SELF-HELP WRITER LEO BUSCAGLIA DIES
GLENBROOK, NEV. -- Leo Buscaglia, 74, a noted self-help author and bearded, teddy bear-like apostle of love who customarily ended motivational speeches by giving everyone in the audience a hug, died June 12 at his home here, on the shore of Lake Tahoe, after a heart attack.
Mr. Buscaglia (pronounced Bus-KAL-yuh) wrote more than a dozen books and sold more than 11 million copies in 20 languages. Among them were "Loving Each Other" and "Living, Loving and Learning." At one time, five of his books appeared on the New York Times bestseller list. His most recent book was "Love Cookbook" in 1994.
Another of his books, "The Fall of Freddie the Leaf," was adapted to audio cassette, an educational film and a one-hour ballet. It explored the delicate balance between life and death in a thought-provoking story about how Freddie and his companion leaves change with the passing seasons and the coming of winter.
Advertisement
PBS used his taped lectures during fund-raising drives.
"I've spoken in every state in the union, meeting and hugging the people who later bought my books," he said in 1986. "I spoke to anybody who wanted to hear me, including 1,000 nuns who could pay me only with homemade bread."
Mr. Buscaglia, who became popularly known as "Dr. Hug," got his start as a supervisor of special education in the Pasadena, Calif., schools from 1960 to 1965.
His first book, "Love," was published in 1972 and examined the phenomenon of human love as the one unifying force in life. As an education professor at the University of Southern California from 1975 to 1984, he shook up the institution when he started classes on love, including "Love 101," combining sociology and psychology. In 1991, the school honored him by establishing the Leo F. Buscaglia Scholarship for Inner City Teachers Education.
At a lecture in Denver, he once proclaimed that death "is only morbid if you never lived."
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZK6zr8eirZ5nnKSworiOanBycF9lg3B9kmiqnqSWYrWmuM9mrquhpJq%2FbrjEqGSbraOYrqi4yJpknaGVqHxxgJVpnZ9oaGKDeLCWZmttcWJir6Stk2abnHGRbLCirpdramln