Buscaglia, author, preacher of love, dead at 74

Friday, June 12, 1998 | 1:56 a.m.

Buscaglia, a California educator, wrote "Loving Each Other" and "Living, Loving and Learning." His first book, "Love" in 1972, examined the phenomenon of human love as the one unifying force of life.

He died of a heart attack at about 1:45 a.m. Friday at his home on the shores of Lake Tahoe, said Pat Duffy, director of corporate marketing for Slack Inc., a publisher in Thorofare, N.J.

A joyful, dynamic speaker, Buscaglia became known as "Dr. Hug" for ending his lectures by hugging all members of the audience who would line up for the embrace.

He shook up the academic world at the University of Southern California in the 1970s, when he started classes on love, including "Love 101," combining the teachings of sociology and psychology.

Buscaglia wrote more than a dozen books that have sold more than 11 million copies in 20 languages. At one time, five of his books appeared on the New York Times best-seller list concurrently. His latest release in 1994 was "Love Cookbook."

The University of Southern California, where he taught for 19 years, honored him in 1991 by establishing the Leo F. Buscaglia Scholarship for Inner City Teachers Education.

"The entire university mourns the loss of a truly great friend and pioneer in his field. He has been contributing to USC in numerous ways for more than 40 years," USC School of Edcucation Dean Guilbert C. Hentschke said today.

"Through this endowed scholarship fund, his love for teaching and his fellow human beings will impact inner city children forever," he said.

At a lecture in Denver with civil rights activist Dick Gregory in 1991, Buscaglia said that death "is only morbid if you never lived."

One of his books, "The Fall of Freddie the Leaf," was adapted to audio cassette, 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.

Buscaglia got his start as a supervisor of special education in the Pasadena city schools from 1960-65 and served as a professor of education at the University of Southern California from 1975-84.

He recently had been named a contributing editor to Positive Living magazine. Public Broadcasting Service uses his taped lectures as fundraising tools.

In a 1986 interview, Buscaglia attributed the popularity of his books to the reputation he built before becoming an author.

"I've spoken in every state in the union, meeting and hugging the people who later bought my books," he said. "I spoke to anybody who wanted to hear me, including 1,000 nuns who could pay me only with homemade bread."