Palisad fire destroyed almost everything Tommy Hawkins estimated

We should not allow the history and astonishment of Tommy Hawkins go up in flames without proper retelling. Still so that of his wife of 39, Layla.

The inferno, which raged over the palisades on January 7, took thousands of houses and several lives. It deleted wealth, hope, memories and future. It devastated the Las Flores Canyon in Malibu, where Tommy and Layla had lived in a house with mountain and sea views for 32 years.

Several fires had driven over the years, some came close, some even caused damage. But this time, since Tommy was no longer there and Layla with so many years of memory and art and music and awards, as well as badges and trophies and family books, the Inferno did not trigger any exceptions. .

“The falcon”

When he died in August 2017 at the age of 80, it was properly noted in Los Angeles, but nobody lowered the flags on half a seasons in the town hall in Malibu. He had been a star, a long -term sporting and media presence, but his generation had gained from the spotlight or preceded him in death.

He was “Der Hawk” by Parker High in Chicago. He was one of 25 black children who were sent from the Chicago projects to Parker, now Robeson High, to integrate the school. He would grow at 6 feet 5, like to play basketball and be inspired by Jackie Robinson, who breaks the color barrier with the Dodgers. His mother had shown him the stories about it and told him that if Robinson can do it, he could be too.

He became a top -class preparatory basketball star. His specialty recovered. He was able to select tea cup from the tip of the backboard.

In 1955, he and his mother set the list of colleges he would visit to 10, each striving to wear her basketball jersey. His first trip was to South Bend, Ind., And Notre Dame. After walking around the campus lake and sat in the shade of huge old trees, he called his mother and told her to cancel the other nine trips.

Three years (first semester were not justified) he packed the old field house with the creaking grandstand seats and the dirt. He was an all-American. Notre Dame, a football school, was noticed for basketball. He scored a lot, but he recovered more. He treated every shot like a long -lost brother. When he was finished, he had lost 1,318 rebounds. This is still the school record that has been 66 years old.

He claimed that he had never had a racist incident with Notre Dame, maybe he forgot the time he went to a pizza place in South Bend with several other students. His friends went out with him. The football star Paul Hornung, already a golden boy at school, heard about it, came in Hawkins' room, knocked on the door and said Hawkins, they wanted a pizza. Hornung brought him down the owner to the same place where Hawkin's service was rejected, and they sat down when their pizza was served.

Overall, the professionals went the third and he went to play for the Minneapolis Lakers, who quickly became the Los Angeles Lakers. At that time, the NBA in Los Angeles was less a big thing than, for example, UCLA basketball and USC football. But the Lakers tried. Soon there were like Tommy Hawkins and Elgin Baylor, who drove in a convertible in the streets of downtown La and encouraged people to see them in the sports arena. Try to introduce Kobe and Shaq.

Hawkins was traded on the Cincinnati Royals and played there from 1962 to 1966. He then returned to the Lakers for his last three seasons in the NBA and ended in 1969.

As quickly as he had become a laker, he became a media -friendly figure in the LA region. He was the first black basketball announcement for NBC, had many local televisions, had his own radio show in which he played and talked about jazz. Lady Football Game Luncheon. Finally he spent 18 years as a communication director for the Dodgers and, as close friends Peter O'malley and Tommy Lasorda.

A day that is never forgotten

Layla Hawkins woke this 7th January with the same fear she had before. Windy days, scary fire nearby, radio and television, the warnings send. But she had been spared before.

This morning, five members of a real estate company came to take photos for their listing. She wanted to keep the house for her daughter, but her daughter with memories of past fire, who have close calls, didn't want to do anything. Layla spoke to friends, consultants whom she trusted, and Peter O'malley and his employee, Brent Shyer, helped with the steps to prepare for the sale.

When the winds howled and friends called them to the fire with updates, the real estate people ended, packed and set off. Layla later learned that the wind had occurred so quickly that it hardly made after sunset and to Santa Monica, where her office was.

In the late afternoon she received frenzied calls from her friend Susie, who was two canyons in Topanga. The message was no longer a recommendation. It was a demand. Exit.

She quickly sprayed the bushes she could reach, saw a neighbor on his roof the same, then reached her handbag and opened the door and gates so that the fire brigade has access. After all, she was a fire veteran.

She moved too slowly, she recalls. She recently had a knee replacement and it slowed her almost tragically.

“The fire came out of nowhere,” she says. “It came up to me. It was like one of these 3-D films. I can't explain it.

“I spoke all the way with Tommy. He was always there for almost 40 years. I told him, don't let me die like that. The fire was suddenly there. It was as if someone would drop an atomic bomb. “

She made it to Mulholland Drive and was still trying to look back on her house.

“I knew nothing could survive,” she says.

Return home

Layla didn't want friends or neighbors to send their pictures from the rubble. She would go back, but not immediately. It was weeks.

“I went up there alone,” she says. “My house was the fourth on the left. I had to count to make sure. Everything looked like the pictures you see from Gaza. I spoke to Tommy again. I told him I was glad he wasn't there to see that. “

She knew she was in the right place. Tommy Hawkins' basketball hoop, the high, edge was still and the network. You could have kicked some of the debris, made a shot and listen to the Swish. It would still be there.

What was no longer painful.

There were so many trophies and badges, 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 had died, O'Malley and Shryer worked with Layla on how to finish and published it.

But it was gone together with almost everything else.

She found a star fish -shaped figure. It was ceramic and had survived. It was originally to bring in money and loose coins.

“We used it to leave the love notes to each other,” she says.

She says that they were both enthusiastic readers. The house was full of books.

“Tommy joked earlier,” she says, “that we could simply fill it out with our collection if we have ever happened.”

Her return ended when she realized that she had bloody hands to search all debris. She returned to her car after she had felt the symbolism of Tommy's surviving basketball tire and recovered a ceramic figure and a slightly hinged metal figure of a trumpet player.

The objects and possessions of their lives, almost all of them, were gone.

Live now

“I go to the Fema offices every day,” says Layla.

She was so close not to do.

Your house should go on the market for 3.5 million US dollars. On the real estate market in Los Angeles, with its view of Ocean and Malibu, the price seemed appropriate and a quick sale. The insurance company that she had will now cover only 600,000 US dollars, and its remaining mortgage is 250,000 US dollars. Nobody can now really say what the country is worth or whether people finally shy away from building in an area in which wind and fire always represent a threat. Friends tried to gather around them, including the establishment of a Gofundme account.

She is 22 years younger than Hawkins when he died in 2017. She is Persian. She left Iran, as her family, part of the Iranian government's Shah, was on the lost side of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. When Ayatollah Khomeini took over power, her family from wealthy went.

She came to the United States, completed the state of Louisiana with a degree in mechanical engineering and finally moved to Los Angeles to find work in various photo bets and film companies in Santa Monica.

There she met Hawkins.

“It was really love at first glance,” she says.

She says that at some point Hawkins defined his feelings towards her by sitting down at his desk and tapping a sentence on a sheet of paper. He handed it and it was: “It's more than a feeling. It is a force. “

This sheet of paper was perhaps her valued possession.

It burned on January 7th.