Leonard Black [pictured at left], Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Brigham Young University Hawaii's Willes Center for International Entrepreneurship, shared some of his wide-ranging experiences with Honors Program students at their January 21 colloquium, including being a fluent Navajo-speaking missionary, NCAA Final-Four basketball player, decorated Viet Nam veteran, university professor, gold miner, serial entrepreneur, and assistant BYUH men's basketball coach.
Black explained that his love of basketball started when he received a hoop for his eleventh birthday to help him overcome the effects of rheumatic fever. His love and skill for the game helped his high school win the Utah State championship and earned him a scholarship to the University of Utah, then ranked in the top-10. He starred on the freshman team, but unfamiliarly warmed the bench the next year "behind two All-Americans."
"I'd been a starter on basketball teams that generally won for seven years," he said. "It's a grueling experience when you want to play the game, and you think you're better than the people on the floor. That was an interesting emotional experience for me."
"I thought my mission in life was to be a ball player, and to be an inspirational influence on the youth," he continued, noting that his patriarchal blessing said, "You will serve a special mission at home." For example, Church leaders invited him to join panels with other Latter-day Saint athletes of the day, "guys like Merlin Olsen, a great football player out of Utah State who played pro ball for years and years; Vernon Law, a professional baseball player...and Gene Fullmer, a professional boxer."
"I thought if the Lord wants me to go on a mission somewhere and give up basketball, He better let me know somehow. In my prayers I said something like...if You don't want me to be a basketball player, then take the talent away."
Black said toward the end of his sophomore season, "I lost my talent. I could not do anything right." He took that as the answer to his prayers, and was soon called to the former Southwest Indian Mission in Arizona and New Mexico, working with Navajo, Pueblo, Hopi and other Native American Indian tribes. Quite a few people tried to discourage him from going, because at that point only one other athlete since World War II had ever gotten back on a team at Utah after serving a mission.
"Within one month of being in the mission field I could speak more Navajo than any other missionary. I'd been out 28 days. They gave me a brand new missionary companion from Salt Lake City, made me a district leader and put me in charge of all the language training."
Black said his mission was fascinating but difficult, and he was particularly intrigued with traditional Indian beliefs that included concepts similar to the Plan of Salvation, the Second Coming, and religious leaders organized into groups of three and twelve.
After returning from his mission, Black's basketball talents returned and he won a starting spot on the Utah team that lost his senior year to the Texas Western team and Duke by just a few points each in the 1966 NCAA Final Four. "When I heard of the Road to Glory movie about the Texas team and their pioneering use of African American players coming out, I wondered who was going to play me," he said, "but Utah wasn't even in the movie."
Graduating from Utah, Black enlisted in the Air Force, playing military basketball so well that he was invited to try out for the 1968 U.S. Olympic team. However, an appendix attack kept him out of the running. "Sometimes things don't work out," Black said, adding he went on to serve with distinction in covert operations with Air America in Viet Nam, that required him to have a security clearance above "top secret." He also taught at the Air Force Academy.
Later, after a stint at helping develop spy satellites, Black became a serial entrepreneur — eventually starting or co-founding nine businesses. Two in software information and systems are still going. Another of his ventures — hard-rock gold and silver mining in upstate Washington — had the potential to make him very wealthy, but it didn't turn out after two years of trying.
"This particular company never made more than we spent," he recalled, pointing out that assays at the underground rock face of the mine were high, but post-milling assays came in around 60% "and we needed about 80% to run at a good margin. We tried all kinds of things to fix that, but we never could... It was an experience that, hopefully, you'll never live through. It was not fun...it's hard to fail."
More recently Black started the entrepreneurship center at the University of Utah and worked there for eight years before coming to BYU-Hawaii, where he indicated one of his most satisfying assignments currently is serving as an assistant coach for the BYU-Hawaii men's basketball team.
"There are a lot of things coming at you in life, and certainly that's been my story," Black told the Honors students. "I really believe you play a lot of 'ball games' in life, and you can't win them all. There are a lot of successes and failures. The important thing is you learn lessons, and you don't quit. Keep your focus and maintain your faith; and if you stay true to that faith, all will be well."
Black also encouraged any entrepreneurial-minded student to consider participating in the upcoming business plan competition.