Notre Dame Basketball Icon Tom Hawkins Passes Away At Age 80
Tom Hawkins, a 1959 University of Notre Dame graduate and basketball All-American who was inducted into the school’s Ring of Honor in 2015, passed away at his home in Malibu, Calif., today (Aug. 16).
The first African-American to earn All-America honors as a Notre Dame student-athlete, his 1,318 career rebounds remain the school’s oldest standing record in basketball. "The Hawk" then was the No. 3 pick in the 1959 NBA Draft and enjoyed a 10-year career in the pros, finishing with the Los Angeles Lakers.
Hawkins’ 23.0 career scoring average is No. 3 on the all-time Notre Dame chart, behind Austin Carr’s 34.6 from 1968-71 and Adrian Dantley’s 25.8 from 1973-76.
“I feel blessed and privileged that I got to develop a relationship with him as the head coach at Notre Dame,” Mike Brey said. “Tom was a trailblazer, a class act and a true ‘Notre Dame Man.’’’
Here is the feature we did on Hawkins shortly before his induction into the Ring of Honor two years ago:
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During his three-year varsity basketball career at Notre Dame from 1956-59, Tom Hawkins immortalized himself in the school’s record books.
He remains the lone player in school history to average more than 20 points (23.0) and 15 rebounds per game (16.7), and his 1,318 career rebounds remain the oldest standard in the program's history. So when it was announced on Oct. 31, 2014 that Hawkins would be Notre Dame’s seventh member in the Ring of Honor created in 2010, the reaction from his contemporaries was universal:
What took so long?
For Hawkins, the official ceremony on Jan. 17, 2015 goes far beyond any achievements in the basketball arena, which included helping Notre Dame advance to the Elite 8 his junior year in 1957-58 (one of only five times that has occurred the past 59 years).
“Every thought I have about Notre Dame is so positive, it sometimes overwhelms me,” he said. “To recognize my basketball contributions to the University is great, but running concurrently with my basketball achievement was the humanity that I was afforded by everybody associated with the University.”
As a 10-year-old in 1947, Hawkins received a powerful message from his mother when news arrived that Jackie Robinson would break baseball’s color barrier.
“She told me what this would mean to me as a young black man later on and what it meant to the nation,” he recalled. “Through that door I could do something to distinguish myself and be a disciple of Jackie Robinson.”
In 1951, Hawkins was one of 25 students who helped integrate Chicago’s Parker High School in an era when segregation was the law of the land. The No. 1 basketball prospect in talent-rich Chicago in 1955 while leading the city in scoring (29 points per game) and rebounds (20 per game), Hawkins was introduced by his high school coach, Eddie O’Farrell, to Notre Dame head coach John Jordan. O’Farrell and Jordan had grown up and played basketball together in The Windy City.
Hawkins made a list of 10 schools he wanted to visit, and Notre Dame was first.
“It was like stepping into a haven,” he recalled of the campus’ serenity and architecture. “I called my mom and told her, ‘Tear up the list. I don’t even want to see another university.’”
Race Relations
Hawkins had prided himself as a student racial ambassador at Parker, but he had a broader challenge at Notre Dame. He was one of only two black students admitted into the school in 1955, and 10 were on the campus overall. He would be the lone black on the basketball team and in any class he took all four of his years.
“It didn’t matter to me and I can't tell you why, but I can tell you that in four years on campus I did not have one racial incident,” he said. “I didn’t because all of my teammates, my freshman advisor, [school president] Father [Ted] Hesburgh … so many people respected me and always looked out for my dignity.”
He recalled a day when he was not sat down at a local pizza parlor because he “didn’t have a reservation.”
“All of the students who were from Notre Dame got up, left their food and didn’t pay the bill, and Father Hesburgh immediately put the pizza parlor on the list that Notre Dame personnel could not patronize,” Hawkins recalled. “Father Hesburgh said that until I was given a public apology, no Notre Dame student or personnel could go there, and anywhere that Notre Dame minority students aren’t welcome, neither was Notre Dame.”
Shortly thereafter, a knock on Hawkins’ dorm room came from 1956 Heisman Trophy winner Paul Hornung, who had befriended him.
“He said, ‘Damn you, Hawk, I’m missing out on all of my lasagna and pizza, and it’s because of your ass,’ ” Hawkins laughed. “So he said, ‘C’mon, we’re going downtown, and we’re going to get your apology and eat.’ I got the apology and Father Hesburgh took the restaurant off the list.”
On a trip to Lexington with the basketball team, Hawkins and teammate Eddie Gleason were told they were welcome at a movie theatre but “blacks in the balcony, whites on the main floor.” After some expletives from Gleason at the ownership, he hailed a cab and went to watch a movie with Hawkins in the black section of town where they could sit together.
“This was the kind of support I always had at Notre Dame,” Hawkins said.
His best friend and roommate was point guard Gene Duffy — “I was never more coordinated with another man than Gene Duffy,” he said — one of the many Irishmen, along with Jordan, O’Farrell, teammates Bob Devine, John McCarthy, Mike Graney … who nurtured him while he in turn enhanced race relations.
Chairman Of The Boards
Some records are likely to stand forever. Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game in the NBA …
At Notre Dame, no one will ever eclipse Austin Carr’s career scoring average of 34.6 nor Hawkins’ 1,318 career rebounds, achieved in only three varsity seasons and 79 games. The closest to Hawkins’ record was Luke Harangody (2006-10) with 1,222 — but that was over four years and 129 games, 50 more than what Hawkins played.
Although he was only 6-5, Hawkins’ 40-plus vertical leap, instincts and determination make him Notre Dame’s eternal Chairman of the Boards.
“I averaged 23 points in my career, but I look at the rebound record as just as or even more important because it’s a lot of work,” Hawkins said. “Nobody invites you underneath the boards to grab a rebound. You’re knocked around, you’re pushed around, but it was a vital part of our game.”
The Ambassador
Hanging in the study of Hawkins’ home in Malibu, Calif., is his “all-time favorite picture,” one of Father Hesburgh handing Hawkins his sociology degree from Notre Dame in June 1959.
Meanwhile, hanging in Hesburgh’s office is a framed free-verse narrative entitled “The House of Hesburgh” in Hawkins’ 2012 released book: “Life Reflections Poetry for the People.”
The first print volume sold out, prompting a second printing. It reflects Hawkins’ eclectic, Renaissance Man life.
After a 10-year NBA career that ended with the Los Angeles Lakers — where he was the player representative in labor relations — in 1969, he began his new career as a basketball analyst in Los Angeles, and soon he worked five years apiece next to two of the play-by-play titans in the industry, Curt Gowdy and Harry Kalas, experiences he treasured during his own Emmy-nominated radio and television broadcasting career.
Not only did Hawkins cover the NCAA title game with Gowdy on NBC from 1971-74, but for 30 years he also became the master of ceremonies for the John Wooden Award that honors the nation’s top basketball player. A few years ago Hawkins received a call from the NCAA that they wanted to honor him in Anaheim.
“I said, ‘For what?’ ” Hawkins remembered. “The guy said, ‘You were the first black basketball analyst for NBC television.’ My response was, ‘I was?’ I had become so integrated since my teen years that I never really thought in those terms.”
The father of five — son Kevin was a walk-on basketball player at Notre Dame from 1978-81 and is now a federal mediator in Los Angeles — and grandfather of seven, Hawkins served as the vice president for communications for the Los Angeles Dodgers for 18 years, and in his spare time on weekends he hosted a four-hour network jazz show.
In addition he was active as a partner in the Beverly Hills public relations and advertising firm, Bishop, Hawkins and Associates and taught “Mass Media and the History of the Black Athlete” at Cal State Long Beach.
So respected was he as a community leader, he was one of the Olympic torch bearers when the Games were held at Los Angeles in 1984. An active public speaker, Hawkins recently was the Veterans Day emcee at the Glendale Elks Club and is a staff writer for the Malibu Chronicle magazine.
“I couldn’t have been all of those things without the background that I got at Notre Dame,” Hawkins said. “Notre Dame prepared me to be a man in a man’s world, and I will forever be grateful.”
The school is even more so.
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