We should not allow the story and wonder of Tommy Hawkins to go up in flames without a proper recounting. Nor so that of his wife of 39 years, Layla.
The inferno that raged across the Palisades on Jan. 7 took thousands of homes and several lives. It wiped out wealth, hope, memories and futures. It ravaged Las Flores Canyon in Malibu, where Tommy and Layla had lived for 32 years, in a house with mountain and ocean views.
There had been several fires headed their way over the years, some coming close, some even causing some damage. But this time, with Tommy no longer there and Layla left alone with so many years of memorabilia and art and music and awards and plaques and trophies and family scrapbooks, the inferno allowed no exceptions, paid no attention to legends of the legend it was consuming.
‘The Hawk’
When he died in August of 2017, at age 80, it was duly noted around Los Angeles, but nobody lowered the flags to half-staff at City Hall in Malibu. He had been a star, a longtime athletic and media presence, but his generation had drifted out of the limelight or preceded him in death.
He became “The Hawk” out of Parker High in Chicago. He had been one of 25 black kids sent out of the Chicago projects to Parker, now Robeson High, to start to integrate the school. He would grow to 6 feet 5, love to play basketball and take inspiration from Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier with the Dodgers. His mother had shown him the stories about that and told him that, if Robinson can do it, so could he.
He became a high-leaping prep basketball star. His specialty was rebounding. He could pick teacups off the top of the backboard.
In 1955, he and his mother sat down and narrowed the list of colleges he would visit to 10, each one eager to have him wear their basketball jersey. His first trip was to South Bend, Ind., and Notre Dame. After he walked around the campus lakes and sat in the shade of huge old trees, he called his mother and told her to cancel the other nine trips.
For three years (freshmen weren’t eligible), he packed the old fieldhouse with the creaky bleacher seats and the dirt floor. He was an All-American. Notre Dame, a football school, started to get noticed for basketball. He scored a lot, but he rebounded more. He treated each shot like a long-lost brother. When he finished, he had taken down 1,318 rebounds. That is still the school record, standing now for 66 years.
He claimed he never had a racial incident at Notre Dame, perhaps forgetting the time he went with several other students to a pizza place in South Bend and was refused service. His friends walked out with him. Football star Paul Hornung, already a golden boy at the school, heard about it, came to Hawkins’ room, knocked on the door and told Hawkins they were going out for a pizza. Hornung took him to the same place that had refused Hawkins service, stared down the owner, and they sat down as their pizza was served.
The pros drafted him third overall and he went off to play for the Minneapolis Lakers, who quickly became the Los Angeles Lakers. Back then, the NBA in Los Angeles was less of a big deal than, say UCLA basketball and USC football. But the Lakers tried hard. Soon, there were the likes of Tommy Hawkins and Elgin Baylor, riding in a convertible in the downtown streets of L.A., encouraging people via megaphone to come and see them play at the Sports Arena. Try picturing Kobe and Shaq doing that.
Hawkins was traded to the Cincinnati Royals and played there from 1962 to 1966, then traded back to the Lakers for his final three seasons in the NBA, ending in 1969.
As quickly as he had become a Laker, he became a media figure of note in the L.A. area. He was the first black basketball announcer for NBC, did lots of local TV, had his own radio show where he played jazz and talked about it, became the master of ceremonies for major events such as the Wooden Award dinner and the annual USC-Notre Dame football game luncheon. Eventually, he spent 18 years as the director of communications for the Dodgers and counted as close friends Peter O’Malley and Tommy Lasorda.
A day that will never be forgotten
Layla Hawkins woke that Jan. 7 with the same dread she had had before. Windy days, scary fires nearby, radio and TV sending warnings. But she had been spared before.
That morning, five members of a real estate company had come to take pictures for her listing. She had wanted to keep the house for her daughter, but her daughter, with memories of past fire close calls, wanted nothing to do with it. Layla talked to friends, advisors she trusted, and Peter O’Malley and his associate, Brent Shyer, helped with the steps to get ready to sell.
As the winds howled and friends called her with updates on the fire, the real estate people finished, packed up and headed out. Layla learned later that the wind had kicked up so fast that, with fire closing in, they barely made it down to Sunset and into Santa Monica, where their office was located.
By late afternoon, she was getting frenzied calls from her friend, Susie, who was two canyons away in Topanga. The message was no longer a recommendation. It was a demand. Get out.
She quickly sprayed down shrubbery she could reach, saw a neighbor on his roof doing the same, then grabbed her purse, and opened the door and gates so the fire department would have access. She was a fire veteran, after all.
She was moving all too slowly, she remembers. She had a recent knee replacement and it slowed her down, almost tragically.
“The fire came out of nowhere,” she says. “It came at me. It was like one of those 3-D movies. I can’t explain it.
“I was talking to Tommy all the way. Nearly 40 years of marriage, he was always there. I told him, don’t let me die like this. The fire was suddenly right there. It was like somebody dropped an atomic bomb.”
She made it down to Mulholland Drive, still trying to look back towards her house.
“I knew nothing could survive this,” she says.
Returning home
Layla didn’t want friends or neighbors to send her pictures of the rubble. She would go back, but not right away. It was weeks.
“I drove up there by myself,” she says. “My house was fourth one on the left. I had to count to make sure. Everything looked like the pictures you see of Gaza. I talked to Tommy again. I told him I was glad he was not there to see this.”
She knew she was in the right place. Standing tall, rim straight and net still in place, was Tommy Hawkins’ basketball hoop. You could have kicked aside some of the debris, taken a shot and listened for the swish. It would still be there.
What wasn’t there was beyond painful.
There had been so many trophies and plaques, a huge and valuable art collection, wedding pictures, one of the better collections of jazz music in the city and invaluable computer files. He had started writing his second book, and after he died, O’Malley and Shryer were working with Layla on how to finish it and get it published.
But it was gone, along with almost everything else.
She found a starfish-shaped figurine. It was ceramic and had survived. It was originally for putting in money and loose coins.
“We used it to leave love notes to each other,” she says.
She says they were both avid readers. The house had been filled with books.
“Tommy used to joke,” she says, “that if anything ever happened to the Library of Congress, we could just fill it up again with our collection.”
Her return ended when she realized she had bloody hands from sifting through all the debris. She returned to her car, having felt the symbolism of Tommy’s surviving basketball hoop, and having salvaged a ceramic figurine and a slightly scorched metal figurine of a trumpet player.
The items and possessions of her life, almost all of them, were gone.
Life now
“I go to the FEMA offices every day,” Layla says.
She was so close to not needing to.
Her house was to go on the market for $3.5 million. In the Los Angeles real estate market, with her ocean view and Malibu address, the price seemed reasonable and a quick sale likely. The insurance she had will now cover only $600,000, and her remaining mortgage is $250,000. Nobody can really say now what the land is worth, nor whether people will finally shy away from building in an area where winds and fire are always a threat. Friends have tried to rally around her, including setting up a GoFundMe account.
She is 22 years younger than Hawkins when he died in 2017. She is Persian. She left Iran when her family, part of the Shah of Iran’s administration, was on the losing side of the Iranian Revolution of 1979. When Ayatollah Khomeini took power, her family went from wealthy to endangered.
She came to the United States, graduated from Louisiana State with a degree in mechanical engineering and eventually moved to Los Angeles, finding work in various photo agencies and film companies in Santa Monica.
That’s where she met Hawkins.
“It truly was love at first sight,” she says.
She says that at one point, Hawkins defined his feelings toward her by sitting down at his desk and typing one sentence on a sheet of paper. He handed it to her and it read: “It’s more than a feeling. It’s a force.”
That sheet of paper was perhaps her most treasured possession.
It burned on Jan. 7.
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