Former NBA player Jerry Lucas is now Dr. Memory

Former basketball star says he wants to revolutionize the U.S. education system.

FAIRFIELD TWP. — NBA Hall of Fame member and former Middletown High School, Ohio State University and New York Knicks star Jerry Lucas, now goes by another name — Dr. Memory.

Since retiring from the NBA, Lucas has a new passion for life. For the past 35 years, he’s been traveling the country leading seminars on education. Sunday, June 27, he spoke to a group of roughly 100 at St. Mark’s United Methodist Church in Fairfield Twp.

“To be a better learner, you need to be better at registering,” he said.

Lucas used several examples of how people fail to register information, including asking the audience which U.S. president appears on the $20 bill. When the audience failed to know the answer, he explained how he has created a system of cartoons and images to help people remember and register information.

“When I was a boy, I wanted to see a pronoun. I wanted to create a way to give an identity to non-tangible words,” he said.

Lucas, or Dr. Memory, now sells learning material to help educate. The material ranges from learning Spanish to Bible verses. All of the courses are animated, and give images to words to help the viewer learn the given material.

One image to help a child remember the capital of Arkansas showed a backward R, holding a saw against a can that had a little rock on it. A child would see it as R-can-saw, with the capital being Little Rock.

“I’ve given a picture to every sound in the English language,” he said of his products. “You’ve never seen a sound, have ya?”

Lucas doesn’t ask to be paid for his seminars, but relies on donations and proceeds from his education materials.

“God called me to revolutionize the education system in America,” Lucas said.

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