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Life’s harsh blows have left their mark on the 48-year old. But at 6-foot-10, he is as striking now as when he was a UW-Madison basketball star from 1977 to 1981.
A man approaches, asking him quietly for advice on where he can get a free lunch on this freezing February day.
“There’s a church on Ingersoll, just off Jenifer Street,” Petty tells the man. Not that Petty needs to go, having saved a snack from an earlier meal from a similar place. He has learned how to survive on the streets.
Petty has been homeless since getting out of prison and a halfway house last spring.
As a player on the Badgers basketball team, Petty, whose jersey number was 00, was a heroic figure. He was heavily recruited to play here, scored 1,066 points, was nicknamed “The Bear,” and had his own cheering section called “the Bear Area” behind the south basket in the Field House.
Current coach Bo Ryan, who was assistant coach from 1976 to 1984, once called him “one of the most loved” basketball players the school has ever had.
But since leaving UW-Madi-son as a seventh-round draft pick of the Los Angeles Lakers in 1981, he has plummeted from those heights, succumbing to injuries, drug abuse, crime, prison, and lately, homelessness.
He’s faced with the challenge daily of having to scrape his way up from the bottom.
“As long as you’re producing on the court, everybody’s cheering,” Petty said. “But one day, those 70,000 fans aren’t going to be there. And then what do you do? The university don’t prepare you for when the lights end. And you look for that high somewhere else.”
Reality sinks in Many a college athlete — revered and pampered as a hero on campus — eventually faces the reality that he isn’t going to make it as a pro and that he must create some other sort of path in life. Many are able to thrive.
Others like Petty have tumbled when they look for that “high” in all the wrong places.
Petty, a New York City native, was able to follow his basketball dreams for a few years after UW-Madison. He stayed with the Lakers for six months before being cut from the team and spending several years playing in Europe, South America and Russia. He returned to Wisconsin to play in Oshkosh for the Wisconsin Flyers of the CBA.
After five knee operations left him broke and out of a job, Petty, who never got his degree during his basketball days, decided to go back to school at UW-Madison. He earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology with a minor in communications in 1989. At the time, he was married and had four young children.
For Petty, school was always grueling. Diagnosed with dyslexia, Petty said he had to take statistics and methods four or five times before he passed it. He found help with his learning disability from the school’s academic advancement program, which helps disadvantaged students succeed.
Petty was hired by the university as the school’s liaison to the Greek community in 1989 during a period when there was serious concern over out-of-control drinking and racial incidents, said Roger Howard, associate dean of students at the time.
“He was almost immediately very helpful,” Howard said. “A gregarious guy. Willing to move around and talk to a lot to people.“
But soon, Petty began spiraling downward.
Maybe it was the back injury he suffered when a new garage door he was installing fell on him, which led to an addiction to pain killers and absences from work. That’s when Howard said he noticed things starting to go awry for Petty at his job.
Perhaps it was the drug use that Petty says he has struggled with since he was with the Lakers — though some court records says it goes back even farther.
Or maybe it was the mounting pressures of a new job and life that no longer included basketball stardom, forcing him to confront learning disabilities and family issues, which was the evaluation made by a psychologist in 1992, according to court records.
But in early 1992, he pleaded guilty to threatening his then-wife, Sharon, with a kitchen knife. He lost his job with the university due to repeated absences from work and he was accused of stealing $175 from the Wisconsin Student Association.
In 1993, he was sentenced to 10 years of probation and a year in the state’s intensive sanctions program, which involves a short time in prison followed by a treatment program, for his role in a check forgery scam — writing more than $6,000 in bad checks for cocaine in 1991 — with his former wife and two others.
At the time, Petty’s lawyer, Mark Eisenberg, argued for a lenient sentence, saying Petty was “not smart enough to be leader” of the group because of his memory problems and learning disorders.
Petty divorced Sharon in 1993 and married Jan Myers-Petty, formerly the director of the Broadway-Simpson-Waunona Neighborhood Center, later that year. She was identified as a stabilizing force during Petty’s sentencing in the forgery case.
After a short stint in prison on the forgery conviction, Petty used his own experience in trying to readjust to society to start U-Turn Inc., a company that helped put ex-offenders to work. The program gave former inmates temporary jobs so they could get skills and earn a living wage.
This upswing was put to a swift end when Petty fell on the job in 1994. He needed spinal surgery and U-Turn folded.
Petty and Myers-Petty filed for divorce in 2000 after a rocky marriage that included several instances of domestic violence and restraining orders.
In 2002 he was sentenced to a term of six years when a rock of cocaine was found in his apartment — a violation of his probation
Petty doesn’t lay all his troubles on drugs and says he regrets threatening his first wife.
“Yes, that was me. I’m not going to lie and say it wasn’t,” he said. “I was clean. I went off (on her) because of the situation.“
But he denies involvement in the check scheme and denies abusing Myers-Petty.
Petty was released from prison last spring after serving four years. Two more months in halfway houses, and he was out on the streets of Madison with an income of only about $500 in monthly disability payments.
His children are in Madison, except for one son who is in prison, but they are in no position to help him, he said.
“I really found that the system is made to re-incarcerate, not to make a change,” Petty said. “I feel that the cycle is pulling me back.“
After seeing Petty’s picture on the front page of The Capital Times earlier this month in an article on the conditions at the Porchlight homeless shelter, some of his old teammates contacted him.
“We as teammates have reached out to Larry to find out how he’s doing,” said Joe Chrnelich, who played with the Badgers from 1976 to 1980. “It obviously made us very sad to see a teammate who’s not doing well.“
Petty came to the university at a time when the basketball program was not the powerhouse it is today, noted former UW-Madison dean of students Paul Ginsberg. Petty was recruited in the hopes that he could improve the record of a struggling team.
“Larry was seen as the one who could raise the team out of its doldrums,” Ginsberg said. “That’s an incredible amount of pressure for a young man of 18. I’ve never been quite sure that it was fair.“
For the most part, Petty doesn’t dwell too much on his playing days. He says when the other men at the shelter ask him about it, he simply tells them “those days are over.” But when he goes past the Field House, the memories are rekindled.
“That was the place, man,” said Petty. “When you played in there, (so many) people in that crammed place, you played against Michigan and you won on the last-minute shot and everybody went crazy. I look at it now and it’s just cold.“
Petty blames a multitude of forces for his problems: a societal system that favors whites over blacks, a prosecutor who he said wanted to pin him in the forgery case because of his famous name, social services programs that aren’t effective at helping ex-offenders get jobs and housing, a university that didn’t prepare him for the future.
“What he needs to do is get back on his feet, he needs to get a job, get things going,” said Badgers Basketball Coach Bo Ryan.
“It’s never been that nobody’s helped him. There’s been a lot of people that have helped him a lot of times, believe me.”
Chrnelich won’t say in what way he and other former Badgers are reaching out to Petty, referring to an old saying from playing days: “What happens in the locker room, stays in the locker room.“
“Larry was a very solid athlete in college,” Chrnelich said. “What happened during the four years in college really had no bearing on where he’s sitting today. This is much more recent.“
Ryan said he spoke with Petty a month or two ago and has been in contact with the concerned teammates.
“He could charm anybody at any time,” Ryan said. “And that is unfortunate that he will at times tell you what you want to hear. But we’ve got to cut through this. And this is where tough love — that’s where the term came from. It isn’t a lack of sympathy. It’s, ’alright Larry, here are the things we gotta do.“’
Petty strides to the front of the line at Grace Episcopal Church on a sub-zero February night, where men are waiting for the homeless shelter to open. Some who patiently wait their turn in the back grumble about Petty’s nerve, but he doesn’t care. He’s concerned about getting a clean bunk and enough food.
Petty admits that being homeless is “humbling,” yet his manner is open and disarming. He smiles easily and talks with a firm, deep voice that conveys authority. Indeed, just as college students in the Greek system once turned to him for advice, other homeless men turn to him as a man who knows the ropes.
He still struggles with drugs, tempted by an environment in which he says they are rampant.
“It’s not an easy thing when you’re living in a shelter with 50 other guys who might be selling dope or whatever not to come in contact with it,” Petty said. “There’s always temptation. Sometimes you give in to the temptation. Other times you fight it and stay clean.“
Hoping to find his own apartment soon, he calls rental agencies. He said he doesn’t want to fall into a comfortable pattern at the shelter.
“This is just the end of a bad nightmare, put it like that,” Petty said. “I know somewhere down the line it’s going to end.“
