Muhammad Ali: A Tribute to the Greatest (29 page)

THE LONG SAD GOODBYE

Muhammad Ali told me in 1997 that he planned on living until age ninety. We were on a bus in Boston en route to an elementary school for an assembly devoted to teaching students about tolerance and understanding. Muhammad’s speech
was noticeably affected by then as a consequence of Parkinson’s syndrome. But he was
still physically strong and his thought processes were clear.

As we approached the school, Ali was reminiscing about some of the departed souls who had played a significant role in his life. His father, Elijah Muhammad, Sonny Liston, a few others. “Ninety would be good,” he told me. “I think I’ll live to be ninety. But if I’m feeling good when I’m eighty-nine, I might change my mind and ask God to let me live longer.”

Ali, unfortunately, didn’t feel good as he got older. Not physically. And his decline was on display for the whole world to see.

I
n September 1984, Muhammad Ali checked into the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York for an eight-day series of diagnostic tests.

“I’m not suffering,” Ali told reporters. “I’m in no pain. It’s really nothing I can’t live with. But I go to bed and sleep eight, ten hours. And two hours after I get up, I’m tired and drowsy again. Sometimes I have trembling in my hands. My speech is slurred. People say to me, ‘What did you say; I can’t understand you.’ I’m not scared, but my family and friends are scared to death.”

Ali, in 1984, was suffering from a series of symptoms—slurred speech, difficulty in maintaining balance, a facial mask, and a tremor in his hands—known as Parkinson’s syndrome.

Dr. Stanley Fahn is Director of the Center for Parkinson’s Disease and Other Movement Disorders at Columbia University. In 1984, he was the supervising physician for Ali’s evaluation at Columbia-Presbyterian. Fahn spoke openly with me regarding Ali’s medical condition pursuant to a waiver that Muhammad had signed to facilitate my research when I was writing
Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times
.

Ali did not have Parkinson’s disease in 1984. His condition, Dr. Fahn concluded, had been caused by physical trauma that destroyed cells in his brain stem.

“He has asked that I speak freely and completely,” Dr. Fahn told me. “So I’ll tell you my diagnosis that it was a post-traumatic Parkinsonism due to injuries from fighting. It’s highly unlikely that it all came from one fight. My assumption is that his physical condition resulted from repeated blows to the head over time.”

In the three decades that followed, the world witnessed something unprecedented for its transparency and duration: the long slow sad physical decline of one of the most beloved icons of all time.

We watched Ali slowly and inexorably lose one physical characteristic after another; his movement, his voice, his good looks. Once, his face had sparkled with happiness. In his later years, there were times when it seemed as though all the suffering and cares of the world were etched on that face. Instead of being drawn to images of Ali with anticipation and joy, we expected the worst.

It prepared us for the end.

Boxing takes a heavy toll on those who practice the trade. No fighter knows with certainty that the sweet science will lead him to a dark place. Few fighters believe that what happened to Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, and countless others will happen to them.

But all of the heavyweight champions who reigned before Ali claimed the throne died before he did. Muhammad had sixty-one professional fights against fifty different opponents. More than half of those men are known to have predeceased him. And Ali inflicted brain damage on his opponents too. The punishment wasn’t all one way.

People talk about the lineage of heavyweight champions. Jack Dempsey beat Jess Willard who beat Jack Johnson, and so on back to James Corbett who beat John L. Sullivan. But there’s another kind of lineage.

Like Ali, Joe Louis was a larger-than-life symbol as a fighter. Boxing fans of a certain age remember Louis in a wheelchair being brought to ringside on October 2, 1980, as Muhammad Ali was about to be brutalized by Larry Holmes. Once, Joe Louis had embodied America. He was the symbol of a nation’s strength as it readied for the inevitable confrontation with Adolf Hitler’s evil empire.

Budd Shulberg’s notes of Louis at ringside for Ali-Holmes read as follows: “Joe Louis wheeled in—mouth hangs open—eyes staring. He holds his head in his hands. An attendant wipes spittle from his mouth. His head sags. He sees nothing. The crowd cheers as Ali comes down the aisle. Louis doesn’t see him.”

Later that night, Schulberg wrote, “Our Joe Louis, the greatest before ‘The Greatest,’ destroyer of Max Schmeling, slumped beside me in his wheelchair. After the early rounds of the fight in which Larry Holmes established immediate dominance and exposed Muhammad Ali as an old man, we found ourselves calling on the Lord of this cruel sport to spare us the sight of a wheelchair for Ali.”

In the ring, Ali always got up after being knocked down. In and out of the ring, he was willing to pay the price to accomplish what he wanted to achieve. At the end of his life, we saw the price.

We wanted Ali to become a hale and hearty old man like Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney, who grew old gracefully together. It wasn’t to be.

In the new millennium, Ali’s physical condition crossed over a line. He went into shock from a kidney problem. There was surgery to fuse a disk in his neck. He was taken to the hospital on several occasions after falling unconscious.

Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher each suffered a long slow physical and mental decline at the end of their respective lives. But the image of a weak impaired Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher was never disseminated to the world. Ronald Reagan could have been brought to a fundraising event, had his hand raised, and smiled for the camera. It would have generated millions of dollars. But he was protected and shielded from public view.

Ali and the people charged with his well-being chose a different path. The decision to keep Muhammad in the public eye was an inspiration to many. It was a reminder that all people, no matter how debilitated in mind and body they might be, are deserving of respect, care, and love.

But the consequence of this decision was that the entire world was aware of Ali’s decline. We saw it happening before our eyes.

In December 2014, George Foreman told me, “I look at a man’s insides. And Muhammad Ali is about the only human being I know of who has had no sign of deterioration inside. He was so special, and it’s still there inside him. Muhammad is as beautiful on the inside today as he ever was.”

That said; the young Ali—strong, vibrant, rebellious—was a glowing representation of youth. He was arguably the most handsome, most charismatic, most physically gifted person on earth. To see this man, who once floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee, confined to a wheelchair, unable to lift his head, was heartbreaking.

We live in a world with sunsets and roses, Mozart’s music and the Sistine Chapel, happiness and love. But comcomitant with these glories is the knowledge that we will all die. If we live long enough, each of us will become physically and mentally impaired to some degree.

Some endings are sadder than others. There are good “golden years” and golden years that are not so good. Ali’s good years were great. His final years were not so kind. His very-public physical decline spanned three decades.

We could tell ourselves that this wasn’t our decline; that it was happening to someone else; that we didn’t take the blows to the head that Ali took. But for those who lived through Muhammad’s glory years, following the arc of his extraordinary life to its inevitable end was a reminder of our own mortality.

That’s the dark side of reality.

Twenty-five years ago, Ali told me, “I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me, because I had a good life before and I’m having a good life now. It would be bad if I had a disease that was contagious. Then I couldn’t play with children and hug people. But my problem with speaking bothers other people more than it bothers me. It doesn’t stop me from doing what I want to do and being what I want to be.”

Lonnie Ali built on that theme, saying at the time, “It’s scary for anybody to experience a physical decline. But when the whole world is watching and so much of your life has been defined by your physical skills, to lose that is very difficult. And what happened was, for the first time in Muhammad’s life, he became intimidated. He stopped speaking as freely as before because he was afraid that, as soon as he opened his mouth, people would say, ‘Listen to Muhammad; he can’t even talk.’ Then other people tried in good faith to explain away the situation by saying, ‘Muhammad is bored; Muhammad is tired. Muhammad is fine; he’s just a little depressed.’ And those people might have been trying to help, but the truth is, Muhammad does have a physical problem. And that problem shouldn’t be treated in hushed tones as an embarrassment any more than cancer or a stroke. Muhammad faces up to his condition, and so should everybody else.”

Ali’s physical condition worsened markedly after that. His symptoms became more pronounced. In his final years, when he tried to speak, the words didn’t come out. He found it increasingly difficult to communicate, not just with the public, but with those he loved. It was sad for everyone who cared about Ali. And it was sad for Muhammad. But one had the sense that he was at peace with himself.

In early 2015, Rasheda Ali (one of Muhammad’s daughters) told me, “When my dad was first diagnosed, he was devastated. That would be true of anyone. But he doesn’t put a lot of meaning on what’s happening now. It’s the afterlife that matters to him. And how he feels about it transforms how we feel about it. The good days as far as his communicating effectively are fewer and further in between. But he can talk if you catch him at the right time. It depends on which day and what time of day you’re with him. The disease has its own mind.”

“He’s my dad,” Rasheda continued, “so I look at it differently from the rest of the world. I want to be able to talk with him whenever I want. Hey, Dad; what’s going on? Ask him for advice, and do all the things that a father and daughter do together. But for most of my life, my dad has had difficulty talking, so I experience it differently from the way other people who knew him way back when might experience what’s happening now. Every day presents new challenges. But he has a lot of love and support, which many people in his condition don’t have. And he never complains. It hasn’t destroyed his spirit.”

Ali’s faith ameliorated his suffering. He comforted himself with the belief that his final years were a transition period as he waited to enter heaven.

“I accept it as God’s will,” he said. “I know that God never gives anyone a burden that’s too heavy to carry. What I’m going through now is short in time compared to eternity.”

Rasheda Ali put matters in further perspective, saying, “I never ask, ‘Why him?’ because he never asks, ‘Why me?’”

Ali spent very little time in his life looking back with regret. One moment that I remember well from our experiences together came when Lonnie read a quotation from television boxing analyst Alex Wallau to Muhammad. Wallau had expressed the view that, even if Ali had foreknowledge of how boxing would affect his physical condition, “If he had it to do all over, he’d live his life the same way. He’d still choose to be a fighter.”

When Lonnie read those words, Ali responded immediately, “You bet I would.”

In that vein, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar long ago observed, “When I see Ali, part of me feels sad, but I know what it’s all about. It’s the result of his having had every bit of fun that he wanted to have.”

George Foreman holds to a similar view. In December 2014, George told me, “We’re all born with our own personal journey. To me, what’s sad is if a person never had a gleam in his eye. Ali has had a wonderful life. And he has lived his life with a gleam in his eye. He’s a beautiful man. I’m still jealous of him.”

But certain realities are hard to ignore.

Jerry Izenberg knew Ali as well as any writer. “We had a pretty good idea of what Ali once was,” Izenberg observed as 2014 drew to a close. “We don’t know what he is now. There’s a person inside. I know that. And he carries his personal history in him. But I don’t care what anyone says; he’s not Muhammad Ali anymore. I’m fighting to block what I see now from entering my mind any more than it has to. This isn’t the way I want to remember him.”

Ali’s second wife also struggled with what she saw.

Khalilah Ali Camacho grew up in the Nation of Islam. She married 25-year-old Muhammad Ali on August 17, 1967, when she was seventeen years old. They had four children together; three girls (Maryum, Rasheda, Jamillah) and a son (Muhammad Jr.). Ali was a womanizer at that time in his life and was unfaithful throughout the marriage. There were public liaisons with other women and several children out of wedlock. Ten years later, they were divorced.

I spoke at length with Khalilah on December 19, 2014.

“The way it started for me in terms of seeing Ali’s illness,” Khalilah recalled, “was I hadn’t seen him for a while. Then I saw him at Maryum’s wedding [in the mid-1990s]. He was shaking and he was talking funny. I couldn’t understand what he was saying. It scared me. I said to him, ‘Something is wrong. You shouldn’t be like this.’ And he told me, ‘Sometimes I don’t talk clear. But I ain’t fighting no more. It will be okay.”