Thanks, Dennis Harp, for letting me know that Pat Williams is coming to town.

Williams is the senior vice president of the NBA’s Orlando Magic, and his 90-minute talk will be at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 19 at the Paramount Theatre. Admission is free, and a reception and book signing will follow the talk.

Here is some information on Williams from Dennis:

Pat Williams is the author of over 40 books and one of America's top motivational, inspirational and humorous speakers. He has addressed employees from many of the Fortune 500 companies and the Milton Dollar Round Table, been a featured speaker at two Billy Graham Crusades and two Peter Lowe Success Seminars and spoken on many university campuses.

After serving for seven years in the United States Army, Pat spent seven years in the Philadelphia Phillies organization, two as a minor league catcher and five in the front office. He then spent three years in the Minnesota Twins organization before moving to the National Basketball Association. Since 1968, he has been affiliated with teams in Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, including the 1983 World Champion 76ers, and now the Orlando Magic, which he co-founded in 1987 and helped lead to the NBA finals in 1995. Twenty-three of his teams have gone to the NBA playoffs, and five have made the NBA finals. In 1996, Pat was named one of the 50 most influential people in NBA history by a national publication.

In his NBA career, he has traded Pete Maravich, traded for Julius Erving, Moses Malone, Penny Hardaway, and won four NBA draft lotteries, including back-to-back winners in 1992 and 1993 and most recently in 2004. He also drafted Charles Barkley, Shaquille O'Neal, Maurice Cheeks, Andrew Toney and Darryl Dawkins and signed Billy Cunningham, Chuck Daly and Matt Guokas to their first professional coaching contracts. Twelve of his former players have become NBA Head Coaches, and seventeen have become assistant coaches.

Pat and his wife, Ruth, are the parents of 19 children, including 14 adopted from four nations, ranging in age from 18 to 32. For one year, 16 of his children were all teenagers at the same time. Pat and his family have been featured in Sports Illustrated, Readers Digest, Good Housekeeping, Family Circle, The Wall Street Journal, Focus on the Family, New Man Magazine, plus all the major television networks, The Maury Povich Show and Dr. Robert Schuller's Hour of Power.

Pat hosts a national and local sports radio show as well as a weekly Christian radio show. In the last seven years, he has completed 37 marathons, including the Boston Marathon ten times and has also climbed Mr. Rainier. He is a weight lifter, Civil War buff and serious baseball fan - every winter he plays in Major League Fantasy Camps and has caught Hall of Famers Bob Feller, Bob Gibson, Fergie Jenkins, Rollie Fingers, Gaylord Perry, Phil Niekro and Tom Seaver.

Pat was raised in Wilmington, Delaware and earned his bachelor's degree at Wake Forest University and his master's degree at Indiana University. He has a doctorate in Humane Letters from Flagler University. He is a member of the Wake Forest Sports Hall of Fame after catching for the Deacons baseball team, including the 1962 Atlantic Coast Conference Championship team. He is also a member of the Delaware Sports Hall of Fame.