Memories of encounters with ‘The Greatest’
Everywhere Ali went, there’s another tale to tell
If Muhammad Ali had never existed we would have been incapable of inventing him.
No one but the man himself — so full of improbable gifts, spectacular agility, conscience and courage to sting the very times he lived in — none but he alone could have imagined himself into being, in all his wonderful particularity.
His two names, his divided career, his electric personality, volcanic rise, that playfully manic look in his eyes. (Playful? Once he pinched Hamiltonian Tija Piet Kay’s bum, while being photographed, of which more in a second.) There was his “prettiness,” his strength and defiance under adversity, his comeback.
He put together the moments of his allotted time not as a great dull march from coffee cup to coffee cup (like so many of us) but as the fuel of pure story. Non-fiction, but nonetheless epic in measure.
The late Tija Piet Kay, who lived in Dundas from 1977 until his death, was not Muhammad Ali. He was his own man. But there are parallels; that he was “his own man” being the first of them.
He had two names. (He changed from Tija Piet Kay to Peter Tjahja after Indonesia gained its independence from the Dutch.)
He was a sports figure, a “football” (soccer) star in his native Indonesia. He was courageously outspoken in his opposition to authoritarian Indonesian leader Sukarno, so much so he had to leave Indonesia in 1957.
And he knew Muhammad Ali. They met, says Peter’s granddaughter Lily Poei, in the late 1970s in Louisville, Kentucky, through a mutual friend, and hit it off. They met several times thereafter; Peter was a guest at Ali’s home and in 1984 visited Ali in Los Angeles when Ali did the torch relay for the Olympics that year.
“Opa told me they discussed religion,” says Lily, who grew up in Hamilton and now lives in Thunder Bay.
“Opa came from a mixed faith background. He practised both Islam and Christianity.
“He told me that they talked about being humble and having acceptance, tolerance and compassion for others. I think they shared the same values.
“In one photo, my Opa has a surprised expression, and Ali is standing behind him, smiling. He told me Ali had just pinched his bum.”
Peter saw suffering in Indonesia under Japanese occupation during the Second World War. The experience instilled in him a sense of mission to help others, not unlike Ali, who refused to serve in Vietnam against non-white people with whom he had no quarrel.
When Peter came to Canada in 1977, settling in Dundas, he was 66 but he immersed himself in his new culture.
“He became a Leafs and Blue Jays fan and took French lessons at a local high school,” says Lily. He loved bridge and won trophies at it.
He and Ali wrote letters to each other but, sadly, none survives.
Peter died in 1998. Lily’s parents Hedy and Alfred Poei still live in Dundas.
One other Ali memory from a reader — Shirley Mayeski, a nurse at the time, was driving home on King Street in 1983. While stopped at a red light by the Royal Connaught she happened to glance at the car next to her.
“It was a big luxury car, taupe-coloured with dark windows and I noticed the window start coming down,” Shirley tells me.
“A man who looked just like Muhammad Ali motioned to me. I said, ‘Are you ... are you ... ?’”
He said, “Yes.” The cars both pulled over and Shirley had a brief but delightful conversation with the man at the end of which she got his autograph.
“I said, ‘My husband is a big fan.’ He signed it on a page with Stirling Print-All letterhead. I asked why he was driving in Hamilton and he said he’d just helped open a food factory.
“He was very friendly. I noticed when he signed his hand was shaking. He wore a navy blue, pinstripe suit. And a white shirt.” She says she’ll never forget it. There was a story, it seems, everywhere he went.