Six-year-old Isaiah Harris rambled around the Whitesburg Baptist Center gymnasium in Huntsville, oblivious to the other 130-plus children who were bouncing or shooting basketballs one Saturday morning.
Although he was taking part in a daylong basketball camp, Isaiah was more intent on discovering how the light switches worked.
But that was OK with the camp’s director, George Lemon, known to most of the world as Meadowlark Lemon.
Today, the former Harlem Globetrotter and “Clown Prince of Basketball” is more interested in helping light a path for children than teaching the game he played. He just uses his famous hook shot to get them interested.
“We’re not just teaching basketball skills, but life skills as well,” said Lemon. “It’s more important that they take them (life skills) to the next level, because many are not prepared to do so.”
He was born Meadow George Lemon, but became Meadowlark Lemon as an understudy for “Rookie” Brown with the Harlem Globetrotters. Lemon was later dubbed the “Clown Prince of Basketball,” a title previously held by Reece “Goose” Tatum until his retirement from the Globetrotters.
Unlike his zany on-court persona, Lemon is a soft-spoken man. And while he still spends much of his time on the basketball court, it is usually conducting camps, especially for indigent children.
Wearing a T-shirt with the words “You Won’t Lose When You Shoot for This” and an image of a cross, Lemon walked among the campers, picking out some for instruction while his assistant, John Mayberry, led much of the camp, along with 15 volunteers from the church.
Lemon said many young people, even athletes, get into trouble by making bad decisions. Several current Globetrotters were recently in the home of ex-NBA star Jayson Williams when, authorities believe, Williams shot and killed a man. Though the shooting is assumed accidental, Williams faces criminal charges of reckless manslaughter and tampering with evidence.
“It upsets me very much,” said Lemon. “Jayson put himself in a bad position because of a bad decision he made. He had everything people strive for in their lives. We just want to stop kids from making those same kinds of bad decisions.”
A native of Wilmington, N.C., Lemon was relatively poor as a child and had to improvise to practice basketball. He used an onion sack and coat hanger for the goal and an empty milk carton for his first two-point shot. When he was 11, he saw a newsreel of the Globetrotters and immediately set his sights on becoming a member of the team. He was invited to join just before high school graduation but ended up serving in the armed forces for two years before finally realizing his dream.
Lemon left the Globetrotters in 1979 after 22 years. He became a Christian in 1982 and went into the ministry in 1986, but often appeared with the team until 1995 when he left for good to pursue other avenues, including appearances in films, television shows and commercials. He recorded albums for RCA and Casablanca Records.
He also formed the Meadowlark Harlem All Stars and expects to play in his 10,000th basketball game this fall. “It’s not about what you do on the court,” he said. “I’ve been an entertainer for years, but this (ministry) is what is real.”
Today, he hosts “The Meadowlark Lemon Show,” televised nationally on the Trinity Broadcasting Network.
Most of the kids, who ranged in age from 6 to 14, knew of Meadowlark only from Scooby Doo cartoons, but his speech at the church’s Upward youth basketball program and his camp were enough to make a believer out of Sarah Becky Spain, a seventh-grader at Whitesburg Baptist Christian Academy.
“I knew about the Globetrotters, but I didn’t really know Meadowlark,” she said. “He’s very inspirational. He told us we’ve just got to be nice to each other.”
(RNS)
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