawn up with a lawyer, George Andrews of Chicago, Isiah’s agent.
What would be the penalty if Isiah broke the contract?
”I don’t know,” Thomas said recently, with his bright, boyish smile, ”I guess my mother could sue me.”
That won’t be necessary. Six years later, after paying to take numerous courses in summer school, and correspondence courses during the basketball season, and a night course through Wayne State University in Detroit, Isiah Lord Thomas 3d, with a B average and a major in criminal justice, had his graduation day at Indiana University. On Mother’s Day.
Because of circumstances beyond his control, he couldn’t make the ceremony. Mary Thomas could, though she wasn’t told she would participate until just before yesterday’s 11 A.M. commencement exercises in Bloomington when she was handed the cap, gown and tassel at the Assembly Hall door. Although Thomas is 16 credits short of a degree, he plans to complete the work this summer. At Indiana, it is not unusual for summer graduates to participate in the spring commencement.
Isiah’s academic counselor at Indiana, Sharon Ray Gotlob, gave the graduation garb to Mrs. Thomas yesterday. ”I didn’t know what size hat she wore,” said Mrs. Gotlob, ”so I ordered a large, and brought a whole lot of bobby pins.”
Mrs. Gotlob had to fight some administrative red tape to arrange for Mrs. Thomas, who was born in Vicksburg, Miss., and never went past the sixth grade, to represent her son among the 1,100 or so other graduates from the School of Arts and Sciences.
”I don’t know, this has never been done before,” a university official told her.
”Oh heavens,” Mrs. Gotlob countered, ”what’s there to get nervous about?” The argument was persuasive.
Thomas couldn’t make his graduation because, as much of the country knows, he had a basketball game to attend to. ”I had my hands full here,” said Thomas, the star guard for the Detroit Pistons. ”But I wish I could have been there, too. But in some ways it’s better this way. I’m gratified about finally getting the degree, but I think it might mean more to my mother. My getting a diploma was an achievement for her, too.”
The Pistons are engaged in a fierce series with the Atlanta Hawks in an Eastern Conference semifinal playoff series, which Detroit leads, 3-1, after beating the Hawks, 89-88, yesterday afternoon in the Silverdome. Thomas won the game with a driving layup with one second left, and finished with a game-high 31 points.
Late last week, Thomas said he had hoped the playoff game would be on Saturday, and not Sunday. It didn’t work out that way, and so Thomas was struck by a brainstorm: Let his mother do it!
Thomas is devoted to his mother, whom he admires for her struggle to keep the family together, and to keep him in school. She worked in the community center, she worked in the church, she worked for the Housing Authority of the City of Chicago.
He has six older brothers and two older sisters, and the West Side of Chicago where they grew up was rough. Thomas would recall the time known as Draft Day in the ghetto, when about 25 members of the Vice Lords street gang came to recruit some of his brothers at their home on Congress Street, facing the Eisenhower Expressway.
”We want your boys,” the gang leader told Thomas’s mother. ”They can’t walk around here and not be in no gang.”
She stared at him from behind her glasses. ”There’s only one gang around here, and that’s the Thomas gang,” she said, ”and I lead that.”
”If you don’t bring those boys out, we’ll get ’em in the streets,” he said.”
Isiah was 6 years old and frightened. His mother told the assembled gang members to wait just a minute. She went inside. When she returned, she opened the door and held a sawed-off shotgun.
”Get off my porch,” she demanded, ”or I’ll blow you ‘cross the Expressway.”
Thomas didn’t join a gang, and was protected from the streets by his brothers – and his mother. But some of his brothers would eventually succumb to the ravages of that world: drinking, dope, pimping, run-ins with the law. Two of his brothers, now, are on the Chicago police force. And two other brothers, he said, ”are still sort of out there.”
Isiah was the hope of the family, though, and went on scholarship to a private Catholic high school in a suburb – an hour-and-a-half round trip every day by elevated train and bus.
Thomas received an athletic scholarship to Indiana, and became a standout under Bobby Knight. When Indiana won the National Collegiate Athletic Association title in 1981, Isiah was named the most valuable player in the tournament. It was Mary Thomas who had pushed for Indiana. She said that Knight was one of the few recruiters out of many who came to her who didn’t offer her anything under the table: no cars, no condominums, no free plane trips, no money. She respected that, and respected that he seemed to be sincere about the education aspect of college for her son.
Then, after two years at Indiana, Thomas understood that if he agreed to leave school the Pistons would draft him (he would be the second choice over all) and sign him to a four-year contract for $1.6 million.
”I had to take it,” Thomas said. ”It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance. My mother worked hard all her life and for not much money. This was a chance to help her, and help my family. I had to do it.”
Mary Thomas still wasn’t certain. ”One day you might go broke,” she told her son. ”You need a college degree to fall back on.” So Isiah made his promise to her, and signed the legal document to underscore it.
In six years in the N.B.A., Thomas has made a great success of it. Despite being small for a pro player, he has averaged 20 points a game and 11 assists in his career, has made the all-N.B.A. first team three times, and was twice voted most valuable player in the annual all-star game. He is deft at the 3-point shot and can score in traffic around the basket against 7-footers.
There are criticisms of him on the court: Sometimes he shoots too much for a point guard, thinking he can carry more of the burden of the team than some think he ought to; sometimes he’ll force a situation by a pass or drive; sometimes he may get too ferocious in a game, and a scuffle might break out around him.
Regardless, he is one of the handful of players in the league – along with Larry Bird and Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan and Akeem Olajuwon – who can almost single-handedly dominate and change the course of a game. Last Friday was a perfect example. In the third game of the playoffs against Atlanta, the teams were tied at the half, 41-41. Thomas led a third-quarter charge by scoring 25 points – breaking an N.B.A. playoff record for most points scored in a quarter – grabbing four rebounds, making four steals, and handing off for two assists. The Pistons went on to victory.
”Isiah gets that glow, that gleam,” said his teammate, Bill Laimbeer, after Friday’s game. ”He just got that intense look at halftime. He knows what’s going to happen in advance.”
Two years ago, when his contract was expiring, the Pistons signed Thomas, now 26 years old, to a 10-year contract worth $10 million.
With part of the money, he bought a home for himself and his wife, Lynn, in Bloomfield Hills, a Detroit suburb, and bought a home for his mother in Clarendon Hills, a Chicago suburb.
”What’s life been like for me since I left Chicago? It’s been unreal,” he said. He recalled a recent walk with Lynn near their home. ”It was about sunset when we came back,” he said, ”and looking at the house – I don’t even know how many rooms it has, but it’s big enough to hold the gym I had built – and there were two cars in the garage and I said, ‘This is what I bought with my money.’ It seems amazing.’
”But the most satisfying thing for me since turning pro is when I go to my mother’s house. The bills are paid. When she goes to the closet, she can choose a dress to wear, rather than have to wear the only one in it. And there’s food in the refrigerator all the time. I remember when I was growing up that much of the time I never even went into the kitchen. There was no reason to. There was nothing there. I got used to eat a lot at a friend’s house. ‘Oh, hi, just happened to be around,’ ” Isiah laughed at the memory. ”I got very good at dropping by at dinnertime.”
Beyond the responsibility to his family now – he has helped his brothers and sisters and their children when possible – he has also been instrumental in community affairs in the Detroit area. Last year, he created and organized ”No Crime Day” in Detroit.
”I think it worked out O.K.,” he said. ”Since then crime has decreased” – he paused, and then added with a despairing laugh -”with the exception of homicide.”
At Indiana, he has created an Isiah Thomas Scholarship for one needy student a year. ”It’s for someone who needs the money otherwise they’d be kicked out,” said Thomas, ”and it doesn’t matter if they’re black or white, or what religion or background. It’s just need.”
It was this endowment that Thomas used to lure his mother to Bloomington for the graduation. ”Mom,” he had said, ”I want you to represent me at the announcement.” She said of course. She flew there with her 16-year-old granddaughter, Racquel, who was in on the plan.
”My mother wasn’t expecting me to graduate now,” said Thomas, who still has the 16 credits to earn. ”I think she had an idea I was taking courses, and she’d ask but I never gave her details.
”I’m not sure that a college education would mean much to me anymore. I mean, I’ve really gotten an education from my life now: traveling around the country, meeting people, being exposed to all kinds of new ideas. But I’m one of the rare ones, one of the lucky ones. When I have children I’ll insist on their getting a college education, just like my mother did with me.”
Isiah’s courses included English composition (he received a B) and Bambara, an African language (in which he received an A in each of the four quarters he took it), and calculus (”The hardest course I ever took,” he said. ”I needed a tutor twice a day every day for six weeks. I got behind early, and when I finally caught up at the end, it was too late.” He received a D plus.) He studied at home, on buses, on airplanes, even sometimes in the locker room. Now the time had come. Just before 11 A.M. yesterday, Mary Thomas, in a pale blue dress, and her granddaughter appeared as planned at the north entrance of Assembly Hall. There, Mrs. Gotlob met her. ”I’m pleased to inform you,” she said to Mrs. Thomas, ”that this is Isiah’s graduation. He called and asked us to have you participate in it for him.” ”You’re kidding, you’re kidding.” ”I’m not kidding.”
”Oh Lord!” said Mrs. Thomas. ”Bless his heart!” Mrs. Gotlob handed her the cap and gown, and a long-stemmed rose. Mrs. Thomas said later that she ”got weak in the knees.”
”I know why he had to graduate,” she said, with a laugh. ”Because of that contract. If he didn’t, he knew I’d get all his money. I’d ask him, ‘Is you doin’ any studyin’?’ or, ‘What’re you doin’?’ He’d say, ‘Don’t worry about me, ol’ lady.’ ”
In the ceremony, the vice president of the university, Kenneth Gross Louis, spoke of the variety of students graduating, from one who escaped from the dictatorship in Chile, to one who came to America four years ago unable to speak English and now is graduating with honors, and, he said, one who can’t be here because he’s playing in an N.B.A. game. He introduced Mrs. Thomas. She received a standing ovation.
When John Ryan, the university president, suggested that the students thank their parents and others who have stood behind them, Mrs. Thomas buried her head in her hands.
Meanwhile, her son was in a basketball game, one from which he emerged the hero. Shortly afterward, Thomas, from the trainer’s room, called his mother at Mrs. Gotlob’s home.
”Hey, ol’ lady,” he said, still in uniform and wiping sweat from his forehead. He listened. ”Were you surprised? . . . What you were cryin’ for? . . . I’m proud of you, too. . . . Yeah, we won the game. . . .”
He listened and laughed. ”You deserve it. . . . Oh, ol’ lady, almost forgot. Happy Mother’s Day.”