January 1, 2025 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, just days before his death, the 40-year-old Maravich shared his story to a small audience about his life pursuing success and fame—until that pursuit brought him to his knees. This is the story of him coming to Christ.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
This is our American Stories. Pistol Pete Maravich is widely
regarded as one of the greatest players in basketball history,
also one of my personal hoops heroes. Marrivich starred in
college with the LSU Tigers while playing for his father,
head coach Press Marivich, with thirty six hundred and sixty
seven points, and he averaged forty four point two points
(00:34):
per game. All of his accomplishments were achieved before the
adoption of the three point shot and the shot clock,
and despite being able to play varsity as a freshman
under the NCAA rules. That's crazy. Marrivig played ten years
in the NBA and is considered by many to be
the best ball handler of all time. Just days before
(00:54):
his death on January eighth, nineteen eighty eight, the forty
year old Pistol Pete spoke to guests who gathered near
the pool side of Jimmy Walker's house an NBA All Star.
We'd like to thank Vision Video for giving us special
access to this rare, bonus footage you were about to
hear from their fantastic uplifting movie The Pistol The Birth
(01:15):
of a Legend. Three to g Here's Pete Maravich looking
back on his life just days before his death.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
I grew up in Clemson, South Carolina. When I was
four years old, the only thing I ever knew was basketball.
By the time I was five years old, I was
already playing organized basketball. My parents baded me into the game.
That never forced me in. When I was seven years old,
my dad came to me and he says, Pete. He says,
I don't have any money to send you to college.
You're going to have to get a scholarship. And if
you get a scholarship, they'll pay your way. I only
(01:45):
make twenty nine hundred dollars a year, and that's just
not going to pay your way by the time you
get there. And if you're good enough, Pete, you might
even make it to the pro basketball. That's where the
greatest players play, and there's so few. And if you
get there, you might play on a team that wins
a world championship and you'll get a big diamond ring, Pete,
so big, and it has on their World champions and
you'll be declared as the rest of the team, one
(02:06):
of the greatest at that particular time. Not only that, Pete,
you'll be able to make money. They'll pay you for
doing it. They'll pay you for playing something that you
enjoy doing well. From that day, I decided to commit
my life totally to basketball. I was dedicated, possessed, and
obsessed by I was so dedicated to it. I'll tell
(02:26):
you some of the things I used to do. We
lived two and a half miles outside of town in Clemson,
South Carolina, and I used to get the basketball and
I'd dribble in all the way. I would not accept
the ride. I would dribble in with my right hand
and dribble back home with my left hand, five miles
a day to the gym, where I'd play eight to
ten hours a day. When I finally got a bicycle
when I was about eleven years old. Ten eleven years old,
I learned to dribble the basketball on my bicycle all
(02:48):
the way. And it made a lot easier to get
into town too, and I got there quicker, and I
dribbled the ball by riding the bicycle. It got so
bizarre that my dad came to me one day and
he says, Pete, come on, get your basketball on us.
Go in the car. So where are we going? He says,
i'll tell you when we get there. He went over it,
and he went on this specific highway and there weren't
many cars there, and he said, now look, I want
(03:09):
you to get in the back. See stick yourself out
that back window there, and you start dribbling the ball.
I'm gonna drive at various speeds. I want to see
if you can really control this. And so I did that,
and he'd go five, ten, fifteen miles an hour, and
twenty miles an hour. And of course, if you realize
(03:29):
when you're trying to drive a basketballt of a car
or on a bicycle, you got to throw away out
in front because he's going and it's coming back. It
really comes back quick, along with a lot of rocks.
And to see the faces on the people that just
happened to be driving by was something in itself. It
really was. I used to tick the basketball to bed
(03:50):
with me. I slept with a basketball till I was
about thirteen years old. I would get in bed and
I'd lay in the bed for one hour before I
ever went to sleep, and I would repeat three things
fingertip control backspin fallow through fingertip control backsmen followed through
as I released it laying down. I was completely possessed
by the game. I used to go around my house blindfolded,
dribbling the ball because I knew where everything was. Of course,
(04:11):
through the dismay of my mother, sometimes I didn't, and
I knew how to drill the ball very fast. Out
of the house. I used to get the basketball and
I would dribble out in thunderstorms, lightning, everything else you
couldn't even see. I used to sneak out of my
back window. I'd go to this little spot where there
was a mud hole. It was kind of a real
hard mud, and I'd start dribbling the balls of mud
(04:31):
and everything splashed up on me and literally scared to
death because of the thunder and lightning. Because I felt
like if I could dribble in that mud and that
water and everything else control it, I could certainly do
it on a court when some of it was guarding me. See.
I was so committed to the game of basketball. In fact,
from the time I was five years old I was
seventeen years old. I played over twenty thousand hours of basketball.
And the March Readers Digest they had a story in
(04:54):
there about television and how it affects young people's minds
or any person. It wasn't four against television, it just
how it affects one's mind. And it said that the
average person by the time he's twenty years old sees
twenty thousand hours of television. And I kind of paralleled
that with my life, twenty thousand hours of people watching television.
I've spent twenty thousand hours of hard sweat playing the
(05:16):
game of basketball. When I was twelve years old, it
was my first time I ever played in a regular
game for junior varsity. I made the junior varsity when
I was twelve, and I was at thirteen, I started
on my high school team and played five years of
high school basketball. I was four foot nine and a
half and at that time, at twelve, a reporter came
up to me after the game, and I used to
(05:37):
shoot the basketball from down here because I was too
weak to shoot it from up here, and so I
used to take the ball and take it and release
it like this. And this reporter saw him and he says,
what looks like this guy is drawing a pistol, And
he wrote that up and that name is stick Stuck.
Ever since I just threw that in. I know that
doesn't interest you at all, but I just wanted to
say that. But he asked me after the game. He
(05:59):
came up an inner me. That was my first interview
I ever had, and I wish that had been my last.
But he said, what are you going to do when
you grow up? Crystol Pete? And I said, well, I'm
gonna play pro basketball. I'm gonna be on a team
that wins a world championship to get a diamond ring
and make a million dollars. And he literally fell off
his chair with laughter, and I said, what are you
laughing about? He said a million dollars. They don't make
(06:20):
that kind of money. This was in the fifties, and
he was right. But I just felt like at some
point in my life I would My early church life
was absolutely probably zero. I was not raised in a
Christian home. I was raised in a church home. I
was raised with telling Pete, you got to go to church.
It's good to go to church. You gotta you need church.
(06:42):
But when I got into church, I didn't never hear anything.
I never heard who Jesus Christ was when I was
young because I didn't want to hear see. I would
sit in there and literally count ticks in my head one, two,
three up to a minute, and that would go for
an hour until I got out of there. I felt
that if I was in this church for an hour,
or somebody in Philadelphia, La, Boston, New York was playing basketball,
and when it came down to get that scholarship, I
(07:03):
would not get it. See, and I progressed on into
my teenage years. When I was fourteen years old, was
the first time I ever had my first taste of alcohol.
I had a beer at fourteen years of age on
the steps of the Methodist church in Clemson, South Carolina,
(07:24):
and I liked it. I really did like it. I
liked it a lot. If for something I can tell
you young people here tonight, it's this, don't ever take
that first drink, and don't ever take that first drug,
because it'll never be your last and it'll lead to destruction.
Because that's literally what almost happened in my own life.
Ninety eight percent of all people in jails today started
with that first drink. Eighty five percent of over five
(07:47):
hundred thousand people in correctional institutions today committed their crimes
while only the influence of a mind altering substance. Drugs
are alcohol, And all of a sudden, this tremendous and
this commitment that I had and everything else, I kind
of went down the drain. I didn't have it anymore.
And I'd played so much up until that time when
(08:08):
I was fourteen fifteen going to sixteen seventeen, but all
of a sudden, I had time on the weekends to
do other things. I saw the opposite sex for the
first time in life. You see, I was completely obsessed
with basketball. I didn't do whatever other people did. My
god was basketball. Their god was sex, alcohol, and whatever else.
But I didn't see any of that until I was fourteen,
(08:30):
and then my eyes opened up and I enjoyed it
and I started getting into it. And then that toe
hold became a foothold, and the foothold became a stronghold,
and that stronghold became an entire possession. I'm not scared
to tell you here. I was an alcoholic. I can't
get people to write that up because I've never been
to a clinic or anything. And all my friends drank
just like I did, and they were alcoholics too. I
(08:52):
enjoyed it a great deal because there's a great pleasure
and sin. There's a lot of pleasure in it because
if there wasn't, nobody would do it. When I was
eighteen years old, I was I has to go out
to take Arrowhead out in San Bernardino, California, to a
campus crusade for Christ. They asked me to come out
there and do what you just saw here what was
called showtime. They said, would you come out here and
(09:12):
do your clinic Pete? I said, well, sure, that'd be great.
I'll bring one of my friends and we'll just come
out there California. I've never been there. It'll be fun.
So we got in the car and I was just
reaching my eighteenth birthday, literally right before what was to
be called the pistol pe Era in Southeastern Conference basketball.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
And you're listening to pistol Pete Marrivitch reflecting on his
own life, his days before his tragic death and a
premature death at that. When we come back, more of
its remarkable talk by Pistol Pete. Here are our American stories,
(10:09):
and we're back with our American stories and way to
continue with Pistol Pete Maravich, one of the old time
greatest players and an idol of mine. I can't tell
you how many hours I spent watching him on television
the rare times he would come on, and then trying
to copy every single thing he did. Let's go back
to Pistol, Pete.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
And so I drove out there and we partied all
the way out, and we had fun, and we chased girls,
and we just were in every bar we could find
and everything else. Took us three or four days to
get out there. And as I drove up on this campus,
I noticed that there were people sitting around praying and
holding hands under trees and things of this nature. And
I became very embarrassed. I didn't want any part of that,
(10:54):
and I told my friend, I said, hey, we got
to hurt get out of here. I'm gonna do this
clinic and get out of these people are nuts, I mean,
where are they smoking? And put that beer down. We
don't want to, you know, we don't want to see
him with this, with this beer. So I checked into
this place and it was for three days, and I
asked him when am I supposed to do my clinic
and they said, well, Pete, we're not sure yet, but
if you just bear with us, we're gonna have you
(11:14):
over here with this group, and I said, what do
you mean. What am I gonna do? Is it's well nothing,
there's nothing to do. We'll just put you here, would
you would be all right? And I said okay. So
I stayed with this group and my friend went with
another group, and for three days I finally heard who
Jesus Christ was. I wasn't concerned about that. To me,
it was just a story. It was a story. It
was nice, that's nice. But after the end of three
(11:37):
days there there was no impact on my life. We
went out to the beach. Bill Battle, who was an
All American football player and with a bicep as large
as my thigh, said we're going out to the beach.
I'm taking this group with me. We're going to witness
for Christ. And I said, what do you mean witness?
What is this? Bill? What do you mean witness? What
were you talking about? He's just come along, Pete. We
(11:58):
just want to we just want to show what we
do here. So I went along with him and we
went out on the beaches out there in California beaches,
and he goes up to the worst looking group. This
is back during the sixties. This is the most revolutionary time,
the rebellious time in our history. Probably it's led to
so much of the rebellion today. And yet he went
(12:20):
up to the worst looking group. Guy had tattoos, all
of his own hair down here, was smoking a joint, drinking.
There was about four or five of them. They were
mean looking, ugly, they didn't smell very good everything, And
I stayed wait in the background. But you know, the
Lord has a way to use people. You see, he
went up to this guy who was the meanest looking
guy right behind his head, he says, you know something,
(12:41):
I would really like to share something with you folks.
And this guy was literally gonna turn around and punch him.
I know, because he turned around. He said, look, go
right ahead, because that advice that was right in his face. Now,
if anything impressed me, it was that that did impress me.
I said, Wow, how God gets people's attention, It's amazing.
(13:05):
So they witnessed, and I don't remember. I think some
of them left right away. They said, oh, you Jesus
freaks and all this kind of stuff, and I just
kind of turned my head. I don't want to know
part of it. At the end of three days, there
was a there was a thousand kids, and I was
part of it. And Bill Bright, who's founder of the
camp Scrusade, gave a message much like Billy Graham had
an invitation for people to come receive Christ. Then he
had him to come publicly and receive him. Lo and behold.
(13:25):
My friend was sitting next to me. He got up.
I said, what are you doing? He says, Pete, I
don't know what to tell you. I really don't know
what to tell you. I've just received Christ, end of
my life. I said, Kenny, hey, man, ken' you something
you ate or something something? And I grabbed him by
the arm. I literally tried to steal away his salvation.
(13:46):
I said, don't go up there. The embarrassing. Then I
remember saying that, and he pulled away and he went
up there. He says, you don't understand. I said, no,
I don't. And he walked up there, and I remember
sitting there and saying, well, you're not gonna get me. God,
I'm gonna play Pro Basketball World championship team and make
a million dollars. Boy, that's what I want in life.
But you know, as I've reflected over that time, how
(14:07):
many times I've cried and wish that i'd received Christ
in my life. Then you know why, because God had
sent me there for a purpose, not to do a clinic.
I never did one. Nobody even asked me. But he
put me there for one reason. Pete, come home now,
Come home now, because you're about to embark on a
(14:30):
tremendous amount of personal tragedy and destruction in your life.
And it doesn't have to be that way, but you
can choose that way, and you don't have to. And
I want on into college, and I did a lot
of things in college. I've set something like around fifty
basketball records from high school, college, and pro The amount
(14:51):
of trophies and awards and plaques that I have, the
amount of honorary mayorships and keys the cities that I have,
except the time I go to those cities and try
to get the keys, they don't ever give them to me.
It could literally, really, I could go around this entire
pool area. Now. I have a trophy from nineteen seventy
two in a box. It's never been opening, six foot
(15:12):
five inches and six foot five one quarter inch tall,
the exact height of me. I've never seen it. I've
never opened the box. But they're all stored away. They
don't really do anything for me. But I've had all
those trophies, awards, I've had popularity, I've had fame. I
had a tremendous amount of fame back in the sixties,
tremendous amount of popularity everywhere when we played before over
(15:35):
White at a million people in college in three years,
and that's pretty good. And I had all this adulation
and people wrote me. I got thousands of letters a
week from fans. We idolize you, Pete Merriwich, You're my idol,
You're this, You're that. And I wasn't a role model
at all, not at all. I wasn't a role model
(15:56):
for young people at all. None. Zero. And then after
my college and I was All American and I was
a leading s I'm the leading scorer of all time
in college basketball. It'll be broken someday, but I'm the
leading scorer. I averaged over forty four points a game
for a three year period. I just hold just all
(16:20):
kinds of records. My high school records are still held.
I still hold the record for the All Star game.
I scored forty seven points in the East West High
School All Star Game back in nineteen sixty five. That's
still there. It hasn't been broken, and some great players
have come through there. And then I went into pros,
you see. And I had a lot of fun in college,
a lot of fun, too much fun. In fact, I
(16:41):
was in nine accidents in college and walked away from
every one of them. Not only that. One time I
was coming home from putting on a clinic in Pennsylvania
and I drove seven hundred miles and I stopped for
the night. It was a halfway point. I went down
to a local pub, ocal little bar, sat in there
and had about two beers, and the young lady came
(17:02):
over to me. I said, how are you, sweetie? I said,
I'm just fine. He said, you mind if I sit
down here? I said, well, suit yourself. So I was
sitting there. I wasn't there at two minutes when a
guy came up to me, about six foot five, about
two hundred and seventy pounds, said what are you doing
with my girl? He said, I'm not doing anything with her, sir.
(17:26):
I'm just sitting here. I'm just having this cold beer here.
I don't want any trouble. I didn't, you know, and
he started pushing me. He started hitting me in the shoulder.
And I grew up as kid, knowing that you never
backed down from anybody. I don't care what the odds,
I won't going back down. And I told him to
get his hands off of me and all this, and
before long, one thing led to another and they said,
(17:47):
y'all get out of here. If you're gonna fight. He said, yeah,
come on, So I said fine. So I got up
and I went out quickly, and I made myself through
the crowd and I got outside and I stayed behind
the door, and I was really good to get this
guy when he came out, but he never came. Of course,
I didn't wait there about two minutes and he didn't come,
(18:08):
let you see, And so I said, I'm better get
out of here, and I left and I walked out
in the parking lot. As I was walking in the
back of the parking lot, I tore it up. I
saw a telephone booth where I was gonna call a
taxi to go to a holiday in where I was staying.
As I was walking out, I heard this guy came
out and he yelled to me, and little did I
know that another guy had gone around the other side
(18:30):
and they both had blackjacks, which I didn't know. And
the guy. The old story is that the guy just
literally they just hit me from behind and beat me
up pretty good. As I laid there on that parking
lot that night, that girl came up and I was
all blood and she took a twenty five automatic pistol
and she put it in my mouth and cocked it
(18:52):
and she says, you're a dead man, Pistol Pete, how
about that? And I remember laying there and from the
so my heart, I said, yeah, kill night, cause then
I'll have peace.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
And you've been listening to Pistol Pete Marrivich and he
gave this speech not long before his death, indeed, just
days before his premature death. More of Pistol Pete Marrivitch,
his life story, his last story that he told in
front of a large audience here on our American Stories,
(19:39):
and we continue with our American stories and with Pistol
Pete Maravich's story, one of the last ones he told
in his life, this one just days before he passed.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
But you know something, there's a god up there that
overruled Satan that night, too, overruled him. And I know that,
and I went into the pros and I signed the
largest contract in the history of sports, not basketball sports
at the time, it made the Guinness Book of Records.
It lasted thirty days. They started pouring out a lot
(20:15):
of big money back then. And I searched all through
the nineteen seventies for what meaning there was to life.
I had to know the meaning, what was the meaning?
And I got involved in all kinds of different things.
I was involved in yoga and TM, I was involved
very heavily in uifology, philosophy. I was involved in different religions,
(20:38):
Hinduism especially. I was involved in everything. But the thing
about it is, none of it really satisfied me. They
were just all brief interludes of satisfaction, much like my
life was brief interludes of just ego, gratification, satisfaction and
all through that time. In fact, in nineteen seventy six,
I decided I was going to live to be one
hundred and fifty years old, and I got very heavy
(21:00):
and the nutrition because I was into Hinduism and I
was into the karma and all these other types of situations.
And I became a vegetarian and then a fruitarian and
a macrobotic and a mini dose and a MAXI dosed
on vitamins, and I fasted twenty five days, and I
sat in all kinds of different positions, and I was
searching for life, for friends. I was really searching for
(21:21):
life because my life had no meaning at all. My
life had absolutely no meaning at all. And in each
one of these stops, each one of these stops, I
had to have something else. They just didn't satisfy me.
In nineteen eighty I quit basketball. I just quit. I
walked away from it because of immaturity and because of
the fact that I just got tired of it all.
(21:42):
I just got tired of it. I got tired of
my life, and I became a recluse. For about two years,
I sat in my home. We had our first son, Jason.
He was only one and a half years old, and
I was set there for hours at a time trying
to teach him seven and eight year old puzzles. Because
I wanted my son, Jason to have what I didn't.
I wanted him to have a high intellect. See, I
want him to be an intelligent person. I want him
(22:05):
to be able to go to the right parties and
say the right things. I thought that was important. I
really thought that was important. And so my wife used
to come to me and she says, Pete, you really
need to go see someone because you're really flipping out.
I said, what do you mean? She says, you have
left his house in two weeks. I said, yeah, I have.
I'm not you know. I brought to the garage and stuff,
(22:26):
but I was really lost. And in nineteen eighty two,
I went to bed one night. It was like any
other night. Pete Marriviage had all the material things you
could want. I used to carry around five thousand dollars
in my pocket and cash in twenties. I never cared
(22:49):
any change. But I had all that stuff, and none
of it ever satisfied. I mean not the money, not
the wealth, not the success. And I laid there in
bed and I couldn't sleep, and I didn't understand it.
And all of a sudden, everything started coming up in
my life, all the sin, every sin I'd ever committed,
(23:10):
and I've committed many. Let me tell you many sins
in my life. And there's nothing hidden. And I'm not
airing all my dirty laundry here. I'm not trying to.
I don't want to give Satan any credit. But I
can tell you this. It all came up. And it
also came up when I was eighteen, when I could
have received Christ. And it was five thirty in the
morning now, and I laid there crying with two pillars
(23:32):
back up in my back, with an unsaved wife next
to me. And I was sitting there crying, and I said, God,
I've punched you, I've kicked you, I've cursed you, I've
used your name in vain. I've mocked you, I've embarrassed you.
I've done all those things. And yet do you really,
(23:52):
I mean, will you really forgive me the things that
I've done? And I was about to get over on
the side of my bed. And what happened to me
doesn't happen everybody. And what happened to me happened to me.
And that's why I'm talking out of my shoes. Many
(24:14):
people don't believe it. Manythinglodians don't believe it. Many people,
many Thieldians don't believe in God. God spoke to me
audibly right there in the room, and he said be
strong and left eye own heart literally audibly. I looked
around the room. I was in total shock. I'd never
heard anything like that before, and I was so shocked
(24:37):
that I reached over and I woke my wife, just
shaking her like crazy. I said, Jackie, did you Jackie,
did you hear what the Lord said to me? Did
you hear that? You must understand Jackie had seen me
go through all kind of trips in my life. And
she just kind of looked at me in a dark
haze that it was at five thirty in the morning
and said, Pete, you really have gun that's having you
(24:58):
and she just went back to sleep. You know. I
was sitting there and all of a sudden, about a
year and a half ago, Uh, my wife and I
went through a terrible tragedy. I was restoring an old
Victorian home and I had just gotten back from China.
Some friends came over and when we were showing them
the house, uh, we'd gone upstairs with them and there
was no banish. So we told our kids to, you know,
(25:20):
stay away from the stairs, just gonna be here second
we were showing them, and as careful as we are
with our children, I'd forgotten that they didn't even really
think about it. I'd built in a little closet and
upstairs room, and in that closet was an air conditioning bent,
an old one that had been stuffed up with insulation.
And uh uh it really happened very quickly. Uh. They
(25:43):
both kind of ran in there. We didn't see him,
and all of a sudden, it it was like that,
my wife heard a a very loud thumped and when
she uh went back there, Uh, Joshua and my little
two year old at the time wasn't there. Uh. I
just kind of knew what happened. And I dashed down
the floor and I went in there, and I saw
(26:04):
my little son lying there in a pool of blood.
He had landed an impact had hit him directly in
the eye is where he hit on this part of
his head. He was in a semiconscious state, taken CPR
in the past, and my wife never did see him.
I'm glad you didn't, because it's something I'll live with
(26:25):
on my life. But anyway, I picked him up and
he was just a lifeless little body. His heartbeat was
so faint that I didn't know whether he was gonna
make it or not. But I rushed him to the hospital.
I got him there and there wasn't even any doctors
there at this particular hospital. The guy that was supposed
(26:45):
to be there was off who was in lunch or
something like that, and it just so happened. I had
a Christian painter there and a Christian carpenter, and they
started praying. They found a doctor and he came in
and checked him out, and I was in prayer in
the other room. My wife was uh literally away with
uh just had lost it completely, and we didn't know
(27:08):
what was gonna happen to Joshua. About ten minutes later,
the doctor came out. He uh happened to be an
eye surgeon, and he says, Pete, Uh, Joshua's gonna make it.
And I said, thank God for that. I said, that's
just great. He says, but uh, We've looked in his
eye just very quickly, and it looks like all the
muscles of his eyes have been uh of his eye
have been torn away. So I'm going back in there
(27:30):
and check him out, and and you just uh waiting here,
I said, find I just went back in prayer. And
my prayer wasn't that uh josh be healed. My prayer
was according to God's plan in Joshua's life, that it
just be worked out. And so about fifteen minutes later,
the doctor came back to me and he says, Pete,
(27:52):
he says, I really can't uh believe what happened. And
I said, what's that doctor? And he says, we look
in Joshua's eye just now, and it's as clear as bell.
There's no contusions, there's no there's no broken bones, his
neck is there's nothing. I mean, it's just absolutely clear.
Plus the fact he's just gonna be perfect. There's nothing
(28:13):
wrong with him except this massive swelling that has taken place. Well,
that was just a little miracle of my life. And
as I thought about this, I started reflecting back on
my own life. And it's been that way in my
life hundreds upon hundreds of times that I've literally reflected
back at the times that I really shouldn't be here,
but I am here, and I'm here for one purpose.
(28:37):
Jesus Christ changed my life. Money didn't do it. Women
didn't do it. Friends didn't do it. Pastors didn't do it.
Wealth didn't do it. Success president of being a company,
owning your own business, having your own boat. I don't
have much time left, and the time that I have,
I'm giving to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
And you've been listening to pistol. Pete Marriage and one
of the last talks he ever gave here on this earth.
He suffered a heart attack and he died on Tuesday,
January eighth, nineteen eighty eight, after playing a pickup basketball
game at a Pasadena, California church. He was only forty. Quote.
(29:23):
We were on a break and he walked up to me, said,
focus on the family's James Dobson. I asked him how
he was feeling. He said, I feel great. He took
one step and fell, and Dobson continued, quote. I tried
to do what I could, but he'd had a seizure.
That was easy to see. He was jaundice and his
(29:44):
eyes rolled back in his head. His body was rigid.
It was clear he was leaving. I called out to him,
asked him not to go, but it was much too late.
Pete Marriage died in doctor Dobson's arms. The story of
Pete Maravich in his own words here on our American
(30:07):
Stories
This is our American Stories. Pistol Pete Maravich is widely
regarded as one of the greatest players in basketball history,
also one of my personal hoops heroes. Marrivich starred in
college with the LSU Tigers while playing for his father,
head coach Press Marivich, with thirty six hundred and sixty
seven points, and he averaged forty four point two points
(00:34):
per game. All of his accomplishments were achieved before the
adoption of the three point shot and the shot clock,
and despite being able to play varsity as a freshman
under the NCAA rules. That's crazy. Marrivig played ten years
in the NBA and is considered by many to be
the best ball handler of all time. Just days before
(00:54):
his death on January eighth, nineteen eighty eight, the forty
year old Pistol Pete spoke to guests who gathered near
the pool side of Jimmy Walker's house an NBA All Star.
We'd like to thank Vision Video for giving us special
access to this rare, bonus footage you were about to
hear from their fantastic uplifting movie The Pistol The Birth
(01:15):
of a Legend. Three to g Here's Pete Maravich looking
back on his life just days before his death.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
I grew up in Clemson, South Carolina. When I was
four years old, the only thing I ever knew was basketball.
By the time I was five years old, I was
already playing organized basketball. My parents baded me into the game.
That never forced me in. When I was seven years old,
my dad came to me and he says, Pete. He says,
I don't have any money to send you to college.
You're going to have to get a scholarship. And if
you get a scholarship, they'll pay your way. I only
(01:45):
make twenty nine hundred dollars a year, and that's just
not going to pay your way by the time you
get there. And if you're good enough, Pete, you might
even make it to the pro basketball. That's where the
greatest players play, and there's so few. And if you
get there, you might play on a team that wins
a world championship and you'll get a big diamond ring, Pete,
so big, and it has on their World champions and
you'll be declared as the rest of the team, one
(02:06):
of the greatest at that particular time. Not only that, Pete,
you'll be able to make money. They'll pay you for
doing it. They'll pay you for playing something that you
enjoy doing well. From that day, I decided to commit
my life totally to basketball. I was dedicated, possessed, and
obsessed by I was so dedicated to it. I'll tell
(02:26):
you some of the things I used to do. We
lived two and a half miles outside of town in Clemson,
South Carolina, and I used to get the basketball and
I'd dribble in all the way. I would not accept
the ride. I would dribble in with my right hand
and dribble back home with my left hand, five miles
a day to the gym, where I'd play eight to
ten hours a day. When I finally got a bicycle
when I was about eleven years old. Ten eleven years old,
I learned to dribble the basketball on my bicycle all
(02:48):
the way. And it made a lot easier to get
into town too, and I got there quicker, and I
dribbled the ball by riding the bicycle. It got so
bizarre that my dad came to me one day and
he says, Pete, come on, get your basketball on us.
Go in the car. So where are we going? He says,
i'll tell you when we get there. He went over it,
and he went on this specific highway and there weren't
many cars there, and he said, now look, I want
(03:09):
you to get in the back. See stick yourself out
that back window there, and you start dribbling the ball.
I'm gonna drive at various speeds. I want to see
if you can really control this. And so I did that,
and he'd go five, ten, fifteen miles an hour, and
twenty miles an hour. And of course, if you realize
(03:29):
when you're trying to drive a basketballt of a car
or on a bicycle, you got to throw away out
in front because he's going and it's coming back. It
really comes back quick, along with a lot of rocks.
And to see the faces on the people that just
happened to be driving by was something in itself. It
really was. I used to tick the basketball to bed
(03:50):
with me. I slept with a basketball till I was
about thirteen years old. I would get in bed and
I'd lay in the bed for one hour before I
ever went to sleep, and I would repeat three things
fingertip control backspin fallow through fingertip control backsmen followed through
as I released it laying down. I was completely possessed
by the game. I used to go around my house blindfolded,
dribbling the ball because I knew where everything was. Of course,
(04:11):
through the dismay of my mother, sometimes I didn't, and
I knew how to drill the ball very fast. Out
of the house. I used to get the basketball and
I would dribble out in thunderstorms, lightning, everything else you
couldn't even see. I used to sneak out of my
back window. I'd go to this little spot where there
was a mud hole. It was kind of a real
hard mud, and I'd start dribbling the balls of mud
(04:31):
and everything splashed up on me and literally scared to
death because of the thunder and lightning. Because I felt
like if I could dribble in that mud and that
water and everything else control it, I could certainly do
it on a court when some of it was guarding me. See.
I was so committed to the game of basketball. In fact,
from the time I was five years old I was
seventeen years old. I played over twenty thousand hours of basketball.
And the March Readers Digest they had a story in
(04:54):
there about television and how it affects young people's minds
or any person. It wasn't four against television, it just
how it affects one's mind. And it said that the
average person by the time he's twenty years old sees
twenty thousand hours of television. And I kind of paralleled
that with my life, twenty thousand hours of people watching television.
I've spent twenty thousand hours of hard sweat playing the
(05:16):
game of basketball. When I was twelve years old, it
was my first time I ever played in a regular
game for junior varsity. I made the junior varsity when
I was twelve, and I was at thirteen, I started
on my high school team and played five years of
high school basketball. I was four foot nine and a
half and at that time, at twelve, a reporter came
up to me after the game, and I used to
(05:37):
shoot the basketball from down here because I was too
weak to shoot it from up here, and so I
used to take the ball and take it and release
it like this. And this reporter saw him and he says,
what looks like this guy is drawing a pistol, And
he wrote that up and that name is stick Stuck.
Ever since I just threw that in. I know that
doesn't interest you at all, but I just wanted to
say that. But he asked me after the game. He
(05:59):
came up an inner me. That was my first interview
I ever had, and I wish that had been my last.
But he said, what are you going to do when
you grow up? Crystol Pete? And I said, well, I'm
gonna play pro basketball. I'm gonna be on a team
that wins a world championship to get a diamond ring
and make a million dollars. And he literally fell off
his chair with laughter, and I said, what are you
laughing about? He said a million dollars. They don't make
(06:20):
that kind of money. This was in the fifties, and
he was right. But I just felt like at some
point in my life I would My early church life
was absolutely probably zero. I was not raised in a
Christian home. I was raised in a church home. I
was raised with telling Pete, you got to go to church.
It's good to go to church. You gotta you need church.
(06:42):
But when I got into church, I didn't never hear anything.
I never heard who Jesus Christ was when I was
young because I didn't want to hear see. I would
sit in there and literally count ticks in my head one, two,
three up to a minute, and that would go for
an hour until I got out of there. I felt
that if I was in this church for an hour,
or somebody in Philadelphia, La, Boston, New York was playing basketball,
and when it came down to get that scholarship, I
(07:03):
would not get it. See, and I progressed on into
my teenage years. When I was fourteen years old, was
the first time I ever had my first taste of alcohol.
I had a beer at fourteen years of age on
the steps of the Methodist church in Clemson, South Carolina,
(07:24):
and I liked it. I really did like it. I
liked it a lot. If for something I can tell
you young people here tonight, it's this, don't ever take
that first drink, and don't ever take that first drug,
because it'll never be your last and it'll lead to destruction.
Because that's literally what almost happened in my own life.
Ninety eight percent of all people in jails today started
with that first drink. Eighty five percent of over five
(07:47):
hundred thousand people in correctional institutions today committed their crimes
while only the influence of a mind altering substance. Drugs
are alcohol, And all of a sudden, this tremendous and
this commitment that I had and everything else, I kind
of went down the drain. I didn't have it anymore.
And I'd played so much up until that time when
(08:08):
I was fourteen fifteen going to sixteen seventeen, but all
of a sudden, I had time on the weekends to
do other things. I saw the opposite sex for the
first time in life. You see, I was completely obsessed
with basketball. I didn't do whatever other people did. My
god was basketball. Their god was sex, alcohol, and whatever else.
But I didn't see any of that until I was fourteen,
(08:30):
and then my eyes opened up and I enjoyed it
and I started getting into it. And then that toe
hold became a foothold, and the foothold became a stronghold,
and that stronghold became an entire possession. I'm not scared
to tell you here. I was an alcoholic. I can't
get people to write that up because I've never been
to a clinic or anything. And all my friends drank
just like I did, and they were alcoholics too. I
(08:52):
enjoyed it a great deal because there's a great pleasure
and sin. There's a lot of pleasure in it because
if there wasn't, nobody would do it. When I was
eighteen years old, I was I has to go out
to take Arrowhead out in San Bernardino, California, to a
campus crusade for Christ. They asked me to come out
there and do what you just saw here what was
called showtime. They said, would you come out here and
(09:12):
do your clinic Pete? I said, well, sure, that'd be great.
I'll bring one of my friends and we'll just come
out there California. I've never been there. It'll be fun.
So we got in the car and I was just
reaching my eighteenth birthday, literally right before what was to
be called the pistol pe Era in Southeastern Conference basketball.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
And you're listening to pistol Pete Marrivitch reflecting on his
own life, his days before his tragic death and a
premature death at that. When we come back, more of
its remarkable talk by Pistol Pete. Here are our American stories,
(10:09):
and we're back with our American stories and way to
continue with Pistol Pete Maravich, one of the old time
greatest players and an idol of mine. I can't tell
you how many hours I spent watching him on television
the rare times he would come on, and then trying
to copy every single thing he did. Let's go back
to Pistol, Pete.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
And so I drove out there and we partied all
the way out, and we had fun, and we chased girls,
and we just were in every bar we could find
and everything else. Took us three or four days to
get out there. And as I drove up on this campus,
I noticed that there were people sitting around praying and
holding hands under trees and things of this nature. And
I became very embarrassed. I didn't want any part of that,
(10:54):
and I told my friend, I said, hey, we got
to hurt get out of here. I'm gonna do this
clinic and get out of these people are nuts, I mean,
where are they smoking? And put that beer down. We
don't want to, you know, we don't want to see
him with this, with this beer. So I checked into
this place and it was for three days, and I
asked him when am I supposed to do my clinic
and they said, well, Pete, we're not sure yet, but
if you just bear with us, we're gonna have you
(11:14):
over here with this group, and I said, what do
you mean. What am I gonna do? Is it's well nothing,
there's nothing to do. We'll just put you here, would
you would be all right? And I said okay. So
I stayed with this group and my friend went with
another group, and for three days I finally heard who
Jesus Christ was. I wasn't concerned about that. To me,
it was just a story. It was a story. It
was nice, that's nice. But after the end of three
(11:37):
days there there was no impact on my life. We
went out to the beach. Bill Battle, who was an
All American football player and with a bicep as large
as my thigh, said we're going out to the beach.
I'm taking this group with me. We're going to witness
for Christ. And I said, what do you mean witness?
What is this? Bill? What do you mean witness? What
were you talking about? He's just come along, Pete. We
(11:58):
just want to we just want to show what we
do here. So I went along with him and we
went out on the beaches out there in California beaches,
and he goes up to the worst looking group. This
is back during the sixties. This is the most revolutionary time,
the rebellious time in our history. Probably it's led to
so much of the rebellion today. And yet he went
(12:20):
up to the worst looking group. Guy had tattoos, all
of his own hair down here, was smoking a joint, drinking.
There was about four or five of them. They were
mean looking, ugly, they didn't smell very good everything, And
I stayed wait in the background. But you know, the
Lord has a way to use people. You see, he
went up to this guy who was the meanest looking
guy right behind his head, he says, you know something,
(12:41):
I would really like to share something with you folks.
And this guy was literally gonna turn around and punch him.
I know, because he turned around. He said, look, go
right ahead, because that advice that was right in his face. Now,
if anything impressed me, it was that that did impress me.
I said, Wow, how God gets people's attention, It's amazing.
(13:05):
So they witnessed, and I don't remember. I think some
of them left right away. They said, oh, you Jesus
freaks and all this kind of stuff, and I just
kind of turned my head. I don't want to know
part of it. At the end of three days, there
was a there was a thousand kids, and I was
part of it. And Bill Bright, who's founder of the
camp Scrusade, gave a message much like Billy Graham had
an invitation for people to come receive Christ. Then he
had him to come publicly and receive him. Lo and behold.
(13:25):
My friend was sitting next to me. He got up.
I said, what are you doing? He says, Pete, I
don't know what to tell you. I really don't know
what to tell you. I've just received Christ, end of
my life. I said, Kenny, hey, man, ken' you something
you ate or something something? And I grabbed him by
the arm. I literally tried to steal away his salvation.
(13:46):
I said, don't go up there. The embarrassing. Then I
remember saying that, and he pulled away and he went
up there. He says, you don't understand. I said, no,
I don't. And he walked up there, and I remember
sitting there and saying, well, you're not gonna get me. God,
I'm gonna play Pro Basketball World championship team and make
a million dollars. Boy, that's what I want in life.
But you know, as I've reflected over that time, how
(14:07):
many times I've cried and wish that i'd received Christ
in my life. Then you know why, because God had
sent me there for a purpose, not to do a clinic.
I never did one. Nobody even asked me. But he
put me there for one reason. Pete, come home now,
Come home now, because you're about to embark on a
(14:30):
tremendous amount of personal tragedy and destruction in your life.
And it doesn't have to be that way, but you
can choose that way, and you don't have to. And
I want on into college, and I did a lot
of things in college. I've set something like around fifty
basketball records from high school, college, and pro The amount
(14:51):
of trophies and awards and plaques that I have, the
amount of honorary mayorships and keys the cities that I have,
except the time I go to those cities and try
to get the keys, they don't ever give them to me.
It could literally, really, I could go around this entire
pool area. Now. I have a trophy from nineteen seventy
two in a box. It's never been opening, six foot
(15:12):
five inches and six foot five one quarter inch tall,
the exact height of me. I've never seen it. I've
never opened the box. But they're all stored away. They
don't really do anything for me. But I've had all
those trophies, awards, I've had popularity, I've had fame. I
had a tremendous amount of fame back in the sixties,
tremendous amount of popularity everywhere when we played before over
(15:35):
White at a million people in college in three years,
and that's pretty good. And I had all this adulation
and people wrote me. I got thousands of letters a
week from fans. We idolize you, Pete Merriwich, You're my idol,
You're this, You're that. And I wasn't a role model
at all, not at all. I wasn't a role model
(15:56):
for young people at all. None. Zero. And then after
my college and I was All American and I was
a leading s I'm the leading scorer of all time
in college basketball. It'll be broken someday, but I'm the
leading scorer. I averaged over forty four points a game
for a three year period. I just hold just all
(16:20):
kinds of records. My high school records are still held.
I still hold the record for the All Star game.
I scored forty seven points in the East West High
School All Star Game back in nineteen sixty five. That's
still there. It hasn't been broken, and some great players
have come through there. And then I went into pros,
you see. And I had a lot of fun in college,
a lot of fun, too much fun. In fact, I
(16:41):
was in nine accidents in college and walked away from
every one of them. Not only that. One time I
was coming home from putting on a clinic in Pennsylvania
and I drove seven hundred miles and I stopped for
the night. It was a halfway point. I went down
to a local pub, ocal little bar, sat in there
and had about two beers, and the young lady came
(17:02):
over to me. I said, how are you, sweetie? I said,
I'm just fine. He said, you mind if I sit
down here? I said, well, suit yourself. So I was
sitting there. I wasn't there at two minutes when a
guy came up to me, about six foot five, about
two hundred and seventy pounds, said what are you doing
with my girl? He said, I'm not doing anything with her, sir.
(17:26):
I'm just sitting here. I'm just having this cold beer here.
I don't want any trouble. I didn't, you know, and
he started pushing me. He started hitting me in the shoulder.
And I grew up as kid, knowing that you never
backed down from anybody. I don't care what the odds,
I won't going back down. And I told him to
get his hands off of me and all this, and
before long, one thing led to another and they said,
(17:47):
y'all get out of here. If you're gonna fight. He said, yeah,
come on, So I said fine. So I got up
and I went out quickly, and I made myself through
the crowd and I got outside and I stayed behind
the door, and I was really good to get this
guy when he came out, but he never came. Of course,
I didn't wait there about two minutes and he didn't come,
(18:08):
let you see, And so I said, I'm better get
out of here, and I left and I walked out
in the parking lot. As I was walking in the
back of the parking lot, I tore it up. I
saw a telephone booth where I was gonna call a
taxi to go to a holiday in where I was staying.
As I was walking out, I heard this guy came
out and he yelled to me, and little did I
know that another guy had gone around the other side
(18:30):
and they both had blackjacks, which I didn't know. And
the guy. The old story is that the guy just
literally they just hit me from behind and beat me
up pretty good. As I laid there on that parking
lot that night, that girl came up and I was
all blood and she took a twenty five automatic pistol
and she put it in my mouth and cocked it
(18:52):
and she says, you're a dead man, Pistol Pete, how
about that? And I remember laying there and from the
so my heart, I said, yeah, kill night, cause then
I'll have peace.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
And you've been listening to Pistol Pete Marrivich and he
gave this speech not long before his death, indeed, just
days before his premature death. More of Pistol Pete Marrivitch,
his life story, his last story that he told in
front of a large audience here on our American Stories,
(19:39):
and we continue with our American stories and with Pistol
Pete Maravich's story, one of the last ones he told
in his life, this one just days before he passed.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
But you know something, there's a god up there that
overruled Satan that night, too, overruled him. And I know that,
and I went into the pros and I signed the
largest contract in the history of sports, not basketball sports
at the time, it made the Guinness Book of Records.
It lasted thirty days. They started pouring out a lot
(20:15):
of big money back then. And I searched all through
the nineteen seventies for what meaning there was to life.
I had to know the meaning, what was the meaning?
And I got involved in all kinds of different things.
I was involved in yoga and TM, I was involved
very heavily in uifology, philosophy. I was involved in different religions,
(20:38):
Hinduism especially. I was involved in everything. But the thing
about it is, none of it really satisfied me. They
were just all brief interludes of satisfaction, much like my
life was brief interludes of just ego, gratification, satisfaction and
all through that time. In fact, in nineteen seventy six,
I decided I was going to live to be one
hundred and fifty years old, and I got very heavy
(21:00):
and the nutrition because I was into Hinduism and I
was into the karma and all these other types of situations.
And I became a vegetarian and then a fruitarian and
a macrobotic and a mini dose and a MAXI dosed
on vitamins, and I fasted twenty five days, and I
sat in all kinds of different positions, and I was
searching for life, for friends. I was really searching for
(21:21):
life because my life had no meaning at all. My
life had absolutely no meaning at all. And in each
one of these stops, each one of these stops, I
had to have something else. They just didn't satisfy me.
In nineteen eighty I quit basketball. I just quit. I
walked away from it because of immaturity and because of
the fact that I just got tired of it all.
(21:42):
I just got tired of it. I got tired of
my life, and I became a recluse. For about two years,
I sat in my home. We had our first son, Jason.
He was only one and a half years old, and
I was set there for hours at a time trying
to teach him seven and eight year old puzzles. Because
I wanted my son, Jason to have what I didn't.
I wanted him to have a high intellect. See, I
want him to be an intelligent person. I want him
(22:05):
to be able to go to the right parties and
say the right things. I thought that was important. I
really thought that was important. And so my wife used
to come to me and she says, Pete, you really
need to go see someone because you're really flipping out.
I said, what do you mean? She says, you have
left his house in two weeks. I said, yeah, I have.
I'm not you know. I brought to the garage and stuff,
(22:26):
but I was really lost. And in nineteen eighty two,
I went to bed one night. It was like any
other night. Pete Marriviage had all the material things you
could want. I used to carry around five thousand dollars
in my pocket and cash in twenties. I never cared
(22:49):
any change. But I had all that stuff, and none
of it ever satisfied. I mean not the money, not
the wealth, not the success. And I laid there in
bed and I couldn't sleep, and I didn't understand it.
And all of a sudden, everything started coming up in
my life, all the sin, every sin I'd ever committed,
(23:10):
and I've committed many. Let me tell you many sins
in my life. And there's nothing hidden. And I'm not
airing all my dirty laundry here. I'm not trying to.
I don't want to give Satan any credit. But I
can tell you this. It all came up. And it
also came up when I was eighteen, when I could
have received Christ. And it was five thirty in the
morning now, and I laid there crying with two pillars
(23:32):
back up in my back, with an unsaved wife next
to me. And I was sitting there crying, and I said, God,
I've punched you, I've kicked you, I've cursed you, I've
used your name in vain. I've mocked you, I've embarrassed you.
I've done all those things. And yet do you really,
(23:52):
I mean, will you really forgive me the things that
I've done? And I was about to get over on
the side of my bed. And what happened to me
doesn't happen everybody. And what happened to me happened to me.
And that's why I'm talking out of my shoes. Many
(24:14):
people don't believe it. Manythinglodians don't believe it. Many people,
many Thieldians don't believe in God. God spoke to me
audibly right there in the room, and he said be
strong and left eye own heart literally audibly. I looked
around the room. I was in total shock. I'd never
heard anything like that before, and I was so shocked
(24:37):
that I reached over and I woke my wife, just
shaking her like crazy. I said, Jackie, did you Jackie,
did you hear what the Lord said to me? Did
you hear that? You must understand Jackie had seen me
go through all kind of trips in my life. And
she just kind of looked at me in a dark
haze that it was at five thirty in the morning
and said, Pete, you really have gun that's having you
(24:58):
and she just went back to sleep. You know. I
was sitting there and all of a sudden, about a
year and a half ago, Uh, my wife and I
went through a terrible tragedy. I was restoring an old
Victorian home and I had just gotten back from China.
Some friends came over and when we were showing them
the house, uh, we'd gone upstairs with them and there
was no banish. So we told our kids to, you know,
(25:20):
stay away from the stairs, just gonna be here second
we were showing them, and as careful as we are
with our children, I'd forgotten that they didn't even really
think about it. I'd built in a little closet and
upstairs room, and in that closet was an air conditioning bent,
an old one that had been stuffed up with insulation.
And uh uh it really happened very quickly. Uh. They
(25:43):
both kind of ran in there. We didn't see him,
and all of a sudden, it it was like that,
my wife heard a a very loud thumped and when
she uh went back there, Uh, Joshua and my little
two year old at the time wasn't there. Uh. I
just kind of knew what happened. And I dashed down
the floor and I went in there, and I saw
(26:04):
my little son lying there in a pool of blood.
He had landed an impact had hit him directly in
the eye is where he hit on this part of
his head. He was in a semiconscious state, taken CPR
in the past, and my wife never did see him.
I'm glad you didn't, because it's something I'll live with
(26:25):
on my life. But anyway, I picked him up and
he was just a lifeless little body. His heartbeat was
so faint that I didn't know whether he was gonna
make it or not. But I rushed him to the hospital.
I got him there and there wasn't even any doctors
there at this particular hospital. The guy that was supposed
(26:45):
to be there was off who was in lunch or
something like that, and it just so happened. I had
a Christian painter there and a Christian carpenter, and they
started praying. They found a doctor and he came in
and checked him out, and I was in prayer in
the other room. My wife was uh literally away with
uh just had lost it completely, and we didn't know
(27:08):
what was gonna happen to Joshua. About ten minutes later,
the doctor came out. He uh happened to be an
eye surgeon, and he says, Pete, Uh, Joshua's gonna make it.
And I said, thank God for that. I said, that's
just great. He says, but uh, We've looked in his
eye just very quickly, and it looks like all the
muscles of his eyes have been uh of his eye
have been torn away. So I'm going back in there
(27:30):
and check him out, and and you just uh waiting here,
I said, find I just went back in prayer. And
my prayer wasn't that uh josh be healed. My prayer
was according to God's plan in Joshua's life, that it
just be worked out. And so about fifteen minutes later,
the doctor came back to me and he says, Pete,
(27:52):
he says, I really can't uh believe what happened. And
I said, what's that doctor? And he says, we look
in Joshua's eye just now, and it's as clear as bell.
There's no contusions, there's no there's no broken bones, his
neck is there's nothing. I mean, it's just absolutely clear.
Plus the fact he's just gonna be perfect. There's nothing
(28:13):
wrong with him except this massive swelling that has taken place. Well,
that was just a little miracle of my life. And
as I thought about this, I started reflecting back on
my own life. And it's been that way in my
life hundreds upon hundreds of times that I've literally reflected
back at the times that I really shouldn't be here,
but I am here, and I'm here for one purpose.
(28:37):
Jesus Christ changed my life. Money didn't do it. Women
didn't do it. Friends didn't do it. Pastors didn't do it.
Wealth didn't do it. Success president of being a company,
owning your own business, having your own boat. I don't
have much time left, and the time that I have,
I'm giving to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
And you've been listening to pistol. Pete Marriage and one
of the last talks he ever gave here on this earth.
He suffered a heart attack and he died on Tuesday,
January eighth, nineteen eighty eight, after playing a pickup basketball
game at a Pasadena, California church. He was only forty. Quote.
(29:23):
We were on a break and he walked up to me, said,
focus on the family's James Dobson. I asked him how
he was feeling. He said, I feel great. He took
one step and fell, and Dobson continued, quote. I tried
to do what I could, but he'd had a seizure.
That was easy to see. He was jaundice and his
(29:44):
eyes rolled back in his head. His body was rigid.
It was clear he was leaving. I called out to him,
asked him not to go, but it was much too late.
Pete Marriage died in doctor Dobson's arms. The story of
Pete Maravich in his own words here on our American
(30:07):
Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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