Fighting for his life, ex-Central star grateful for support as he enters hall of fame

Three decades ago, Larry Florence was a star basketball player at Central High School. As a versatile forward, he used a marvelous mix of power and finesse to dominate all over the court, averaging 19 points and 13 rebounds per game his senior season.

Florence was an all-state selection and signed with the University of Nebraska, where he became a four-year starter . He finished 14 ^th on the program’s all-time scoring list. He was named team captain and honorable-mention All-Big 12 in 2000.

Now, after playing professional basketball for eight years in seven foreign countries and coaching youth in the Columbus area, Florence is back home in Phenix City — fighting for his life.

Battling an aggressive type of multiple myeloma , a blood cancer, he has been in and out of hospitals since his diagnosis nine years ago. His body weight has been whittled from 220 to 165 pounds on his 6-foot-5 frame.

The disease and the treatments are so debilitating, Florence hasn’t been able to hold a full-time job since last year, so he doesn’t have enough medical insurance and disability payments to cover all his medical bills. His debt was more than $11,000 as of last week, he said.

But he isn’t fighting alone. Financial contributions to a GoFundMe account have raised $12,815 from 174 donors in two months. He has received support from a March gala at Mother Mary Mission and a University of Nebraska fund for former athletes. Folks also can donate through his Flo44 Foundation .

“To get the love from people that’s been helping me and sending me love and prayers and cash — everything — it means a lot to me,” he told the Ledger-Enquirer.

So, when Florence is inducted May 4 into the Central High School Sports Hall of Fame, he will be filled with gratitude.

“The guys that came before me paved the way, made me excited and wanting to be into sports,” he said. “I’ve got a lot of honors at the University of Nebraska, of course, but this one is closer to my heart because that helped me do what I did at Nebraska.”

‘Very exciting player’

Bobby Wright, the retired Central boys basketball head coach who guided Florence during his years as a Red Devil, told the Ledger-Enquirer, “He definitely deserves to be in the hall of fame. … He was a very exciting player. … He could shoot, rebound and dribble, and he had an uncanny ability to get to the rim.”

Now 47, Florence was 37 when he was diagnosed. The five-year survival rate for multiple myeloma patients who were younger than 45 when they were diagnosed was 68%, and the 10-year survival rate was 55%, according to a 2009 study published by the National Institutes of Health.

Wright isn’t surprised Florence is persevering He recalled the tenacity that Florence displayed during a Christmas tournament Central played in Columbus. Wright thought an ankle injury would sideline Florence, but he gritted through the pain and helped the Red Devils win the title.

“He never complained,” Wright said. “He’s mentally tough and physically tough and really intelligent.”

Florence also displayed that toughness and intelligence when he often asked Wright to let him guard the opposing team’s best player, regardless of the position. No wonder he was a popular teammate.

“Everybody loved to be around him,” Wright said. “He’s just a good person, … a role model for kids. He set the standard for Central basketball.”

The Red Devils went 96-24 during Florence’s years at Central (1992-96). They won two area championships. In the state playoffs, they reached the quarterfinals twice and the semifinals once.

Images seared into Florence’s memory from those years aren’t just about the wins. They also are about how the Red Devils won.

They overwhelmed opponents and thrilled fans with a furious flurry of full-court defense and fast-break offense. When they showed up, it was showtime.

“Me and Mike Chadwick and Charles Tarver and Kendrick Brooks, Travis Henry, what we were able to do, I don’t think people have done that since, as far as the crowd participation,” Florence said. “Everywhere we went was a sellout. The crowd was into it on both sides. … We always wanted to get up and down the floor. Running Red Devils, that was our name.”

‘It changed the trajectory’

Florence grew up one of four children raised by a single mother.

“My family is what gives me energy and gives me strength,” he said. “When you have a loving and caring family, and it’s genuine, I mean, there’s a lot of things you can get through.”

As a ninth-grader, Florence initially was mad at Wright for putting him on the varsity roster and not allowing him to play with his friends on the freshman team. Now, he is thankful for his coach believing in him.

“Every time I would quit, he would always be the first one at my mom’s house, sitting there and talking it out, and I’d go back,” Florence said. “He gave me a sense of determination. A lot of frustration, of course, but a lot of love.”

Florence’s love of basketball kept him out of trouble in his neighborhood, he said, and his excellence in basketball afforded him a college education and the chance to expand his horizons by playing professionally overseas.

“It saved my life because it gave me a sense of purpose,” he said. “Once you figure out that you’re pretty good at it, now you got to work at it. … It gave me a sense of pride to be doing something that other people want to come and watch you do. … If I didn’t have basketball, I could have been out in these streets doing nonsense, whether it was drinking alcohol every day or doing drugs. … It was really difficult in the hood, as far as guys selling drugs or breaking into people’s homes or stealing cars.”

Florence is the first male in his family to graduate from college, a bachelor’s degree in human resources and family/consumer science. He was scheduled to have a workout for a chance in the NBA with the Denver Nuggets and the Philadelphia 76ers. But he broke his ankle while playing a pickup game the previous day.

“I think I cried for a couple weeks after that,” he said.

His pro basketball career overseas, however, produced eight years of exploring and learning in Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Ireland, Iceland, Greece and Paraguay — and this great joy: his daughter, Alexandra, now 15, who lives with her mother in Chile.

Florence began his coaching career as an assistant under Wright at Central. He also has been an assistant at Northside High School and worked for the Columbus Parks and Recreation Department.

Cancer diagnosis

In 2014, as the coach of the seventh-grade basketball team at Phenix City Intermediate School, Florence periodically heard concern that he looked unusually thin. He also seemed to be constantly thirsty, no matter how much water he drank.

Near the end of the season that December, Florence felt lightheaded at practice. He sat on the bleachers and called his cousin to pick him up.

“Once I got to the house, I got in bed and couldn’t move,” he said. “… I kept having a tingling sensation that was going over my body.”

His mother took him to a doctor in Columbus. An x-ray found a tumor the size of a golf ball on the seventh vertebra in his neck. The doctor told him he needed to have emergency surgery or he could be paralyzed or dead.

Surgery removed the tumor and fused the vertebra. The biopsy showed cancer. The diagnosis in January 2015 was multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that develops in plasma cells of the bone marrow.

“To hear that word itself, it felt as though it’s — you hate to say the word — but death,” he said. “You think about it because now your life is sped up exponentially.”

Cancer has forced Florence to rethink his self-identity, not being healthy enough to play or even coach the game he loves.

An all-expenses paid trip back to Nebraska for the basketball program’s Legends Weekend in February boosted his spirits.

“All the doubt that I had in myself — I doubted myself for 20 years, man — where I feel like I didn’t do enough, that I didn’t live up to the legacy that I wanted and probably what other people expected me to do,” he said. “… I used to be angry at myself. A lot of people tell me it made me sick because you held onto that for so long.

“… But going back there and seeing the people and the kids come up and say, ‘You used to be my granddad’s favorite player,’ or, ‘You helped me as a kid,’ or to have a kid bring me my jersey from 20-something years ago, that started making me stronger mentally and started making me push myself a little harder. Then to come back home and find out you’re … going into the Central Hall of Fame, I never would have said that for myself.”

‘I want to live’

During his cancer battle, Florence wrestles with an anguishing decision: Suffer through the physical and financial side effects of more chemotherapy — he’s had 15 formulas — or seek alternative remedies or simply quality of life. Then he focuses on this clarity:

“I want to live,” he said. “I want to be here for my daughter, my family and friends and enjoy life. I don’t want to just give up.”

That’s why Florence is flowing with positive feelings from the support he receives. And it means even more, Florence said, because folks are helping him years after his playing career.

“It outweighs the accolades that I got with sports by far,” he said. “… To have that love and appreciation coming from something I did as a young man, coming up without being raised by my father and to have a positive impact on people’s lives, it really encourages me. I feel so grateful. I feel so thankful.”

His advice to other cancer patients, or anybody going through a tough time, is to sometimes be selfish.

“You understand as a human being, God wants us to work together and help each other, but sometimes you’ve got to take a step back and be like, ‘No,’ turn your phone off and just relax,” he said. “… I want people to really concentrate on, especially men in general, to not be so manly. Get your checkups. Get your blood work done.”