Career Leader in Basketball
Blazing Bold Path for Church Leonard Dow ’87 enthusiastically followed the Cinderella story of EMU’s men’s basketball team in 2009-2010 from unranked to one of the best in the nation. He is someone who knows about breaking records. Leonard, now a Mennonite bishop, remains the all-time record holder for career points at EMU (2,192), career rebounds (1,102), career field goals (872), and points in a season by a freshman (19.8 per game). Leonard is the only EMU player to be selected to the all-conference first team each of his four years. In the Royals Hall of Honor, Dow's uniform was the first to be retired. As a junior and senior at Christopher Dock Mennonite High School three decades ago, Leonard was on track to attend a Division I or Division II college on a basketball scholarship when he was injured. Recruiters suddenly stopped calling. “I was filled with self-pity,” he recalls with a wry tone. He decided to ditch college. Factory or College? Leonard’s father pressed pants and suits in a Philadelphia garment factory. Dad took his self-pitying teenager to work with him after graduation. Leonard lasted two weeks as a “bundle boy” and then begged to be allowed to go to any college that would accept him. His mother weighed in: “The Mennonites have done you well in high school” -- he came from a family that lived in Philly, where they were active in an AfricanAmerican Baptist Church (later shifting to a Presbyterian church), but he commuted to classes at Christopher Dock in the far suburbs – “so why not continue with the Mennonites in college?” Leonard’s one and only pre-admission visit to EMU was almost a disaster. His 36 | crossroads | spring 2010
mother, brother and a male friend drove down from Pennsylvania. They lost their way and arrived so late – after midnight – the admissions representative who was supposed to greet them had assumed they weren’t coming and had gone home. “Look, let’s be frank – we were three large African American males walking around the campus at one in the morning at a time
when Eastern Mennonite didn’t have many people of color.” Two young white women happened by and, to the visitors’ surprise, asked if they needed help. When these women – who turned out to be undergraduates at EMU – realized that the three guys and the middle-aged woman with them had nowhere to go that night, they opened up their apartment to the group. “They had two bedrooms. They gave Mom one of their bedrooms, they took the other, and we [guys] slept on the floor.” “They gave us breakfast in the morning, left for class, and I never saw them again until I ran into them my senior year. I still don’t know their names. But what they did
for us blew us away.” [Editor: If you are one of these former coeds, let us know at Crossroads@emu.edu; we’d like to print your names in the next issue.] Leonard said that the hospitality of these two females to strangers of a different race confirmed in his mother’s mind that EMU was “a safe place for my boys.” Being in the Minority It was not an easy place for her boys to be, though. Compared to Philadelphia, Harrisonburg was sleepy. Leonard was popular on campus because he was a basketball star. But there was also a disconnect. His entire family – mother, father, two brothers and two sisters – sacrificed so that Leonard could be the first in the family to graduate from a four-year college. Leonard was acutely aware that he didn’t fit the mold of the typical EMU student. “I would go to the financial aid office to deal with an outstanding bill and they would tell me to call Mom and get her credit card to pay it off.” That just wasn’t an option for Leonard. During his eight years in Mennonite educational institutions, Leonard says he was invited to social events, but was never invited by a Mennonite to a Mennonite church, church-sponsored camp, or religious retreat. To fill the spiritual gap, his brother insisted Leonard go with him to an African-American church in Harrisonburg. Today Leonard chuckles at the irony: “Despite my best efforts and everybody else’s best efforts, I became a Mennonite pastor.” Leonard does credit the Mennonite church, though, with supporting his church leadership roles, beginning 10 or 11 years ago: “I know how bad I had to be early on, yet the church stuck with me.”