To succeed 'you got to stay hungry,' Les Brown tells the BGCC

As a child, Les Brown seemed headed nowhere fast.

Born along with his twin brother, Wesley, on the floor of an abandoned building in Miami in 1945, and given away soon by his mother, Les was labeled mentally retarded in school.

“I was called DT — the dumb twin,” he told an audience of more than 200 donors and volunteers at the Boys & Girls Club of Collier County’s Great Futures Breakfast on Thursday.

But when he told that to a high school speech teacher he respected, the teacher remonstrated him.

“Don’t ever say that again,” he said. “Someone’s opinion of you does not have to become your reality.”

That was the spark that led Brown to a career as a radio disc jockey, television personality, Ohio state legislator and, finally, motivational speaker.

Along the way he also became the third husband of popular singer Gladys Knight (they divorced in 1997).

But it wasn’t an easy or smooth road to success.

Brown and his brother were adopted by a woman who had never had children of her own but who raised seven adoptees by working as a cafeteria worker and a cook for affluent Miamians.

“We wore hand-me-downs and ate food that was left over from the tables of Mother’s wealthy families,” Brown said.

His circumstances left him with low self-esteem, but with the encouragement of his teacher, he decided to pursue his early dream of becoming a DJ by applying at a Miami radio station.

Because he had no experience or college degree, the station manager turned him away. But Brown came back day after day, until he was finally hired as an errand boy.

Instead of spinning discs, he spent his time fetching coffee, waxing employees’ cars, picking up Motown stars at the airport and waiting for his chance.

Then one weekend a disc jockey got drunk on air, and the station owner asked Brown to go on in his stead. Brown seized the chance and used it as a springboard to a career in the Midwest as a broadcaster and television talk show host.

"You got to stay hungry," he said. "Hungry people are unstoppable."

He also served three terms in the Ohio State Legislature, leaving to form a motivational speaking company in 1981. In 1992 he wrote a book about his journey overcoming obstacles and poverty titled “Live Your Dreams.”

To the teen members of the Boys and Girls Club in the audience, representing the 3,000 children the Collier County group serves, Brown advised staying away from negative people and influences, and being relentless and brave in pursuing goals.

“Don’t go where everyone has gone before,” he said. “Go where no one has gone and leave a trail.”

It was a message that Bolivian-born America Gutierrez, 19, the BGCC’s Youth of the Year, echoed in her speech.

Now a student at Florida SouthWestern State College, where she is studying criminal justice, Gutierrez said she felt “imprisoned by circumstances” as a middle school student when her parents underwent a bitter divorce.

“Sometimes I wasn’t sure I was going to eat,” the Golden Gate resident said.

But BGCC’s programs gave her a safe place to regroup and access mentors, and she’s well on her way to reaching her dream of becoming a detective.

BGCC “opened doors for me,” said Gutierrez, who is giving back by working with kids in the group’s after-school programs.

After the speakers, and a rousing rendition of the national anthem sung by Golden Gate High School student Roberto Burgos, 17, BGCC president and CEO Theresa Shaw invited the audience to text in donations.

It cost $2,500 for each child to attend BGCC’s programs, and more than 87 percent of them attend on scholarship, she explained.

On stage, the screen immediately lit up with donors’ names, and the tally of donations raced higher.

In a just a few minutes, nearly $5,000 was raised.