Meyer Book Tour Starts

Aberdeen, SD

He's become a big name here in KELOLAND and his success has earned him national prominence too.

More of that is about to come for former Northern State University basketball coach Don Meyer, when a book written by Buster Olney about Meyer's life goes on sale Tuesday.

The two are about to tour the country promoting How Lucky You Can Be.

As hundreds filed into the Johnson Fine Arts Center in Aberdeen for a book tour kick-off event, the person the book is about was just happy to be there at all.

"I'm just thankful we all got out of it alive," Meyer said.

Meyer and Olney signed copies of How Lucky You Can Be Monday. It tells the story of Meyer coming back to coaching after nearly dying in a car accident that put his little Prius up against a semi. He then learned he had cancer.

"I knew that if Coach Meyer had been able to survive his accident that it was going to be an incredible story because first off I knew he was going to coach again," Olney said.

But as people in Aberdeen are learning tonight, the book is about more than that accident and basketball. Faith, family and friends play a big part along with so many small stories that have made up Don Meyer's life story over the years.

"When I was writing those stories, they would make me cry," Olney said.

Talk of a potential movie is starting to surface too.

"I have no idea who's going to but I have no doubt within a short period of time that someone is going to say, 'you know what, that's something I'm going to do," Olney said.

Regardless of where his story goes from here, whether on the pages of a book or on the big screen, Meyer simply wants to see people benefit from it.

"And if it has to be a bad example about what I did that they don't do, that's fine. If it's something we did right, got lucky, then that's fine too," Meyer said.

More than 500 people heard that message in the Hub City Monday. And countless more will do the same during his book tour in the coming days.

The tour will take Meyer and Olney across the country.