Fans travel from afar to pay homage at Ali’s grave
Louisville cemetery opens to public
LOUISVILLE, Ky.— He carried a dozen roses into Cave Hill Cemetery and headed for a patch of grass in the back corner that seemed too ordinary for the man buried beneath it.
Farzam Farrokhi had worried there would be a horde of people Saturday morning elbowing for a place among the first to see Muhammad Ali’s grave. Instead he found a quiet and reverent stream of visitors. There was not yet a headstone marking the spot.
It would have looked like any unremarkable rectangle of fresh sod had people not been snapping photos. A few brought flowers, one left a tiny set of boxing gloves. A man unfurled an Islamic flag and laid it alongside the grave.
Farrokhi, a native of Iran, drove 12 hours from his home in Queens, New York, for Ali’s funeral. He was grateful there were no massive crowds at the grave so he could sit and reflect on The Greatest, who suffered for years with Parkinson’s disease.
“I can’t imagine a heart like Ali’s being stuck in a body where he can’t do what he wants to do. Now he can be free,” he said. “Maybe he’s shaking up the next world already.”
Ali was buried Friday in a corner of his hometown’s historic Cave Hill Cemetery, 300 acres famous for its beauty and wildlife.
Ali picked the site himself. He toured the cemetery and decided on a spot just across from a flower patch and a lake, with a fountain that babbles day and night.
His headstone will be simple when it’s installed, in keeping with Muslim tradition. It will be inscribed with just one word: Ali.
Visitors trickled in from near and far. James Terry, a Louisville native, carried a map of the cemetery, marking the plot where he will be buried one day. He was delighted at the idea of sharing the same dirt as The Champ.
Roy Johnson, a long-haul truck driver from Colton, California, was delivering a load of paper to New Jersey when he heard about Ali’s death. It broke his heart, he said. Ali made him believe, as a little black boy, that greatness was possible if he fought for it hard enough and never wavered.
Johnson was planning to visit his son, stationed at Fort Campbell on the Kentucky-Tennessee border, during his trip. He drove about 100 miles out of his way to see Ali’s grave.
“My heart is beating really fast right now. I’m in awe of this moment,” Johnson said.