AUBURN, Ala. – Ira Bowman didn't grow up in the south. He grew up in New Jersey where there was no segregation in schools. But every year on Martin Luther King Day, he would watch the "I Have a Dream" speech because he was grateful for the sacrifices that were made by King, the sacrifices made by his grandparents who grew up in Georgia in an era where they didn't have civil rights.
And now, 55 years after that speech was delivered, Bowman is an assistant coach on the Auburn men's basketball team and living his life with the same values that once defined King.
"I would hope people would say I'm a teacher and a servant," Bowman said. "I've been fortunate enough to accomplish a lot in basketball and when I say 'I,' I know it's not just me. I'm completely cognizant that I stand on the shoulders of sacrifices of so many people. So whatever things that I may have been out in front of or because of or celebrated by, I know there's 10 to 20 people behind me that sacrificed something to put me in that position.
"I want to live my life in the sense of knowing that there's humility and service, and I want to continue to try and serve as many people as possible."
It's that same attitude and mindset that made Bowman want to become a coach. In college, he was named the Ivy League Player of the Year his senior year at Penn. He went on to play professionally in the NBA, the CBA as well as overseas in Italy and Australia, and then he served as the director of the Assist by Knight Foundation for four years.
But ultimately, Bowman wanted to impact young lives just as his coaches impacted his own life. He wanted to give back, and coaching was the best way he knew how.
"I think the greatest gift you can give somebody is to kind of help them reflect and understand and learn as much what to do as what not to do from you," Bowman said. "If you can help someone avoid a pitfall in their life or steer them in a different direction than they may be headed, that in itself there's no dollar value that can be attached to that.
"We're all judged by wins and losses as coaches, but I think even bigger part of why I took this opportunity to come to Auburn is just having a greater impact on some young student-athletes – a lot of them who look like me and have an idea of what a responsibility they have moving forward to continue to leave the communities that they live in a better place than they are."
Prior to Auburn, Bowman spent six seasons as an assistant coach at Penn, his alma mater, and four seasons as an assistant at NJIT before that. But the opportunity was too good to pass up when Bruce Pearl called and offered him a job on his staff this past offseason.
And now for the time in his life, Bowman can call the south his home.
"It's been eye-opening," he said. "Eye-opening in the sense that it's been good. I think that all throughout my career, I've been in and out of the south. I just haven't called it home. Now it's a little bit different, but the people have been great."
The new role and the new environment? It hasn't changed Bowman one bit. He still has the same mentality he had when he was growing up in New Jersey. It's the same mentality that helped him go from an Ivy League School to the NBA. Regardless of where he is or what he's doing, he's always going to grind.
"I feel like everything that I've ever received, I've earned," Bowman said. "That blue-collar work ethic is what I feel like I'm built on, and it's what I want to instill in other people.
"I was fortunate to be able to go to a good high school, get out of the city, be exposed to a lot more, and I understand that not everybody got those opportunities that I had. And that's another reason that I'm constantly in the mind frame that I have to do more to help others."
What Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy means to me:
"When you think about it for me personally, it's been monumental in my life. I think in this day in age with these younger kids, coaching is a great opportunity to kind of educate and give back for me. It's why I got into the profession.
"Sometimes you lose sight that all of the kids you're coaching have been born in the last two decades. They have no idea of the civil rights movement and the times that they live in as opposed to the times that we live in as second generation adults. We're not that far removed from where my grandmother, my grandparents, didn't have civil rights. It's not something that's ancient history. Sometimes, the kids today aren't as connected to it just because of the information era, this new tech era.
"(King) means so much to me because he's so relevant in my life and my ancestors. It's about just being able to pay it forward and have the (kids) understand it and be more appreciative and not take for granted the civil rights that they have and to use them for good and to make sure that they're not taking them for granted."
Greg Ostendorf is a Senior Writer for AuburnTigers.com. Follow him on Twitter: @greg_ostendorf
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