Mike Bianchi: New Pat Williams Library is where readers become leaders

Pat Williams is talking about his old friends finally having a place to call their own.

He is telling me about their long and winding journey, where they came from, where they’ve been and how — at long last — they’ve reached their final destination.

“It makes me smile to see all my old friends happy and content that they are all together as one, big happy family,” says Williams, the co-founder of the Orlando Magic and the man largely responsible for bringing professional sports to Orlando. “There were times in the past, I could hear them whispering to me at night, ‘We’re tired of living in cardboard boxes. Rescue us from the darkness. Help us find the light. Help us find a home.’ "

Williams isn’t talking about people; he’s talking about his collection of more than 25,000 books (and counting) that as of this week are on permanent display at the Pat Williams Leadership Library at his longtime church — First Baptist of Orlando. The dedication and ribbon-cutting ceremony was earlier this week and those in attendance were taken on a tour of the library, where Williams’ books are on shelves lining the hallowed halls of the megachurch.

If anybody deserves his own library, it’s Pat Williams — a man who has written more books (120) than most of us have read and has read more books than most of us have opened. It is one of the many things I love about Williams, who at 82 years old is still a voracious reader and an advocate of the printed word.

You hardly ever see Williams without a book in his hand. When he was the general manager and senior vice president of the Magic, he would bring a book to games and read during timeouts and at halftime. He’s run 58 marathons in his life and, yes, he’d often read books to help pass the time. If you’re beside Williams at a traffic stop, you might look over and see his head buried in a book while he’s waiting for the light to turn green.

“Pat attends the 11:30 service and he reads most of the time during the service,” Danny de Armas, one of the pastors at First Baptist, cracked during the library dedication. “It used to distract me while I was preaching, but now I just plow right through it. Amazingly, Pat even picks up a thing or two from the sermon.”

Within the library, there is a collection of memorabilia and big-screen photo montages of Williams’ professional sports career that started as a minor-league baseball player 60 years ago, then saw him put together an NBA championship team as the GM of the Philadelphia 76ers before founding the Magic 35 years ago.

Also on the walls of the library are two vintage Williams quotes about the benefits that come from absorbing the written word.

“Readers are leaders.”

“Books are health food for your brain and dessert for your soul.”

“I’m really concerned that kids and adults alike aren’t reading books like they once did,” Williams laments. “We’ve living in an era of screens; we’ve been hooked on screens — movie screens, TV screens, computer screens, iPhone screens and video-game screens. … But our brains need vigorous exercise and the best way to work out those cranial muscles is to attach a book to them.

“There’s nothing like having a real book with real pages and real print in your hand,” he adds. “And always have a pen with you when you’re reading and mark up that book, fold the pages and save the good stuff. Don’t leave it to memory.”

First Baptist head pastor David Uth tells the story of every time he walks down the book-lined hallways of the Williams Library, he now makes a habit of randomly pulling a book from a shelf and reading a quick excerpt from it. The other day he reached in and pulled out a book called Tastes Like Chicken — an exploration into the rise of the poultry industry in the United States.

“I didn’t know what the book was about, but it’s fascinating to me just to see some of the books Pat has read,” Uth says.

That’s right, Williams has consumed all 25,000-plus books on the shelves during a lifetime love affair with reading that started when he was 7 years old. It was June 7, 1947, when he attended his first Major League Baseball game — the Cleveland Indians vs. the Philadelphia Athletics — at old Shibe Park in Philly.

“I instantly fell in love with the sights and the sounds and the smells and the color of baseball,” Williams recalls. “And I woke up the next morning knowing exactly what I wanted to do with my life: I wanted to be a baseball player. That was my driving force. And so when you fall in love with a topic, you want to learn all you can about that topic. That’s when I began reading baseball books. On every birthday and every Christmas, I got baseball books as gifts. And I read ‘em all.”

As he grew older, he started reading about football and basketball, too, and his collection of sports books grew exponentially. When was 40 years old, he visited the battlefield at Gettysburg and fell in love with Civil War history. And then it was Revolutionary War history. And when he came to Orlando and started the Magic, he started reading and writing books about leadership and also became fascinated with the legendary Walt Disney.

Now, finally, all of these amazing books collected throughout Pat Williams’ amazing life are housed in one reverent spot.

A place to worship God.

A place to honor reading.

Welcome home, old friends.