Bio
- Pat WilliamsPat
Williams is the author of 41 books, the most recent being Ahead of the Game, his
long awaited autobiography. This well-known sports executive is now a premiere
professional public speaker. Pat
Williams was raised in Wilmington, Delaware, earned his bachelors degree at Wake
Forest University, and his master's degree at Indiana University. He has a doctorate
in Humane Letters from Flagler University and is currently working on a doctorate
in sports administration from Walden University. He is a member of the Wake Forest
Sports Hall of Fame after catching for the Deacons baseball team, including the
1962 Atlantic Coast Conference Championship team. He
served for seven years in the United States Army. He
spent seven years in the Philadelphia Phillies organization, two as a player and
five in the front office and three years in the Minnesota Twins organization.
Since 1968 Pat
Williams has been affiliated with NBA teams in Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia,
including the 1983 World Champion 76ers, and the Orlando Magic which he co-founded
in 1987 and helped lead to the NBA finals in 1995. Nineteen of his teams have
gone to the NBA play-offs and five of them have made the NBA finals. In 1996,
Pat was named as one of the 50 most influential people in NBA history by a national
publication. He spearheaded the birth of the Orlando Miracle, Orlando's entry
in the WNBA. Pat,
a disciple of the late Bill Veeck, is considered to be one of pro sports' most
zany and flamboyant promoters. Pat
and his wife Ruth, are the parents of 19 children, including 14 adopted from four
nations, ranging in age from 13 to 27. Two of his sons are in the United States
Marine Corps. Pat
and his family have been featured in Sports Illustrated, Readers Digest, Good
Housekeeping, The Wall Street Journal, Focus on the Family, New Man Magazine,
plus all of the major television networks, The Maury Povich Show and Dr. Robert
Schuller's Hour of Power. Pat
is the author of 41 books, the most recent being Ahead of the Game, his long awaited
autobiography. I am told that this book is a million seller---Pat has a million
of them in his garage, and he sells them to anyone who wants to help put his kids
through college. He
teaches an adult Sunday school class at First Baptist Church of Orlando and hosts
a weekly radio show. In
the last three years he has run eleven Marathons, including the Boston Marathon
four times and also climbed Mt. Rainier. He
is a weight lifter, Civil War buff, and serious baseball fan. Every winter he
plays in Major League Fantasy Camps and has caught Hall of Famers Bob Feller,
Bob Gibson and Fergie Jenkins. Pat
is one of America's top motivational, inspirational, and humorous speakers, and
has addressed employees from most of the Fortune 500 companies. He also has been
a featured speaker at two Billy Graham Crusades in Chicago and Syracuse.
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