- Will you consider this?

You're a really good student in Punta Gorda, Florida, and you're exceptionally good at statistics, so your teacher, your homeroom teacher, encourages you to use that skill, and off you go.

I'm Christine Zak-Edmonds.

Stay here for this fascinating story of a graduate of none other than Bradley University.

(upbeat music) Statistics are a big deal, especially in the world of sports, and that's where my guest first got her start and it blossomed into a lifetime of travels and adventures.

Via Zoom, I'm pleased to introduce you to Laura Herlovich.

Welcome, Laura.

Good to see you.

- Hi there.

Nice to meet you.

- Nice to meet you too.

We've talked a couple of times on the phone, and now we get to see one another.

So let's start with a young girl, high school girl, who excels at statistics.

- That was me, and I loved all my teachers, especially the coaches that were my homeroom teachers and coached all the different sports.

I babysat for all of them.

They were kind of surrogate father figures to me.

And one of them actually asked me to keep statistics for the junior varsity, actually, basketball team, ninth-grade basketball team, and so I told him that I would.

I loved math, and something he did that you would never get away with today, of course, was he used to give us a test every week, and he would sit us in class based on our test score.

So because I got good grades, I always sat in the front row.

So he always kidded around with me and we had a great rapport and he asked me if I would keep statistics, and I said, "Sure," because what 14-year-old girl doesn't wanna ride on the bus with the team, right?

- [Christine] Right, you got that.

- It was a great deal.

So anyway, I started keeping statistics for him.

Then I got to high school and I, not realizing, you know, that somebody might ever tell me no, I just went to all the coaches and said, "Hey, I like doing this, and will you let me keep statistics for you?"

And I ended up, by the time I graduated from high school, I lettered more times than any guy in my high school.

- Incredible.

- Even though I'd never played a sport.

And keep in mind this was right after Title IX and the only girls' sports they had at my high school, Charlotte High School, was swimming and tennis.

So it wasn't like there were a lot of girls' sports to choose from.

- Exactly.

- Yes, and I had tried out for cheerleader in junior high.

I'm very uncoordinated, I did not make it as a cheerleader, so I decided statistics was, you know, gonna be my thing.

Loved math.

And so in high school, I kept for baseball, cross country, wrestling, track, basketball.

You name it, and I kept stats for it.

And so by the time I was a senior, I came from a very low-income family and I knew I needed help to go to college, but I knew I had to go to college.

Punta Gorda is a very small town.

There's very few things I could've done there that would have, you know, stoked a fire of passion in me.

And so one of my coaches came up to me one day.

He was from Eureka.

- Illinois.

- And he said, yeah, Eureka, Illinois, and he said to me, "Hey," and I babysat for him, so he had a little bit of a vested interest in my life, I guess, if you will.

And so he said, "Hey, what are you gonna be doing?"

And I said, "Well, one of my other coaches got me hooked up at Clemson, but then his head coach got fired, and he called me a few months ago and said that's not gonna work anymore," and I said, "So I've gotta go back to ground zero."

And he said, "Well, you know, I know a coach at Bradley in Peoria.

Have you ever heard of that?"

I had never seen snow.

I'd never heard of Peoria.

(Christine laughing) I'd never heard of Bradley.

He said, "Let me call Coach Stowell and see what he can do."

And so he did and came back to me very shortly and said, "No problem.

He'll have you work in sports information."

And so sight unseen, Coach Stowell gave me an opportunity and then not long after that actually came down to my neck of the woods to recruit a player at a neighboring high school and made sure he saw me to say hi and reiterated that I'd be working in sports information, and that's really how it all started.

- What an incredible story, and the fact that it was sight unseen, and Coach Stowell is such a wonderful man.

What's one really fun, clever little story that you remember about him just encouraging you to keep up what you were doing?

- He just was always so kind and so nice and, you know, always remembered everyone, you know?

And just said, "Of course, you can do this."

He was one of the few people, and I had a handful of great few people in my life who, you know, never told me no, and so I just figured I'd just keep moving forward and nobody would ever tell me no, and that made me probably a little bit precocious at times, but I just wouldn't take no for an answer.

So he really taught me not to take no for an answer and to believe in myself, and those were really valuable lessons.

- So you did stats, of course, for basketball, and being in sports information, you did a little bit of everything.

And who did you work with in sports information?

- My first year in sports information was the first year after Jim Dynan left the office, and he had been in that position for, I think, decades.

And they had Dave Snell as the sports information director and a gentleman named Pete Odon as the assistant, and I got to be the secretary.

And then the next year, Dave and Pete graduated the end of that first year, my freshman year, and the next year, they hired Joe Dalfonso, who was a Bradley graduate and literally right out of Bradley, as the sports information director, and he brought in Steve Welling.

Ooh, I'm embarrassed that I'm potentially getting his name wrong.

He just kept, gosh, gosh, well, I'll have to get you the right name if I've got it recorded.

- If you think of it, just blurt it out, right.

But so you did a little bit of everything in that department.

And you graduated in- - Yes, yes.

- In four years, because you're smart.

(Christine laughing) - I did.

I graduated in four years, and I have to tell you one of my favorite moments in sports information.

I had to call the schools and get information from them, and I had to call Southern Illinois one time, and it was late at night, so it was like six, seven o'clock, it was after working hours, and Gale Sayers answered his own phone.

- Aha!

- And I could barely speak!

I didn't know what to do.

(Christine laughing) Here I was talking to Gale Sayers, you know, Brian Piccolo's best friend, and I don't even remember what I asked him.

It wasn't anything important.

I think it was looking for sports information.

Búut I got Gale Sayers, and that was really a very, very cool moment.

We had Chet Walker come back to Bradley while I was there.

I got to meet him and stitch up his coat because it ripped on his way to the field house.

- All the important- - So we had a couple of really, yeah, a couple of great moments there.

But I have to say, I remember how sad I was because Coach Stowell did not last throughout my entire four years.

Coach was there through my, I want to say freshman and maybe only my freshman year or freshman and sophomore year, and then Dick Versace came in.

And there were not two men that were any different in this world than Coach Stowell and Coach Versace.

I survived the transition, but having Coach Versace there, and he was a lovely man, don't get me wrong, very unique guy, a very quirky guy, but it certainly, every day made me appreciate Coach Stowell even more.

Coach Stowell was much more of a Laura kinda guy than Coach Versace, yeah.

- There you go, there you go.

Well, okay, so then once you graduated, you went on to work for the Jazz.

- Yes, actually what happened was my senior year, I lived over on Barker, and I would send a letter out, and we still had typewriters back then and that white tape you put in if you made an error, and I typed an individual letter to every NBA team.

I felt like whatever sport you were gonna work in was its own language, and you had to speak it, and I spoke basketball.

I didn't speak football.

I could've learned to have spoken baseball.

I enjoyed baseball, but basketball was my sport that I really enjoyed and felt I knew the best.

And so I sent a letter to every NBA team and I got the most beautiful rejection letters from almost all of them.

Really lovely letters.

As a matter of fact, Ken Goldin's brother-in-law was the PR director for the Houston Rockets, and I probably got one of my nicest letters from him 'cause I mentioned, somehow I found out he and Ken were related and mentioned that.

And at that time, there were 22 teams maybe in the NBA, and each of them had a two-person PR department.

So they had a PR director, which in every case but one was a male, and they had a secretary in most cases, except there were two or three teams that actually had an assistant.

And I wanted to be an assistant.

I was gonna have a college degree.

I was gonna be paying off a college degree.

I did not do all of that to be called a secretary.

I wanted to be an assistant.

Luckily for me, the Utah Jazz were still in New Orleans, and they were getting ready to move out to Salt Lake City, Utah, and so the PR director at the Jazz felt like he was falling short in the grammar category.

- Ooh.

- And so I got two degrees, one in communications and one in secondary education.

I was certified to teach English.

So he thought that not only did I have this great resume I'd been able to build at Bradley, in addition to sports information, I worked in the intramural office.

Haussler Hall had just been built, and I worked there for three years.

I did sports for the yearbook.

I did sports for the newspaper.

So I had a pretty decent resume, and so my resume said I could do the sports side of it, but what gave me a bump up was I had the grammar side of it, the English side of it.

- All right.

- And so he got in touch with me and we communicated throughout the end of my semester.

And he couldn't quite offer me a job yet.

The team hadn't quite moved.

They were gonna move during the summer.

So he and I stayed in touch, and there was a minor league hockey team at the time called the Peoria Blades.

They were like club hockey.

And I got a job selling ads for them and being their PR director, if you will.

There really wasn't a need for a PR director, but nonetheless.

So I worked for them throughout the summer, and I remember that Dave, as the season started for the Jazz into the fall, so I'd been out of Bradley a few months, and Dave called me and said, "Listen, the team won't let me fly you out here because they don't understand how much more valuable it would be to have someone like you here than just hire anybody that could type," right?

That was just kinda how it was back then.

And he said, "But if you wanna come out here and interview, it would be the last step.

You can go to a game, be the last step we need to do, and I think soon, I would be able to actually offer you a job."

So I said, "Okay," and I spent $300, which was a ton of money back then, to fly to Salt Lake and visit, and I knew at that point, 'cause I remember thinking, "What if I think this is my dream job and I wait 10 years and I kill myself and then I get offered it and I go and I hate it?"

So it's just, a $300 expenditure's a good thing to be able to go and find out if it's really the dream I think it's gonna be.

So I loved my experience out for, I was there for day and a half, flew back, and that was like November, right after the season started, and then in March, he called me and offered me a job with the Jazz.

So within a year of graduating, I drove out to Salt Lake and I became the assistant director of PR for the Jazz.

So I got the assistant title and I worked there with the Jazz, and my first job, which I'll never forget, my first job that I did with them.

I did some other things, but my first real job I got to do was the draft that year.

And while the coaches called the number one draft pick, I got to call all the other draft picks and say, "Congratulations."

- Ooh!

- [Laura] "You've been drafted by the Utah Jazz."

- All right.

- Which, to me, if I had been in those young men's shoes, would have been a dream come true, right?

I felt like I'd kinda been drafted into my job.

(Christine chuckling) So that was really cool.

And that was the year that we got Darrell Griffith from University of Louisville, and Darrell and I are still friends.

We're on a text chain together.

So we have maintained that friendship for a long time.

- And then, so you were with the Jazz for, like, seven years, and then you just decided to not do basketball anymore?

- Actually, yeah, I was actually with them for four years, and what happened was that final year, they had a new general manager come in.

He was very young.

He was only in his 20s.

He came in, and he just really was not, at that point, I had just been, they were starting to play some of their home games in Las Vegas.

It was a horrible experiment.

It went horribly wrong, but they still needed people in Vegas to handle it.

So they took my boss and they moved him into Vegas to be in charge of operations and they were ready to promote me to the director of PR.

I would have been only the second woman, did become only the second woman to be a director of PR in the NBA, only, I believe, it was the fourth woman to be a PR director in any sport in the country at the time.

And they were ready to promote me.

The new guy came in.

It really wasn't his choice.

He really kind of got told that, "She deserves the job, and you may be new and you may not know her, but you're gonna give her the job."

So he never quite bought down on me.

And so when it came time for them to make some switches, he decided to hire someone else in Salt Lake to work with the Jazz and he moved me to work in Las Vegas.

And I think we all knew the Vegas thing was not gonna last very long.

So when that was over, I no longer had a job with the Jazz.

And so luckily, I had a girlfriend that I went to Bradley with who was Phyllis Diller's road manager.

So she knew a lot of people in Las Vegas in the entertainment offices.

- Oh, your connections, right.

- Yes, and she connected me with someone, and they connected me with the PR director at the Riviera at the time, which of course has now been demolished, and they connected me with him, and he had previously been the PR director for the Oakland Raiders.

So we had the sports background.

They were having major championship fights about every three months, so there was still a lot of sports involved, and he hired me.

So I shifted from sports PR to entertainment PR, or hospitality PR, if you will, but still had a lot of sports going on.

So actually, it was a pretty smooth transition.

So I loved Vegas, and I ended up staying here in Vegas.

- Just incredible.

And then over time, you had your own PR firm.

So it is PR Plus Public Relations, Marketing & Events.

- Yes.

- So you've met some other huge names that we're familiar with.

- I did, I did.

I did PR for Prince.

He's probably one of the biggest names.

That was really an experience.

He was just what you would think he was, very unique, but very talented.

I think he was more of a marketing genius than he was a musical genius.

He was something.

So he was one.

I worked with Bon Jovi.

I worked with Guns N' Roses.

I worked with, gosh, you name 'em, I worked with 'em.

I worked with Paul McCartney for a very short moment in time when he had a show here in town.

It just was, it seemed like it was everybody.

I did some work with Britney Spears, with Destiny's Child, with some of the classics.

I still work with, actually, George Wallace, who you may know he's a comic, and he is Jerry Seinfeld's best friend.

And I've worked with George a long time.

I currently still work with Gladys Knight.

I work with the "Pawn Stars" that are on the History Channel, and I'm actually sitting in Rick Harrison's office right now 'cause I had some technological difficulties at my home.

So Rick was sweet enough to let me use his office.

I've sat in here many a time when he did a Zoom interview, so I knew it would work.

But, so I just worked with, gosh, everybody you can imagine.

There are very few people I haven't worked with.

Every so often I'll speak to a class or I was a professor for Bradley for two years with their Hollywood Semester and it's rare when somebody comes up with a name and my path has not crossed theirs.

And it was a lot of fun and not that much different than working in sports.

It was very much, I felt very much like I was protecting them, all of my clients.

I always felt very maternal towards them and very protective and always wanted to make sure they put their best foot forward, and when they didn't, that's when the protection really came into place.

But we just, Gladys, as a matter of fact, has just been awarded a Kennedy Center Honors and so in December, I will be at the White House with Gladys.

She's being honored alongside George Clooney and U2.

And I don't know if your folks are very familiar with the way Kennedy Center Honors works, but they ask you to give them a list of people that you would like to come in and help be part of your being honored, people you've worked with, people you admire, people who've helped guide your career.

So you can only imagine some of the people that U2 and George Clooney and Gladys and I will be bringing in.

And as well, I should say, so I don't leave them out, Amy Grant is getting honored and so is Tania Leon.

So that's this year's class, those five.

So I never thought I would go to the White House, but here, little old me is going to the White House.

And none of this would've been possible without Coach Stowell giving me an opportunity.

- Well, and that's just it.

Now, you did come back for Bradley's homecoming, the 125th year celebration.

You were planning to come back before then with Gladys Knight, I think.

Did you- - Yes.

- Did you originally arrange for that event here?

- I didn't arrange for that.

Her managers do that kind of booking.

But I was planning to come back actually because I wanted to go see Gladys with Kim, Kim Armstrong.

And she and I are friends and I thought it would be fun you know, to come and see Gladys with her.

And so unfortunately that show didn't pan out.

It had some difficulties and so it didn't actually come to be, but because of that, I had been in touch with Coach Stowell's son Jimmy and he had arranged for me to come see Coach because I hadn't, I thought I was gonna see Coach a few years ago when I was back in town and his wife was still with us and she wasn't doing real well and so Coach was staying home with her.

So I didn't get to see him.

And I just had this overwhelming desire to just, you know, see Coach and just make sure, you know, I mean, I hope we can all live as long a life as Coach has and as meaningful a life, but I just really wanted to make sure that I don't really think Coach knows how meaningful and impactful he's been in my life and I just have this overwhelming desire to tell him.

So when Gladys didn't work out and then when I thought I was coming in for my sorority reunion and that didn't work out, I said, "I don't really care about any of these other things.

I really care about seeing Coach, so I'm gonna come on in and see Coach," and we had the greatest visit.

It was just so much fun.

- How long did you visit?

How long did you spend together with him?

- Well, I had Joe Dalfonso, who was my boss in sports information and who also hadn't seen Coach in a couple years.

And because Joe is still in town and still sees a lot of people there in Peoria, he gets asked about Coach all the time and he didn't really know what Coach was up to these days.

So I asked him to come and so the three of us got together.

We were there for about two hours.

So I brought Coach lunch.

He wanted a burger from Culver's.

So I love me a ButterBurger from Culver when I'm in Peoria.

(Christine laughs) So I got Coach a burger and Joe and I sat and chatted with him and reminisced and it was just awesome.

And met the dog, and actually, before Joe and I left, we took the dog for a walk around the block for him.

And it just, it was so much fun and Coach looked so good and just seemed so sharp and bright and with it.

You know, you just never know when somebody's getting on in years, you know, how much they'll remember, number one, or how able to keep up with conversation.

It was just like it was 40 years ago.

- Do you remember exactly what, how he reacted to you trying to impress upon him what an impression he made on your life?

- You know, he's humble.

So he was appreciative, but he, as I would share with him, you know, "I just want you to know, you know, I would be nowhere without you, you know?"

he would smile and then he would tell me a little bit what he remembered about how we met the first time, you know?

So he kind of liked reminiscing about, you know, how he was outside Punta Gorda and how we, you know, saw each other and that kind of thing and what player he was recruiting at the time.

You know, he remembered him.

He was from a neighboring high school.

And so he just kind of kept building on that story.

I think he enjoyed the memory of it as much as he did knowing that he had just really been special and important.

You know, and I still don't know, as much as I spent two hours with him and I must have told him 10 times in those two hours, I don't know that I could adequately put in words how meaningful he has been to me.

And so I don't know that he'll ever truly be able to take that all in because it's beyond words, you know?

He gave me an opportunity that people just don't get in their lifetimes, whether that be then or now.

And just so kind of him and so, you know, he just said yes.

He didn't know.

Goodness gracious, I could have not been a very nice kid, you know?

He knew very little, well, the coach that he knew endorsed me and I think he respected that coach.

So he knew I was not gonna embarrass him and that I was gonna work hard.

But even if you know that, you don't really know that until you get around somebody, you know?

So I just- - Well, even that he took a chance on a young woman, putting her in that department, right?

- Absolutely.

That was so, so, you know, unique.

People just didn't do that.

And even, as the Jazz experience shows you, even if somebody takes a chance on you, if people change or whatever, you could be gone in just a second, and not for anything you did, just somebody else wasn't feeling it, you know?

So to have those opportunities, you know, were just rare.

And then, you know, when I worked with the Jazz, that's right when they had just started allowing females in the locker rooms.

And I remember, you know, before I would go in to talk to the guys about something, I'd knock on the door and say, "Hey, guys, I'm coming in if it matters to you."

Nobody ever said it mattered to them.

Nobody ever seemed to be the least bit shy about me being in the locker room.

I think they all felt actually a little big brothery about me and were more worried about me seeing something that I shouldn't see than them being seen.

You know, it was really interesting.

It was a very interesting time for women in sports then.

And you're right.

You know, Coach taking a chance on a young woman was just unheard of.

It just didn't happen.

- In the mid-70s.

Exactly.

- Yes.

- So we have maybe a minute and a half left.

Any regrets or anything that you still want to do you haven't done?

- Golly, I wouldn't say so necessarily.

I got to go with Gladys Knight to the Super Bowl a few years ago.

She did the anthem in Atlanta.

(clears throat) Excuse me.

I'm going with her to the White House.

I have met George Clooney and Brad Pitt and been close enough to them I could almost have kissed them.

I've had amazing things happen in my life.

I did PR for the NBA All Star game.

I did PR for the NBA Summer League for many years after I left the Jazz.

So I got to still have a professional basketball career of sorts after that time period.

I helped Jon Bon Jovi get married the night he chose to get married.

I picked him up at the airport.

And so I have been so blessed and I am so grateful.

And boy, I don't know- - You're a happy camper.

- Yeah, I don't know that there's- - You're a happy camper.

All right.

- Yeah, that there's anything else.

The only other thing I would like to do.

If I could- - We have about 15 seconds.

Quickly.

- If I could win the lottery and give it all to charity, that would be wonderful.

- I love that.

Well, thank you very much.

- That would be wonderful.

- You've already won the lottery of life.

So thank you so much Laura Herlovich for sharing your story, it's fascinating, and for sharing us all the kind words about Coach Stowell 'cause he really is truly the best.

- Well, Christine, it's lovely to meet you and any fan of Coach's is a friend of mine.

So we are now bonded for life.

- All right.

Thank you.

Okay, thanks all for joining us.

Have a good evening.

Stay safe and healthy and hold happiness.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues)