We should not allow Tommy Hawkins’ story and wonders to rise in flames without proper rebuttal. So is his 39-year-old wife, Leila.
Inferno, furious across the Palisade on January 7th, claimed thousands of homes and several lives. It wiped out wealth, hope, memories, and future. Destroyed Las Flores Canyon in Malibu. There, Tommy and Leila lived in a house with mountain and sea views for 32 years.
Over the years, some fires have been occurring, some have come close and caused some damage. But this time Tommy is no longer there, leaving behind long-standing memorials, art, music, awards, plaques, trophies and a family scrapbook. .
“Hawk”
Tommy Hawkins was staying with the Cincinnati Royals in 1963.
(NBA photos via Getty Images/nbae)
When he passed away in August 2017 at the age of 80, it was officially attracting attention around Los Angeles, but no one had dropped the flag to half-staff at Malibu city hall. He was a star and a longtime athletic and media presence, but his generation was in the spotlight or died before him.
He went from Parker High in Chicago to “Taka.” He was one of 25 black children who were now sent to Robeson High from the Chicago project to begin consolidating the schools. He grew to 6 feet 5, loved playing basketball, and got inspiration from Jackie Robinson by breaking down the colour walls with the Dodgers. His mother showed him a story about it and told him that if Robinson could do it, he could.
He became a high leaping preparation basketball star. His specialty was rebounding. He was able to choose a teacup from the top of the backboard.
In 1955 he and his mother sat down and narrowed down the list of universities he would visit in the 10th. His first trip was to Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana. After he roamed the lake on campus and sat in the shadow of a huge old tree, he called his mother and told her to cancel nine other trips.
For three years (freshmen were not eligible), he packed his old field house with squealing bleaching seats and dirt floors. He was a national. Notre Dame, a football school, has begun to attract attention in basketball. He scored a lot, but he rebounded more. He treated each shot like a long-awaited brother. When he finished he had beaten 1,318 rebounds. It is still a school record and has been standing for 66 years.
He claimed he had not committed a racial incident at Notre Dame, and was denied service after forgetting his time at a pizza place in South Bend with other students. His friend left with him. Paul Horn, a football star who is already a golden boy at school, heard about it, and said he came to Hawkins’ room, knocked on the door and went out looking for pizza. Horn took him to the same place where he refused Hawkins’ service, staring at the owner, pizza was served and sat there.
The Lakers filmed the Boston Celtics’ Great Bill Russell in the NBA Finals in April 1968.
(AP News)
The pros drafted him third overall and he played for the Minneapolis Lakers. He quickly became the Los Angeles Lakers. At the time, the NBA in Los Angeles was no greater than UCLA basketball and USC football. But the Lakers tried so hard. Soon there were things like Tommy Hawkins and Elgin Baylor who encouraged people to ride convertibles on Downtown Street in Los Angeles and watch people play in the sports arena via megaphone. Try drawing Kobe and Shack doing that.
Hawkins was traded for the Cincinnati Royals, performing there from 1962 to 1966 before returning to the Lakers for their final three seasons in the NBA, ending in 1969.
Just as he became a Laker, he became a media figure in the LA area. He was NBC’s first black basketball announcer, did lots of local television, played jazz with his own radio show, talked about it, wooden award dinners and the annual USC- Became a master of rituals at major events such as Notre Dame Football Game Luncheon. Eventually, he spent 18 years as the Dodgers’ communications director, counting as his best friends, Peter O’Malley and Tommy Lasorda.
A day that will never be forgotten
Leila and Tommy Hawkins in undated family photos.
(Personal courtesy of the Hawkins family)
Layla Hawkins woke up on January 7th with the same horror she had before. Windy days, horrific fire nearby, radio and TV transmission warning. But she had been spared before.
That morning, five members of the real estate company began taking photos of her list. She wanted to maintain the house for her daughter, but the daughter had no connection with it, with memories of the intimate call of past fires. Layla spoke to a friend, an advisor she trusted, and Peter O’Malley and his associate Brent Shyer helped him with the means to prepare for the sale.
The people in the real estate ended, stuffed and went out when the winds looked like they had a friend called her with a fire update. Layla later kicked the wind so fast that the fire closed and they barely entered Santa Monica, where the office was, until sunset.
Until late in the afternoon she was receiving enthusiastic calls from her friend Susie, who was in the two canyons of Topanga. The message was no longer a recommendation. That was in demand. Get out.
She quickly blew away plantings she could reach, seeing her neighbor on his roof doing the same thing, grabbed her wallet and opened the door and gate for the fire department to access it. After all, she was a fire veteran.
She moved too slowly, she remembers. She had a recent knee replacement, which almost tragically slowed her down.
“The fire came out of nowhere,” she says. “It came to me. It was like one of those 3D movies. I can’t explain it.
“I was talking to Tommy the whole time. I’ve been married for almost 40 years, he’s always there. I told him, don’t let me die like this. The fire was there all of a sudden It seemed someone had dropped an atomic bomb.”
She went to Mulholland Drive and was still trying to look back at her house.
“I knew I wouldn’t survive this,” she says.
Go home
The ceramic starfish that Leila and Tommy Hawkins used to put their love notes on each other was one of the few that could be recovered after the Palisade fire destroyed their Malibu home in January 2025 .
(Personal courtesy of the Hawkins family.)
Leila didn’t want her friends and neighbors to send pictures of the kawara rub. She’s back, but won’t go anytime soon. It was a few weeks.
“I drove alone,” she says. “My house was fourth on the left. I certainly had to count. Everything looked like a photo of Gaza. I spoke with Tommy again. I’d like to see this. I told him I was happy that I wasn’t there.”
She knew she was in the right place. The taller, straight rims and still netted was a Tommy Hawkins basketball hoop. You could have thrown away some pieces and took a shot and listened to Swish. It will still be there.
Nothing had not surpassed the pain.
There were so many trophies and plaques, huge and precious art collections, wedding photos, one of the better collections of jazz music in the city, valuable computer files. He had begun writing his second book, and after he passed away, O’Malley and Schlie were working with Leila on how to complete it and publish it.
But it was gone with almost everything else.
She found a starfish-shaped figurine. It was ceramic and survived. Originally it was meant to put money and loose coins.
“We used it to leave a note of love for each other,” she says.
She says they were both enthusiastic readers. The house was full of books.
“Tommy was joking,” she says. “If something happens to the Library of Congress, we can fill it up again with the collection.”
Her return was over when she realized she had sifted through all the pieces and had bloody hands. She returned to the car and sensed the symbolism of Tommy’s surviving basketball hoops, recovering ceramic figurines and slightly burnt metal figurines from the trumpet player.
Almost everything in her life was gone.
Life now
Tommy Hawkins’ basketball hoops were one of the few Palisades standing at home after the fire.
(Personal courtesy of the Hawkins family)
“I go to the FEMA office every day,” says Layla.
She was very close to not needing.
Her home was to go to the market for $3.5 million. In the Los Angeles real estate market, the prices were reasonable and could have been quick sales due to her ocean views and a Malibu address. The insurance she had now only covers $600,000. Her remaining mortgage is $250,000. No one can really say what the land is worth and whether people are embarrassed to avoid buildings in areas where wind and fire are always threatened. Friends tried to gather around her, including setting up a GoFundMe account.
When he passed away in 2017, she was 22 years younger than Hawkins. She is Persian. She left Iran when a family, part of the Shah of the Iranian regime, was on the losers of the 1979 Iranian revolution. When Ayatollah Khomeini came to power, her family went from wealthy to endangered species.
She came to the United States, graduated from Louisiana with a degree in mechanical engineering, and eventually moved to Los Angeles, where she found work at various photography and film companies in Santa Monica.
That’s where she met Hawkins.
“It was really love at first sight,” she says.
She says at one point, Hawkins defined his feelings for her by sitting at his desk and typing a single sentence on paper. He handed it to her and it reads as follows: It’s power. ”
The paper was probably her most precious possession.
It burned on January 7th.
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