Love enters the University and Business Center’s
Seigle Auditorium on March 18.
Love speaks with passion about his life struggles,
which he wrote about in The Bob Love Story: If It’s
Gonna Be, It’s Up to Me, published in 1999.
Bulls legend Bob Love signs a calendar for a
young fan after his motivational speech.
Love gives an autograph to ECC women’s basketball
coach Jerry McLaughlin
James Ayello
Staff Writer
Sometimes, certain stories only seem to exist in Hollywood. Only in a movie script would a man begin his life at the bottom of society, rise to its summit, fall back down to where he started and then rise to the top once more. But some men live those stories, and the Elgin community met one of them on March 18 when former Chicago Bull Bob Love came to ECC’s University Business Center. Love spoke to students, faculty and community members in a motivational speech that detailed parts of his life.
When he was a child, Love had a dream: he was dribbling by and scoring on the greatest basketball stars in the world. In reality, however, he was playing alone with a ball composed of his grandfather’s old rolled-up socks and stuffed with grass; he was shooting into a stretched-out coat hanger nailed to the side of a house in Bastrop, Louisiana. Love’s dream would be one that he would later make into reality. Imagination was never the problem for Love; if he wanted to, he could imagine himself as Doctor Martin Luther King or President John F. Kennedy, giving a speech to a mass of eager Americans hanging on his every word. This dream too would come true—just not as easily as his basketball one.
“All those (accolades) that I received when I was playing: the All-Americans, the All-Stars, the All-Pros,” Love said during his speech. “You know what, I would like to give it all back… for the mere fact that I’m able to stand here this morning before you and utter one single word… It’s a dream come true.”
Despite having basketball talent that granted him not only a scholarship to Southern University in Louisiana but a spectacular basketball career in the NBA (in which he set many records), Love kept a secret. In his documentary, “Find Yourself a Dream: The Bob Love Story,” it was said that many held a bad opinion about Love.
“He had a reputation of being unapproachable and not giving interviews to the press,” explained the film’s narrator. “In those days many thought he was inarticulate, angry or just plain ignorant. As a young child he was cursed with a debilitating stutter. It was so severe he could utter no more than two words without stuttering incomprehensibly. He rarely spoke in public and only family and close friends accepted him for who he was.”
After ten enormously successful years in the NBA, Love suffered a back injury and was forced to retire. One day, after his second surgery in which the doctor told him he would never walk correctly again, he came home to find his wife had left him and had taken everything of his. She left a note that said she did not want to spend her life with a cripple that couldn’t talk. He was devastated. He had no choice but to go out and get a job to support himself. He became a bus boy and a dishwasher in Seattle, Washington— not a normal career choice for a retired basketball superstar, but with his severe speech impediment, no one would give Love an opportunity.
Love’s obstacles would be enough to derail almost anyone.
However, he decided to stay on track and become the best at what he did. Blocking out all of the whispers of customers that recognized who he used to be, Love became so dedicated to his job that his managers began to take notice. They were so appreciative of his work ethic, they decided they wanted make him a permanent part of the company. They offered to pay for speech therapist to help Love liberate himself from the impediment that had imprisoned him his entire life. Love, waiting for this type of opportunity for his entire life, took the lessons.
Today, Love has made speaking his profession, as he talks to more than 250,000 young people each year, including those students that attended his speech at ECC. He is now the director of Community Affairs for the Chicago Bulls.
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