Among Ali’s great traits, loyalty reigned supreme
If I had to pick one word to describe Muhammad Ali, it would be loyal. In his remarkable 74 years in a world he made laugh, cheer, think and cry, it’s a trait he never wavered from.
“The Champ” never forgot his roots in his hometown of Louisville, where both he and I were born and first met in 1966. And he publicly — even proudly — fostered a relationship with his adopted town of Phoenix, where we reconnected after he moved here in 2005.
In the last 50 years, our paths crisscrossed until his death Friday in the desert. But it all started in Louisville.
My father, Larry Boeck, was a sportswriter for The Courier-Journal when he started covering a young, fresh talent named Cassius Marcellus Clay, who was making noise in the ring as an up-and-coming fighter in the late 1950s in the Golden Gloves program.
By 1964, that brash kid was the reigning world heavyweight champion. “The Louisville Lip,” he was called. My father covered that first title fight against Sonny Liston and then the second Liston fight in Lewiston, Maine, in 1965 — the so-called “phantom punch” firstround knockout.
By then, Clay had the sport’s attention. When he announced he was joining the Muslim faith as Muhammad Ali, he grabbed the
world’s attention. In 1966 the cheering suddenly stopped when he refused to join the Army during the Vietnam War on religious grounds. He was denounced in much of the national media and no longer the hometown hero. In the summer of 1966, The
Courier-Journal assigned my father to write a magazine profile of Ali, in which he retraced Ali’s early years and sat down with him at his parents’ new home in Buechel, a Louisville suburb, and talked about his religion and his stance on the Selective Service, among other things, in a first-person story.
He trusted my father, who was there from the beginning, so much so that he allowed him, and him alone, to call him Cassius. Once, when Ali visited the newspaper for an interview with my father, former Courier-Journal colleague Earl Cox recalled in a column years later that, upon arriving, Ali announced to the sports staff, “Laree, you is the onliest one who can call me Cassius!”
The cover headline on the magazine piece: “My Friend Cassius.”
I was 18 that summer, and my father invited me along for the day-long interview. We made stops at Ali’s old haunts, including his Grand Avenue neighborhood where he grew up in the West End. There, he ran into Leonard Tucker, who owned a grocery store two blocks from Ali’s childhood home.
At one stop, Mile Park, a local racetrack, I was alone with Ali for several minutes while my father set up a meeting with some of the jockeys who had fought in the Golden Gloves with “The Champ.” Ali turned to me and started shadow boxing, throwing those quick jabs he was noted for. I froze. “Here’s the punch that floored Liston in Maine,” he announced.
Later that day, he stopped the car we were all piled into in the middle of the expansive main street in town, Broadway. He got out, raised his arms and proclaimed himself “The Greatest” for the millionth time. Bystand- ers watched in amazement.
My father died in 1972 — and “The Champ” called my mother to offer condolences. That’s loyalty. So is this. In 1978, I was a sportswriter at the Rochester (N.Y) Democrat &
Chronicle when Ali made a visit to the Special Olympics held in town. He was surrounded by an entourage and trailed by a dozen or so members of the news media hoping to get an interview. We were told none would be allowed. So as we followed Ali across the campus at Brockport State, where the Games were being held, I yelled out, “Champ, my name is Greg Boeck — Larry Boeck’s son!”
He suddenly whipped around. He didn’t recognize me but said, “You are Larry Boeck’s son? What do you need?”
That led to a one-on-one, 20minute, sit-down interview in a classroom with “The Champ.”
Fast-forward to 1999, I was at USA TODAY then. The newspaper named Ali the greatest athlete of the 20th century, and I came home to Louisville to retrace those steps my father and I took in 1966 with Ali.
I tracked down Tucker, then 88. He recalled the day a package arrived at his store in the mid-1970s. Inside was a can of “Muhammad Ali’s Champion Brand Shoe Polish” — sent by Ali himself.
During my trip home, Ali was inducted into the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame. I went to the ceremony, where I caught up with his brother Rahaman Ali, born Rudy Clay. (Ironic fact: Rahaman lived in an apartment on Muhammad Ali Boulevard in downtown.)
I ran into Ali at the ceremony and reintroduced myself. I shook his hand and showed him a copy of the magazine story my father had written 33 years earlier. Although his hands trembled and his voice shook with a barely audible whimper after years of battling Parkinson’s disease, his eyes steeled right into mine. He drew me close and said, “He was a special friend.”
Then I asked him if he remembered that day in his old hometown. “Yes,” he said, then added, “I’m coming back, too.” He’s back home now. But he left his mark in Phoenix before he returned this week to Louisville, where he will be buried in Cave Hill Cemetery on Friday. Ali arrived in Phoenix with his wife, Lonnie, a childhood friend and his fourth wife, in 2005 and quickly became more like a citizen than a celebrity.
He was spotted everywhere — from Phoenix Suns games where players lined up to meet him and I was lucky enough to have a picture taken with him, to barber shops. His friend, Jimmy Walker, frequently brought him to St. Vincent De Paul, a homeless shelter, and I watched Ali surprise kids at Walker’s Bikes For Kids charity Christmas celebration, where “The Champ” presented each kid with a bike.
In 2011, he surprised the Milwaukee Brewers with a visit to their spring training site in Maryvale. I was there leading a group of students covering the team for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel as a teacher at Arizona State’s Cronkite School of Journalism when Ali showed up.
I cornered Lonnie and asked if she could do an interview with my students. She happily agreed. After the interview, Ali, sitting in the passenger seat in his car, signaled for the students to join him in the car, where pictures were taken with each one. That’s loyalty.
His greatest gift to Phoenix was lending his name to Walker’s Celebrity Fight Night, which has raised $118 million in the last 20 years. I ran into “The Champ” at Fight Night several times. I always said hello and mentioned “Larry Boeck” to remind him. His eyes always lit up.
He never forgot. Nor will I.