Photos courtesy of the University of Virginia

Gus Gerard (22) averaged nearly a double-double in points and rebounds during the two seasons he played at Virginia.

Photo courtesy of University of Virginia

Former UVa basketball player Gus Gerard speaks Monday.

CHARLOTTESVILLE -- When the e-mail alert flashed across the computer screen, there was every temptation to think the worst.

Only the words "former Virginia basketball standout Gus Gerard" appeared in the subject line.

Had addiction taken its final toll?

"There was a time when the phone would ring," one-time roommate Dan Bonner said, "and, depending on who was calling, I would think, 'Something really terrible has happened to Gus.'"

Bonner hadn't seen Gerard in close to 25 years until he turned a corner at UVa's Newcomb Hall Ballroom on Monday night, and there he was.

Gerard, who hadn't been back to Charlottesville in 22 years, took part in a program sponsored by 'Hoos in Recovery, a group of UVa graduates, faculty and former students who have battled addiction. His appearance was the subject of the e-mail.

Gerard spoke without notes for 45 minutes, detailing a basketball career shortened by his abuse of alcohol and drugs and describing a botched suicide attempt that may have saved him. He has been in recovery since 1993 and currently serves as CEO of Extended Aftercare Inc., a 59-bed treatment facility based in Houston.

"It feels like I've gotten some closure," said Gerard, 54. at the end of a four-day stay in Charlottesville. "I've been able to make amends to some people whose lives I came into like a tornado. I've been a bundle of emotions all week."

Gerard arrived at UVa in the fall of 1971, the final season before freshmen became eligible. He was a two-year starter for the Cavs before signing a contract with the American Basketball Association in the spring of 1973.

Gerard, a 6-foot-8 forward from Uniontown, Pa., was the first UVa athlete to turn pro before the end of his college eligibility. As a 21-year-old rookie, he averaged 15.7 points and 7.8 rebounds for the Spirits of St. Louis and remained a double-figure scorer after being traded to Denver the next year.

The Nuggets were one of four ABA teams to merge with the NBA in 1976, and Gerard went on to play in 240 NBA games for five teams over five seasons before his career ended just prior to his 28th birthday.

In all probability, Gerard could have continued to make good money overseas, but he returned to Charlottesville with the idea that he could live off his NBA millions.

Although Gerard's drug use had escalated in the NBA, he was no saint in Virginia.

"If there was a party, I had to be the first one there and the last one to leave," said Gerard, whose alcohol and marijuana use had started in high school. "I was doing a little bit more than having fun on Easter's Weekend. I had this secret little life going on."

That was also the case when he returned to Charlottesville with his family after his NBA "retirement." It was three years before he took a job, and then he became a beer-truck driver.

He subsequently moved to Northern Virginia, where he sold security systems for cars but mostly tried to satisfy his cravings for drugs and booze, His marriage collapsed when his family returned from church one Sunday and was greeted by a local policeman investigating the passing of bad checks.

A series of moves eventually took him back to Uniontown, where he delivered pizzas. He tried to hide his identity by wearing a ski mask.

"But how many 6-8 pizza-delivery guys are there who have size-17 feet and wear glasses?" said Gerard, who also abused cocaine. "People figured it out."

Things got so bad that Gerard was stealing money out of his mother's purse, and eventually his family told him to hit the road. He surfaced as a bartender in Madison, Ohio, on the shores of Lake Erie.

Gerard said he was driving a nearly worthless car with two windows missing when he stopped at the home of a woman he was seeing.

"I pulled the car into a garage, said a prayer, reclined the seat and waited for the fumes to kill me," said Gerard, who had closed the garage door and left the engine running. "Like the fool I was, I never realized, after driving around for three days, the gas would run out.

"I tried to kill myself and I even screwed that up."

It was Gerard's sister, Roxanne, who put him on the road to recovery after reading a Parade magazine article on John Lucas, himself a former drug abuser. Roxanne sent her brother a one-way ticket to Houston, where Lucas, a former World University Games teammate of Gerard's, had opened a treatment facility.

Gerard arrived at Houston with a bag that contained a change of underwear and a T-shirt and stayed for more than 100 days. He subsequently returned to school and was certified as a chemical-dependency counselor, a field in which he worked for nine years before getting his own facility.

He also married a woman he met in recovery. He reconnected with children from his first marriage, but never got back to Charlottesville.

"That would have meant re-addressing his demons," Bonner said. "This is the place where the demons really got him."

By the time Gerard finally made it back this weekend, many of his former teammates knew that he had turned a corner to sobriety. Barry Parkhill, UVa's star during the early 1970s and now an associate AD, had heard about Gerard's return. Bonner and another 1971 recruit, Andy Boninti, attended Monday's speech.

Gerard's brief varsity career has kept him from being mentioned among the great players in UVa history, but few have been as gifted physically.

Over 52 games, he averaged 17.9 points and 9.3 rebounds, with that latter mark among the top five in school history.

Gerard was best known for his jumping ability -- developed, he speculated Monday, while riding his sister's one-speed bicycle on a hilly newspaper route. However, it was his athlete's mentality that fed his addiction in the end.

"We're always taught as athletes to play to win," he said. "We're told, 'Never give up.' But, until I surrendered, I was never going to beat this opponent."