Minium: Ronnie Valentine's "ODU Family" Still Caring For Former Monarch Men's Basketball Star

By Harry Minium

NORFOLK, Va. – Ronnie Valentine was puzzled by the phone call that came just after New Year’s Day.

“I’ve got a surprise,” Wes Lockard said to Valentine, one of Old Dominion University’s all-time best basketball players, and still the University’s all-time leading scorer.

Lockard, an ODU alumnus, walked into Ronnie’s modest apartment in Miami, Florida, a few days later with Stephanie Carr Field, a Norfolk native and a former ODU cheerleader, carrying a box full of mementoes Ronnie hadn’t seen in four decades.

Ronnie lost all of the trophies, scrapbooks and jerseys from his storied basketball past. He had nothing, other than a scrapbook that Stephanie had put together off stories she found from the Internet

But in large part thanks to Norfolk attorney Bobby Howlett Jr. and Ocean View resident Tommy Perry, he was finally in possession of nine trophies and plaques he had not seen in years.

His All-Tidewater trophy from The Virginian-Pilot, MVP plaque from the Richmond Times-Dispatch Tournament and his plaque from his 1985 induction into the ODU Sports Hall of Fame were among the treasures.

And it didn’t take more than a minute before tears began to roll down Ronnie’s cheeks.

“It was beautiful, so beautiful,” Stephanie said. “He was so surprised.

“He would look at each plaque and would be almost without words for a few minutes. It was so overwhelming for him. It was like him reaching into the past.”

If you don’t know Ronnie’s remarkable life history, you need to know it before I go any further.

You need to know the hardships he endured, his 27 years of being homelessness and how a Catholic charity rescued him from the streets of Miami and gave him back his life.

Ronnie was raised in Norfolk by his grandmother and never knew his father. He at times struggled in school and had some discipline problems.

He was, former Norfolk Catholic coach Ed Fraim told me years later, a good but at times troubled young man.

But could he ever play basketball. He starred at Booker T. Washington High School and then Norfolk Catholic and signed with ODU, turning down big-time offers from Georgetown, Syracuse and Virginia Tech.

His career on the court was stellar – he scored 2,204 points and helped lead ODU to a 25-4 record in its first season of Division I, to its first NCAA Division I Tournament bid and two NIT bids as well as victories over Virginia (twice), Georgetown, Mississippi State, Syracuse and Clemson.

He had a brief run with the NBA’s Denver Nuggets but then ended up playing most of his eight years of pro basketball in foreign leagues. His last stop was Bolivia. He returned to Miami, then his home, in1990.

And sort of disappeared.

When he went to Denver, he got sucked into the drug culture that then permeated the NBA. And eventually, drugs forced him onto the streets, where Miami police got to know Ronnie as a friendly, harmless homeless guy who pushed a shopping cart, frequently dribbled a basketball and who often talked about his past basketball exploits.

I didn’t learn all this until early 2018, when I asked former ODU coach Paul Webb whatever happened to Ronnie. He was homeless on the streets of Miami he said, and the sadness in his voice haunted me.

I was then a reporter at The Virginian-Pilot, and convinced my boss, Tom White, to risk $1,000 in travel money and a week of my time to head to Miami and try to find Ronnie.

It’s a credit to Tom that he said yes. There were no guarantees. But I prayed about it and was convinced I would find him.

I had an ace in the hole – Wes Lockard is a former mascot for the then New Jersey Nets and Miami Heat who works for the Broward County recreation department. He was the last person from ODU to be in touch with Ronnie, in the winter of 2000.

And, I should add, he has the strangest sense of humor I’ve ever seen.

"Wes is a clown," former ODU women's basketball star Nancy Lieberman once told me.

When I met him in Miami, he was wearing bright red fake hair and brown false teeth that looked real to me. And there was a baby doll, screaming in apparent pain, with his fingers stuck in a closed window of his car.

For a few minutes, I wondered what I’d gotten into, but quickly realized that Wes has an off-beat sense of humor, but is a smart guy with a relentless work ethic.

When he delivered the trophies to Ronnie, he was wearing a beanie hat that looked like he was a character from the Little Rascals.

Wes seems to know everyone in Miami and had connections with the Miami-Dade police that did much to help us.

Thanks largely to Wes, we found Ronnie on just my second day in South Florida. He had been rescued six months earlier by the Camillus House, a Catholic charity whose purpose is, according to its Web site, to care for “the hungry, the homeless, and the forgotten of Miami-Dade County.”

He was living in an apartment in an awful neighborhood, but at least he was off the streets.

2018 story on finding Ronnie Valentine in Miami

His health was poor, he had few friends and he was struggling.

Then, a remarkable thing happened. ODU alumni in Miami and elsewhere rallied around Ronnie. Wes reached out to Lieberman, who at the time lived in Miami, and ODU alumni from around the nation responded after my story was published.

Nancy, Reece Neyland, Tommy Conrad and so many others sent money or visited Ronnie. Dozens wrote to him. To this day, he gets calls from friends and alumni frequently.

Karlton Hilton, a former Maury High and South Carolina basketball player, also chipped in in a big way. He and Wes are Ronnie’s caretakers of sorts.

There are a lot of heroes here. Nancy stops by to see Ronnie whenever she can and helps him much financially. Karlton is also a frequent visitor, as is Stephanie.

But the main hero here is Wes, who visits Ronnie at least once a month. He’s taken him to Marlins and Heat games and ODU games when the Monarchs played at Florida Atlantic and Florida International when they were in Conference USA.

Wes picks up Ronnie and takes him to his home on July 4^th, Thanksgiving and Christmas. He's spent a ton of his own money taking care of his old friend.

Ronnie remained in the troubled OverTown neighborhood until about six months ago, when Wes found him another apartment, this one within walking distance of American Airlines Arena, where the Heat now play. He rented a truck and helped move him in.

“He doesn’t have to worry about roaches on the walls and broken glass on the streets,” Wes said of Ronnie. “He’s in a much better place.”

“Wes never gives up,” Stephanie added. “He cares so much about Ronnie. He could have said, ‘Now that you’re settled, you’re on your own.’ But that’s not Wes.

“Wes is truly a very special man. What I’ve done is nothing compared to what both Wes and Karlton have done for him.”

Lieberman put it more succinctly:

"Everybody else has contributed to taking care of Ronnie Valentine. But Wes is boots on the ground every time Ronnie needs something, she said.

"He's a great human being hiding behind that laughter. He's a hero."

Bobby Howlett Jr. is a prominent Norfolk attorney who played basketball at Norfolk Collegiate for his late father, Bobby “Sweetie” Howlett Sr, and, as fortune would have it, played against Ronnie.

Bobby Jr. and the Oaks claimed four of six games against Norfolk Catholic and Valentine when he was a junior and senior. The Oaks beat Catholic in the Tidewater Conference championship game when both were juniors.

“Beating Norfolk Catholic, that was amazing,” Bobby said. “Ronnie was such a good player. People now have no idea how good he was.”

Howlett is also a ODU donor and he met Valentine in Miami a few years ago when he traveled with the Monarch football team to a game at FIU. I wrote about his visit online.

When Tommy Perry came across nine plaques and trophies that bore Valentine’s name at a flea market, he immediately purchased them. He sensed he had found something valuable but couldn’t quite place Ronnie’s name.

He went to Norfolk’s Kirn Memorial Library and found my stories about Ronnie. Of all things, Bobby is his attorney, so he reached out to him.

Bobby called Dr. Wood Selig, ODU’s director of athletics, and we got him hooked up with Wes.

When Wes and Stephanie walked into Ronnie’s apartment, “it was like something out of a movie,” Stephanie said.

“I was watching this guy who is now a senior citizen (68 years old) and the joy in his eyes as he recalled those previous moments when he was a superstar, it was an honor to be there.

“So much credit should go to Bobby and Tommy for what they did. They brought such joy to Ronnie’s life.”

Karlton is going to come by, Wes told Ronnie, to hang the trophies on his wall.

“He told me the only thing he wanted to hang was the ODU Sports Hall of Fame induction plaque. That means so much to him,” Wes said.

Bobby was, of course, thrilled to hear about Ronnie’s reaction. Bobby said he will repay Tommy for the plaques by representing him for free in traffic court.

“It’s the least I could do,” he said. “It warms our hearts to hear how much this meant to Ronnie.”

Ronnie stopped opening packages of plaques after four. He said he wanted to wait, that he was too emotional to see them all right away.

He doesn't know what happened to the trophies or how they got to a flea market. "It's been so long, I don't remember," he said.

But after so many years, they are his once again. 

Ronnie’s health isn’t the best – 27 years on the streets takes a lot out of you – but he isn’t bitter. He is a humble guy who is thankful to anyone who calls or takes the time to write him.

Ronnie’s recovery has been slow. He still isn’t ready to return to Norfolk and perhaps he never will.

No matter. He has family, his ODU family, in Miami  

“I don’t know where I would be without Wes,” Ronnie said. “He’s so good to me.

“Everyone at ODU, they've all been so good to me, man, just so good to me.”

Minium is ODU’s senior executive writer. Contact him at hminium@odu.edu or follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram