The fresh faces filled the row of seats on the outside of the auditorium's main floor. They were teenagers, boys and girls from public high schools in the Metro Cleveland area, and they had come downtown to the public library to listen to a man who, for the majority of them, was just a name from history.
To them, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was as unfamiliar as Earl Warren or Nelson Rockefeller or Spiro Agnew. All played starring roles in U.S. history, although perhaps their significance to boys and girls of a certain age was because somebody like me told them so.
Yet as I looked at the faces of youth, I saw an enthusiasm, a real interest in what the giant of a man on the stage in front of them had to say. Abdul-Jabbar, 62, said plenty this day, too -- to these teens and to anybody who cared about the futures of these teenagers.
Abdul-Jabbar, the former NBA star who made the sky hook famous, knows that what people do today can shape how a teenager turns out tomorrow. In a room packed with the melting pot that reflects Cleveland, he could have told the audience of 600 that it takes a village to raise a child. He didn't.
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