When training in Deer Lake, Ali did his banking in my hometown. Frackville (PA), population 5,000 or so, had not a single black resident. Not one. Frackville was a hard scrabble, blue collar, anthracite mining town. It was not the kind of place one would expect a black boxer with an anti-war stance to be welcome. Yet Ali was, slowly and inexorably, adopted by the town. He was incredibly polite, soft spoken, and ridiculously accommodating in terms of photos, autographs, or just saying hello. As bombastic as he was in the ring, he appeared humble and gracious when dealing with working class folks. It did not come across as any kind of public relations act.
My father had decided that if I were drafted, I would of course go to Vietnam. My mother had decided that if I were drafted, I would of course go to Canada. Fortunately for me, the war was winding down as the lottery approached. Isolated as I was in Frackville, Ali's stand on the war at least gave me a reason to pause, think, and discuss it. While none of my friends were killed, some returned legally defined as alcoholics, or drug addicts, or insane. This Vietnam thing was not an abstraction to me. Ali, as a hugely public figure, provided a different and necessary perspective from my dad's John Wayne.
I was on the local cross-country and track teams. Back then, distance running was something you did if you couldn't do anything else. Ali endeared himself to us forever when, in an interview, he discussed his fights with Frazier and the road work necessary to prepare for them. He said he knew the kind of pain distance runners had to endure to succeed. We loved him for that.
Ali could box. He could rhyme. But singing? My friend, Dave, was a drummer in a local band called Midnight Asylum. Dave was in the studio in Pottsville the same time Ali was laying down the vocals for his single, "Black Superman." Dave told us that Ali sounded unbelievably bad. "Terrible," Dave said, laughing. But Dave also said they'd fix it (before auto tune), and he was right. "Black Superman" became a modest novelty hit.
The only fight I actually expected Ali to lose was the Foreman matchup, and truthfully I feared for him after what Foreman had done to Frazier. Ali was about a 6-1 underdog that fight, similar to the odds for the first Liston fight. Using the rope-a-dope, Ali prevailed. I was embarrassed that I had so little faith.
I could go into some of Ali's strategical brilliance -- his use of primacy/recency bias, his manipulation of stress, but these are topics for another day. Right now, I just want to salute the man. Ali was a key part of my teenage gestalt. As an adult, I appreciate him even more. Very few human beings could have handled Ali's roles in this world as well as he did. We're all fortunate to have had him as part of the landscape of our lives.
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