When I was 17, my brother Ron and his friends drove me to Deer Lake, Pennsylvania, one Saturday. Muhammad Ali was about to fight Larry Holmes, and The Boyertown Times and The Cub, 
Boyertown Area’s High School newspaper, were going to get the scoop.
We arrived early in the morning. The champ had just finished his daily three-hour pre-fight workout. As we sat at the table, he slapped a thick square of bread on top of a plate of eggs, sunny side up and soft. He pointed to a handful of pills a trainer had put before him on the table and named each vitamin and explained how it would help him win his fight.
When Muhammad Ali entered a room, his frame filled the doorway and people looked up from what they were doing. He was, in fact, pretty. His skin glowed; his features and fitness cut a picture in real time. When he spoke, only a momentary hesitation between his thoughts and his speech hinted at the damage so many years of boxing had done to the boxer’s brain.
Muhammad Ali was generous. He chatted amiably while his manager paced back and forth looking at his watch. What was his advice for kids like me? “Tell them to go to college and get some knowledge. Stay there till you’re through. If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make something out of you!”
Muhammad Ali was a scholar. He recited whole tracts of great books from memory to support his positions on a variety of topics. Through his life, he had committed to informing himself by reading the world’s best literature. If he had an opinion about something, he had arrived at it with deliberation and readily ticked off – sometimes at considerable length – the text that led him to that place.
Somewhere, I still have the autograph and the inscription he wrote beneath it. The lesson of this giant of a man sitting with an aspiring cub reporter as if he had nothing better to do will last a life time.
“Service to others is the rent we pay for our room here on earth.”
Rest in peace, Muhammad Ali.
Photo by lylejk 
Photo by Oldmaison
