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Issue date: Sept 26, 1999
In this issue:
 Basketball,
Atlanta Hawks Dikembe Mutombo
Basketball,
Portland Trail Blazers Brian Grant
Football,
Chicago Bears Jim Flanigan
USA
WEEKEND'S Most Caring Coaches
Most Caring
Athletes
USA WEEKEND magazine's Most Caring Athlete Award honors
three pros who use their fame to help others. by Dennis McCafferty
Contributing Editors Ken Burns and Stephen Covey chose these honorees
from seven finalists. Each honoree receives a $1,000 grant for his
charity.
Basketball,
Atlanta Hawks
Dikembe Mutombo builds a hospital for his homeland
 Atlanta
Hawks center Dikembe Mutombo, 33, somberly stretches his long legs
on his living-room couch. His 2-year-old daughter, Carrie, beckons
from the stairs for a hug. He looks at her and swears he sees his
mother, Marie Biamba Mutombo. "You put their pictures together,"
Mutombo says in a sad, raspy voice, "and they look alike."
A year ago, an ailing Marie Biamba Mutombo, 63, died at home --
six hours after she'd spoken to her son on the phone -- because
she couldn't get to a hospital in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic
Republic of the Congo. Says Mutombo: "No hospital has been built
there in 39 years. ... [People] go home and wait for death to come."
The telecommunications system is a mess. The hospitals lack supplies,
even beds.
Now Mutombo is using his NBA fortune to create an infrastructure
for his homeland. He returned to Africa last month with $3 million
to start construction on a $44 million hospital. He also took 40
donated beds and medical supplies for existing hospitals. "Because
of the NBA, I've got a lot of doors open to me," says Mutombo. "So
I have to let a lot of people in." For more information, call the
Dikembe Mutombo Foundation at 1-800-546-3917 or go to www.dmf.org
online.
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Basketball,
Portland Trail Blazers
Brian Grant helps sick children -- and shuns publicity
 When
Brian Grant visits children in hospitals -- as he does all the time,
without camera crews -- he has a firsthand feel for what kids are
going through. At age 7, he was hospitalized for a month with pneumonia.
"You're lonely the whole time," he recalls. Once, to the young Grant's
great delight, volunteers stopped in and gave him a toy car. Today,
Grant gets the same wide-eyed reception when he brings goodies to
sick children.
"That stays with me,'' he says.
This year, his tireless efforts -- visiting hospitals and assisting
with medical bills, giving away NBA tickets (25 per game, most to
needy kids) and delivering holiday dinners -- earned him the NBA's
J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award. Grant's upbringing shaped his
value system. He worked hard as a teen, cutting tobacco in Georgetown,
Ohio, in merciless heat. "You don't look at it as hard work, because
everybody did it before you," Grant says. "That was passed down
to me: Just go out and do it." For more information, write: P.O.
Box 567, Lake Oswego, Ore. 97034. Or go to briangrant44.com
online.
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Football,
Chicago Bears
Jim Flanigan opens new worlds for kids through books
 It's
not often that a quarterback-stuffing Chicago Bear cites Tolstoy's
works as a profound influence on his life. But, then, Jim Flanigan
is not your average Bear.
Flanigan grew up in comfortable surroundings in Sturgeon Bay,
Wis. He was valedictorian of Southern Door High, graduated from
Notre Dame in 1994 and was drafted by the Bears. But he felt something
was lacking. An insatiable reader, Flanigan picked up Tolstoy's
Confessions, a memoir in which the Russian writer wrestled with
his life of privilege and gained appreciation for a higher calling.
Like Tolstoy, Flanigan sought to do more. Since 1997, he has worked
aggressively for literacy nationwide. Through Mission '99, he donates
99 books a week during football season. With 10 sponsors, this year's
matching contribution will total 20,000 books. He also expects to
distribute a half-million books to needy Midwestern elementary school
children by next spring. In the off-season, as part of his "Great
American Book Drive," Flanigan and volunteers load up an 18-wheel
UPS truck to distribute books to kids in five cities. Sure, books
are a tough sell in the electronic age. But, as Flanigan says, you
get something from reading you just don't get anywhere else. "You
don't dream watching a movie like you do with a book." For more
information, call 847-914-9875 or go to www.lit4life.org
online.
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PHOTO CREDITS: Mutombo, Manuello Paganelli; Grant, Steven Bloch;
Flanigan, Ralf Finn Hestoft for USA WEEKEND.
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