Arthur Ashe

by Raymond Arsenault

  All of this preliminary work was exhausting and exhilarating, and keeping busy helped to take his mind off his health problems. As Jeanne looked on with amazement and some concern, he never stopped moving. The day before the news conference in Washington, he was in New York, bouncing between a morning doctor’s appointment and other commitments before serving as the master of ceremonies at the Paul Robeson Scholarship Dinner held at Columbia University that evening. He even managed to call his sister Loretta’s house to wish his niece La Chandra a happy fifth birthday.

  There was no letup in his frenetic schedule, but in early May he reluctantly obeyed a doctor’s order to cancel a fishing trip in New Brunswick, Canada. He also relinquished his position on the Men’s International Professional Tennis Council. Later in the month, he decided to forgo a trip to Athens, Georgia, where he was inducted in absentia into the newly opened Men’s Collegiate Tennis Hall of Fame. Staying close to home, he found time to write a blurb promoting his friend Vic Seixas’s new book Prime Time Tennis and to publish a Washington Post article on Calvin Peete’s recent experience as one of the first black golfers to participate in the Masters tournament played at the historically all-white Augusta National Golf Club.13

  In early June, he traveled across town to St. John’s University to accept an honorary degree. But as his doctors continued to evaluate his condition, he was warned not to travel much beyond the five boroughs of New York. To his dismay, he missed both the 1983 French Open—where Noah became the first black man to win the French singles title—and his annual broadcasting stint for HBO at Wimbledon. Skipping the trip to Europe proved to be the right decision. By the end of the second week of play in Paris, his doctors were already preparing him for bypass surgery.14

  “My doctors tell me I’m in no danger of keeling over tomorrow,” he reassured reporters on Friday, June 17, and on Sunday morning he was admitted to the hospital to await surgery. Play began the next day at both Wimbledon and the Gordon’s Gin–Arthur Ashe Tennis Classic, a United Negro College Fund benefit tournament held at the National Tennis Center. But Ashe’s two favorite tournaments would have to proceed without him. On Tuesday morning, he went under the knife at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital, the site of his 1979 surgery. The surgeon performing the procedure, Dr. John Hutchinson III, the hospital’s chief of cardiothoracic surgery, was familiar, having presided over his first heart operation. The procedure turned out to be a relatively simple double bypass.

  Going into the surgery, Arthur had great confidence in both Dr. Hutchinson and the hospital. During the surgery the only complicating factor was the difficulty of cutting through “the tough scar tissue” left over from his first operation, and the surgical team finished in ninety minutes. A hospital spokesman soon announced the famous patient was in “satisfactory and stable” condition, and on Wednesday, the same spokesman predicted he would be strong enough to leave the hospital in “a week to 10 days.”15

  In truth, Arthur was not doing as well as he or the doctors had expected. Unlike his condition during the early recovery period following his first operation, he “felt weak, even anemic.” A bit shaken by this lethargy, he asked Dr. Hutchinson if there was anything that could hasten his recovery. For starters, Dr. Hutchinson prescribed two units of blood. “This transfusion,” Arthur recalled, “indeed picked me up and sent me on the road to recovery from my surgery.”

  What he did not know then, and what he would not discover for five long years, was that the transfusion “also, unwittingly, set in motion my descent into AIDS.” No one at the time had any inkling that blood transfusions could be contaminated with the human immunodefficiency virus (HIV). Patients suffering from acquired immunodefficiency syndrome (AIDS, a term used by the Centers for Disease Control for the first time in September 1982) had been under clinical observation since 1981, but the existence of HIV was virtually unknown until the findings of the research teams led by Drs. Robert Gallo and Luc Montagnier were published in Science magazine on May 20, 1983, exactly one month prior to Ashe’s surgery.

  Medical knowledge of this and related viral agents was still in its infancy, and no one at the time believed any form of routine blood screening—for HIV or any other virus—was necessary (or even possible) for the maintenance of public health. The first practical blood test would not be developed until 1984, and American blood banks would not begin to screen their blood supplies until a year later, two years after Ashe’s exposure to HIV. By early 1985 more than eight thousand AIDS cases had been identified in the United States, and more than four thousand Americans had died from complications related to AIDS.16

  In late June and early July 1983, Arthur’s doctors—unconcerned about tainted blood—were preoccupied with trying to get him back on his feet with a reasonably healthy heart. Following the transfusion, he was stronger with each passing day and generally in good spirits—in part because he was able to take in more than a week of televised Wimbledon matches. The highlight, for him, was when a twenty-four-year-old Nigerian, Nduka Odizor—who as an eleven-year-old had attended an Arthur Ashe–Stan Smith tennis clinic in Lagos—upset Guillermo Vilas, the Americans’ Davis Cup nemesis, in the opening round. If this couldn’t lift Arthur’s spirits, nothing could.

  By the time Arthur left the hospital on July 6, he seemed to be on the road to recovery, yet Jeanne could sense her normally optimistic husband’s unease about the future. “My second operation, coming as it did only four years after the first, was a major physical and psychological setback,” he later explained, “one that left me on the brink of depression. I had assumed that my quadruple bypass surgery would be far more effective and lasting than it turned out be: was the second but a presage of a decline that would virtually cripple me? More than ever, I became aware of my mortality.”

  He was also facing his fortieth birthday on July 10, not a happy prospect for any man in a youth-obsessed culture. Needing something to break the mood of encroaching decrepitude, Jeanne decided to treat him with a small but special birthday party. In addition to inviting Dr. Doug Stein, the Dells, and a few others, she hired a stripper to liven up the evening. “The main surprise of the party,” the birthday boy recalled, “was a performance by a striptease artist who proceeded to bump and grind her way around my living room, dressed in precious little, while I hung my head in sheepish embarrassment.” He understandably assumed that Dell or one of his other male friends had arranged the “entertainment.” But once the bumping and grinding ended and the woman read the birthday message, he discovered “the real culprit” was Jeanne.17

  One of the things he loved most about her was her sense of humor, which could brighten even his darkest days. After more than six years of marriage, their relationship was stronger than ever, strengthened by their shared experiences both good and bad. The one cloud over their marital horizon, other than Arthur’s heart condition, was their inability to have children. They both loved kids, and Jeanne was never more proud of him than when he frolicked with his nieces and nephews, or when he worked with youth organizations such as the NJTL and the Black Tennis and Sports Foundation (BTSF), which sponsored after-school and weekend programs in several cities. Cofounded by Ashe and his old Lynchburg tennis camp friend Bobby Davis in the 1970s, the BTSF was hampered by perennial financial and local management issues. But its goals embodied Ashe’s concern for inner-city kids. Similarly, the NJTL’s summer programs—with their focus on personal growth and character development—remained one of his most passionate interests. Fittingly, just after his birthday, the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges Association honored him for his “Meritorious Service to the Children of America.” While both he and Jeanne appreciated the award, it also reminded them of their unfulfilled efforts to have children.

  These frustrations would soon take them to Virginia Beach, to the Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine. Established by the husband-and-wife team of Drs. Howard and Georgeanna Seegar Jones in 1978, the institute had pioneered studies of in vitro fert
ilization and had produced the nation’s first “test tube baby” in 1981. The in vitro process was expensive and cumbersome, and it had limited likelihood of success. But the Ashes decided to try it anyway. Over the next two years, Jeanne and Arthur made numerous trips to the Institute, hoping to be among the fortunate few to conceive with the new technology.

  At the same time, their health and fertility problems had taught them there are no guarantees in life, a realization that prompted both of them to become more spiritual and philosophically reflective. Jeanne, a lapsed Catholic for more than a decade, returned to the Roman Catholicism of her childhood, and though both she and Arthur prided themselves on being analytical and rational thinkers, they figured a measure of faith in a higher power couldn’t hurt.18

  By September of 1983, the Ashes seemed to be on the rebound. The special fortieth birthday party had raised Arthur’s spirits, and before long he was back in the swing of things, resuming his frenetic schedule of activities and even adding a few new twists. While Jeanne worried he might overdo it, she knew her husband would never be content with a sedentary life. Despite certain risks, she felt she had to allow him do the things that made him feel alive. His close friends agreed. “This successful operation will enable you to lead a much happier and fulfilling life in the future,” Donald Dell wrote from Wimbledon on June 22. “Arthur, I do believe that many good things come out of adversity. . . . In tennis you know the phrase ‘You only learn from losing,’ and unfortunately sometimes this is true in life. You have had several serious and difficult health problems these past five years,” but “as a result of these various illnesses you have grown as a human being in stature, understanding, patience and tolerance.”

  Arthur appreciated the encouragement and concern for his welfare expressed in Dell’s letter. Throughout their long relationship, his friend and agent had acted as both a mentor and a cheerleader. Six weeks before the surgery, Dell sent Arthur a handwritten note expressing his affection and respect—and his optimism: “Lieutenant, you have made a real impact on those around you these past 39 years—by your love, caring, intelligence, loyalty, and in a word—FRIENDSHIP. Never forget all the joy and good feeling you have brought to so many. Your future lies ahead, and it will be challenging, hard working, energetic and successful.”

  The respect and concern went both ways. Throughout that difficult spring, Arthur worried about Dell’s state of mind during the messy aftermath of the management group breakup. He knew how ugly the situation had gotten because virtually everyone involved had approached him with their side of the story, even after he formally re-signed with Dell and ProServ. Much of the haggling and backbiting involved competing attempts to recruit Rodney Harmon as a client. A promising young black player from Richmond, Harmon signed with ProServ on May 25. But Advantage International cried foul, claiming Dell had secured the contract by secretly offering him $10,000 under the table. Dell and his ProServ colleagues vehemently denied they had offered Harmon any special inducements, but the controversy dragged on for months.19

  Arthur welcomed Harmon to the ProServ team, but beyond that he had no time for recriminations or awkward conversations he regarded as little more than petty squabbling among former friends. For one thing, he was too busy working on his book. Since his return from Buenos Aires, the task of writing a history of black athletes had dominated his thoughts. While he maintained other commitments, recovering the lost stories and statistics related to more than four centuries of black athletic achievement had become his greatest passion. “It did more than energize him,” his brother Johnnie observed, “It gave him a new purpose”—and a new understanding of his connections to black history. As Johnnie recalled, “He’d say, ‘The same problems I went through, Jack Johnson went through, Joe Louis went through.’ ”

  Arthur wanted to know more, and early in the project he reached out to the public for help. On June 27, he made his needs known in a pointed interview conducted by a New York Times reporter. “Get-well cards are nice, and flowers are even nicer,” the reporter told his readers, “but if you really want to cheer up Arthur Ashe during his recuperation from last week’s heart surgery, you might want to rummage through the attic to see if you have any old scrapbooks or letters telling of the exploits of obscure black athletes.” He went on to relay Arthur’s specific requests. “I’m having tremendous difficulty finding source material on the early days,” Arthur revealed. “The kind of material I need just isn’t found in libraries or bookstores, not even in the best college libraries. A lot of it was never written. People didn’t write books or articles about black athletes, and even the black newspapers missed it. I need to find people who have old scrapbooks, photographs, or letters, or who can remember something about relatively unknown black athletes.”

  He would eventually turn his attention to the twentieth century, but the initial focus was the pre-colonial era through the nineteenth century. “We’re starting with games that black people played in West Africa in the days before the slave trade,” he explained, “moving to what games they brought with them to America, and then on through history, to people like Isaac Murphy, the black jockey who won the first Kentucky Derby.” The reporter, a veteran obituary writer accustomed to fact-checking, could not resist pointing out that Murphy won no fewer than three Kentucky Derbies between 1884 and 1891, but not the first one held in 1875. That honor belonged to another black jockey, Oliver Lewis, and his horse, Aristides.20

  Ashe was well aware he would have to improve his research skills to have any chance of producing an “authoritative” work on black athletes. But he also knew it would take several years to complete what almost certainly would be a multivolume project. So he was willing to start small and gradually work his way up to serious historical reconstruction. His first attempt at historical writing was “Tennis Everyone?”—an amateurish and rather inauspicious article written for the July 1983 issue of United Airlines’ inflight magazine, Hemispheres. In less than two pages, he covered 110 years of tennis history, from the invention of lawn tennis in 1873 to a forecast of the upcoming competition at the U.S. Open. But the article said nothing about the sport’s long history of racial discrimination—or about women’s tennis. After Leslie Allen—a rising star among black players on the women’s tour—read the article, she complained to Arthur, whom she considered one of her mentors, that she was “a little disappointed, and a lot annoyed.” Her primary complaint was that he had focused on the men’s game while completely ignoring the women’s. “If one writes about the A.T.P.’s formation and the politics of tennis,” she insisted, “certainly there is a place for the formation of the W.T.A.” “It seems to be a grave omission,” she added, “for King, Court and Goolagong to go unnamed!” This would not be the last time Arthur stumbled over matters of gender balance, but to his credit he was always willing to listen and learn.21

  Thanks to the American Davis Cup squad’s early elimination, he had plenty of time for research. He now had an expanded staff, which included Charles Harris’s son Francis and Ocania Chalk, a former reporter and amateur sports historian who had already published two books on black athletes—Pioneers of Black Sport (1975) and Black College Sport (1976).22

  By August, Arthur and his staff were conducting oral history interviews and fanning out to libraries, archives, and private attics. It was often slow, tedious work, but he never seemed to tire of the subject. One interesting development intersecting with his personal history, and with his research, was Yannick Noah’s rise to a new level of stardom during the summer of 1983. As Noah’s discoverer, Arthur was inevitably drawn into the media circus accompanying the Frenchman’s victory at the French Open in June. Finally, a man of color other than Arthur had won one of the four majors.

  Noah, it turned out, was a man of color in every sense of the word, an outsized personality who radiated youthful exuberance and telegenic chic. And unlike many of the celebrities of men’s tennis—McEnroe, Connors, Nastase, and the other bad boys—he was almost always ni
ce and polite. “Noah has never understood why players act any other way,” Barry Lorge observed in Sport magazine. As Noah himself put it, “We should all realize how lucky we are, how nice our life is. We are doing something we like, we get so much money, we travel all over the world, we can be very popular. What we do is not very important, but I receive thousands of letters from kids and I have to realize that for them I am somebody, and I shouldn’t disappoint them. You should be polite on the court. It’s a game and you don’t have to act crazy or cheat.”

  All of this sounded very much like something Arthur would say, and Noah often credited the Virginian with being his role model. Yet he was very much his own man, a much edgier character than Arthur, and one who favored social and cultural experimentation over political activism or institutional involvement. Adorned with his Jamaican-style dreadlocks, he cultivated an image of freewheeling fun that included recreational use of hashish. He owned two racehorses and six cars, and a seemingly endless array of expressive clothing, and unlike Arthur he apparently felt no need to apologize for his extravagant self-indulgence or lack of social activism.

  “My politics are to play on the court and win,” he told Ray Kennedy of Sports Illustrated in August 1983. “I don’t know anything about the other kind of politics, and I’m not interested in learning. . . . I am not an ambassador for any race or any country. My mother is white; my father is black. So inside me I don’t feel like I’m black or white. I think I do more for people by winning Roland Garros than I could by going to South Africa and having meetings. Maybe when I’m 35 I’ll change, but I don’t think so.”23