During the last five years of his life—after decades of unfocused spiritual exploration—Ashe adopted a faith-based philosophy that gave him comfort and a considerable amount of moral and psychological sustenance. Following the obligatory worship of his childhood, he generally kept his distance from organized religion, preferring the posture of “a practical Christian,” as he put it. But now he embraced a deeper commitment, something beyond the basic “loyalty to the Golden Rule” that had anchored his earlier approach to ethical and spiritual life. One outward symbol of this new attitude was a renewal of his childhood affinity for gospel music, which he claimed had eclipsed jazz and 1960s-era rock ’n’ roll as his favorite kind of music.
Arthur confessed he wasn’t sure whether his ill health had precipitated his new attitude toward religion and gospel. But he hoped not. “Have I become more and more concerned about morality and God as I find myself closer to death?” he asked himself in 1992. “Perhaps. But I don’t think my poor health is the reason. I think I am simply being faithful to the way I was brought up, and that I would feel this concern even if I expected to live to be a hundred years old.”31
He was also heavily influenced by the renewal of his friendship with Jeff Rogers, who led him to the writings of the recently deceased Howard Thurman, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s longtime spiritual advisor. With Rogers’s guidance, Arthur became an enthusiastic disciple of the great theologian’s teachings, reading and rereading Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited and Meditations of the Heart, two almost mystical disquisitions on life and death drawn from multiple religious traditions ranging from Quakerism to Zen Buddhism. Infused with practical advice on how to face death without fear, this eclecticism appealed to Arthur’s internationalist approach to moral discourse. “Aside from the Bible,” he revealed, “Dr. Thurman’s two dozen or so volumes are the most important books to me in my moments of crisis and in my extended struggle with disease.” He was especially taken with Thurman’s conception of achieving a state of serenity by “centering down,” a process akin to Zen meditation, and with “the idea of the sacrament of pain.”
The latter concept helped Arthur to deal with the perplexing question: “Why does a benevolent God tolerate or even encourage the presence of suffering in the world?” “What did we do to deserve slavery?” he asked. “What did we do to deserve a century of segregation?” Thurman’s answer advanced the notion that “pain has a ministry which adds to the sum total of life’s meaning and, more importantly, to its fulfillment.” Arthur found considerable solace and wisdom in this statement. “Believing that pain has a purpose,” he declared, “I do not question either its place in the universe or my fate in becoming so familiar with pain through disease.” For him, this insight was an immeasurable help in dealing with a terminal illness. “I do not brood on the prospect of dying soon,” he explained. “I am not afraid of death. Perhaps fear of death will come to haunt me when the moment of death is closer. On the other hand, perhaps I will be even less fearful, more calm and at peace.”32
Even so, Arthur was in no hurry to take his final breath. He was still in the game, one manifestation of which was his insistence on playing an active role in monitoring and adjusting his treatment regimen. He regularly interrogated his doctors with medical questions, either about his current protocol or alternative therapies. In the summer of 1990, he became enthused about Kemron, touted by Daniel arap Moi, the president of Kenya, as an anti-AIDS wonder drug. The reported results among African patients did, indeed, seem promising, but a series of clinical trials by American doctors soon called the African findings into question. After Dr. Murray expressed considerable doubt about Kemron’s efficacy, a disappointed Ashe decided to forgo treatment with the drug, even though he suspected the Western medical establishment had not given Kemron a fair shake.33
During these years, the search for a cure for AIDS, or even a reliable means of slowing the progress of the disease, proved elusive, and the annual toll of AIDS-related deaths continued to climb, reaching forty thousand by 1994. By then, it was the leading cause of death among Americans twenty-five to forty-four years old. Perhaps even more horrifying was the manner of death for AIDS sufferers; the long list of excruciating and eventually fatal symptoms ranged from the cancerous Kaposi sarcoma to the parasite-induced cryptosporidiosis, a devastating gastrointestinal condition that often ended in starvation. But even worse was the public’s insensitivity to the plight of those infected. The association of AIDS with homosexuality destroyed most of the empathy that might have been expected in a national culture that fancied itself as humane and compassionate. As the journalist Andrew Sullivan has written, gay victims of AIDS “were surrounded by a culture that emphatically believed that they had asked for this, that mass death was, as National Review put it, ‘retribution for a repulsive vice.’ ”34
Mercifully, Arthur’s medical experience was surprisingly benign for a considerable period of time. For a full four years after his diagnosis, he avoided lengthy hospitalization. Dr. Murray, for one, marveled at his patient’s resilient capacity to maintain a normal life in the face of AIDS. While Arthur lost some weight during these years, his energy level, general health, and outward appearance underwent little change. “There’s a bit of age on his face, as you might expect,” one reporter observed in 1989, “but by and large he looks as fit as any surgically repaired man of 45 has a right to.” Inside, of course, he was experiencing changes that would ultimately precipitate his death. But this did not prevent him from living life to the fullest, making numerous public appearances, both in person and on television, where there was no letup in his broadcasting career.
He was also able to exercise as strenuously as his heart condition would allow. While he no longer played tennis, other than an occasional racket-testing session for Head or a brief demonstration at a youth clinic, he maintained a rigorous daily regimen of sit-ups, walking, and spending time on an exercise bike. “I know what I can and can’t do, how much I can lift, how fast I can walk, how hard I can push myself on the bike,” he assured Barry Lorge in a 1988 interview. When he was in Mount Kisco, he could often be seen taking long walks—traversing, as he described it, the “3.2 miles from my house to the Croton Reservoir and back—15 minute miles, which is 120 steps a minute, up and down hills, with my Spanish language tape and earphones.” He was also active on the golf course, where his midrange handicap remained steady. In November 1990, he even scored his first hole-in-one during the Bryant Gumbel/Walt Disney World Pro-Am in Orlando.
Most of his many golf outings took place at Doral, where he, Jeanne, and Camera spent part of each winter. South Florida was their second home for at least two months a year, and they reveled in the outdoor activities there, especially after they sold their bucolic Mount Kisco retreat in 1990. Wherever he found himself, Arthur kept busy. His intellectual pursuits were more ambitious than ever, his voracious reading habits continued unabated, and he was almost always engaged in one writing project or another.35
His involvement in philanthropic activities also seemed to expand with every passing year. In 1988, he estimated he devoted 20 percent of his time to pro bono commitments of one sort or another; and the actual figure probably increased after the AIDS diagnosis convinced him he had no time to waste. While he generally reserved weekends for family activities, he spent a good part of every week trying to turn words into action on behalf of his many chosen causes. For example, during the early 1990s—in an effort to complement the work of the Safe Passage Foundation and the Athletes Career Connection—he founded and promoted the African American Athletic Association, a New York–based organization devoted to elevating academic achievement among black student-athletes. At the same time, he also spearheaded an ambitious effort to open an African American Sports Hall of Fame in downtown Richmond.36
On top of everything else, Arthur also managed to sustain a large number of business interests, from product endorsements to entrepreneurial initiatives. His endorsement clients n
ow ranged from Head rackets and Le Coq Sportif sportswear to Bristol-Myers pharmaceuticals, Volvo, and Unisys. And his many investments included shares in several radio stations, a telephone company, and the all-black ownership group of the Denver Nuggets NBA franchise. Combined with his broadcasting salary, the steady income from endorsements and investments supported a comfortable lifestyle, even though not all of his entrepreneurial ventures were successful.
Arthur’s most notable business failures were his short-lived partnership with Doug Stein in an ill-fated wholesale clothing business called STASH (“a combination of Stein and Ashe”) and a longer but ultimately unfortunate partnership with his brother Johnnie, who had sought help in the financing and construction of an apartment complex in Jacksonville, North Carolina, in 1988. Named Cordell Village, after their mother’s middle name, the sixty-five-unit complex was designed to accommodate the families of Marines stationed at nearby Camp Lejeune. But as Arthur recalled: “When President Bush ordered the buildup of forces in the Persian Gulf in August 1990, we, the owners of Cordell Village, were on our way to ruin. Overnight, half of the apartments at Cordell Village emptied as our resident marines headed for the sands of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.”37
Despite these reverses and his HIV status, Ashe held his head high during the four years following his diagnosis. As the journalist Marvin Martin later observed, he “carried on with his various projects, still keeping many balls in the air at once. He just considered AIDS one more ball he had to juggle.” Prior to late 1992, he did not have the look or demeanor of a dying man. Externally he appeared to be as strong, psychologically and emotionally, as ever. Whatever was happening inside his body, there was no outward sign that he was entering the final stage of an abbreviated life.
He had a multitude of interests, but beyond that he passionately embraced his continuing role as an activist. His involvement in strengthening and refining African American political sensibilities remained a high priority, as did his commitment to using tennis as an entering wedge in the struggle against despair among inner-city children and adolescents. And most obviously, there was the goal of black liberation in South Africa. Nothing stirred his soul more than encouraging news from Cape Town or Soweto, though such news was in short supply during the 1980s.38
Finally, at the beginning of the 1990s—a decade Arthur knew would be his last—there was South Africa news worth celebrating. After almost eighty years of struggle by the ANC—and after twenty years of personal commitment to the anti-apartheid cause—he now had reason to believe that victory was in sight. For Arthur, as for millions of black South Africans, Nelson Mandela’s sudden return to active political life in 1990 represented a triumph of incalculable proportions. He had been an admirer of the legendary ANC leader since the late 1960s, when his white South African friend Ray Moore told him that Mandela was “the one man in South Africa capable of leading my country out of this mess.” Moore even predicted Mandela would someday become president of South Africa, but Arthur discounted his friend’s optimism until the events of 1990 changed his mind. During the past year, he had followed the statements and nervous political maneuvers of South Africa’s Afrikaner president, F. W. de Klerk, who seemed to be considering some form of transition from pro-apartheid intransigence to a democratic opening that might someday lead to racial equality. But Mandela’s release from prison on February 10 caught him by surprise.39
Ronald Reagan’s second administration and the first year of George H. W. Bush’s presidency had been a discouraging period for the anti-apartheid movement, and there were moments when Arthur wondered if he would live long enough to see black South Africa’s liberation. One such moment was January 1986, when his hopes hit bottom during an impromptu visit to the campus of Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire. Six years esarlier he had spent a wonderful weekend at Dartmouth as an honorary degree recipient, but his second visit would not be so pleasant. In recent years, the Dartmouth campus had witnessed an upsurge of right-wing militancy promoted by The Dartmouth Review, a five-year-old newspaper staffed by students and funded by a national consortium of conservative activists. Predictably, the newspaper led the reaction when a group of liberal students constructed a small shantytown of shacks on the campus green to “dramatize the plight of black South Africans.” The immediate issue at hand was a call for the divestment of the college’s investments in South African companies, but as the college’s board of trustees mulled over the request on January 16, the day after Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, the activists at The Dartmouth Review took matters in their own hands. Calling themselves the Committee to Beautify the Green, a dozen sledgehammer-wielding students attacked the shantytown at three o’clock in the morning. After dismantling three of the four wooden shacks, they carted off the pieces of lumber on a flatbed truck, to the shock of the campus.
The perpetrators would eventually be brought before a campus judicial review board that convicted them of violating Dartmouth’s Code of Conduct. But Randall Robinson of TransAfrica was more concerned about the morale and future prospects of the campus’s beleaguered anti-apartheid movement. Despite the bitter cold enveloping New Hampshire in late January, Ashe agreed to accompany his friend and colleague on a mission of mercy. Speaking outdoors on the green in sub-freezing conditions, they assured the small group of students and faculty that they “were not alone in their struggle.” Sadly, despite the recent attack, there was no evidence of a groundswell of anti-apartheid activity at Dartmouth, and Ashe and Robinson left the campus with heavy hearts. “Seldom have I felt so embattled and outnumbered in the struggle against South Africa,” he later confessed.40
What a difference four years made as Ashe contemplated the coming era of change. Even before Mandela’s release, there had been a few signs of encouragement. Numerous letters from Ashe’s friends in South Africa documented a rising spirit of resistance, and the divestment movement was clearly catching hold on a number of American college campuses. Unfortunately, there were also moments of backsliding, as in September 1989 when the ATP board appeared ready to endorse participation in two upcoming tournaments in Johannesburg. At a meeting held at the United Nations Plaza Hotel, Ashe—accompanied by Mark Mathabane, the expatriate South African author of Kaffir Boy, who sixteen years earlier had journeyed to Ellis Park to see a free black man play tennis—pleaded with the board to honor Mandela’s request to maintain the boycott of South African sports teams. With Mathabane nodding in agreement, Ashe convinced the board there had been no real softening of the apartheid regime, despite recent false claims by the de Klerk government.41
Coming only a few days after Arthur’s release from the hospital, the ATP decision to exclude the two South African tournaments from the tour was a welcome victory. But the real triumph played out over the next three years as Mandela fought for the imposition of a one-man, one-vote democracy. In the early stages of this process, he visited the United States and Canada in an effort to drum up support for his efforts. On June 20, 1990, the South African leader arrived in New York, and Ashe was on hand to witness one of the most joyous scenes of his life. “I thank God that I lived long enough to see Nelson Mandela come to the United States and be welcomed with a ticker tape parade through the canyons of Wall Street in New York,” he later wrote. “I was seldom more proud of America and my fellow Americans than when I saw the way we welcomed him as a hero. The success of the parade was a sure and gratifying sign that many people, black and white, rich and poor, recognize his sacrifice and applaud the almost superhuman way he preserved his dignity, his humor, and his unquenchable moral sense through the nearly three decades of his imprisonment.”
For Ashe, the high point of Mandela’s visit was an ABC television town hall moderated by Ted Koppel. David Dinkins made sure Ashe had a reserved seat in a special section near the podium where Mandela was speaking and after the program was over, the mayor, at Ashe’s request, introduced him to the speaker. As Ashe later described the scene, “I watched David go over to Mandela an
d whisper in his ear. I saw Nelson’s head raise abruptly, and he broke into a beautiful smile. ‘Arthur is here?’ he asked, with obvious surprise and delight. ‘He’s right here,’ David said turning to me. ‘Oh, my brother,’ Nelson said, looking straight at me. ‘Come here!’ He threw his arms around me and held me for a moment in a most affectionate embrace.” To Ashe’s surprise, Mandela began their conversation by praising A Hard Road to Glory, which he had received as a gift from Yusuf Surtee, a fellow ANC leader, and which he had managed to read before his release from prison. As Mandela exited the hall, Ashe moved “up the aisle and into the lobby, talking with him all the way.” “I could scarcely believe he was there at my side,” he recalled.42
Sixteen months later, in November 1991, Ashe saw Mandela again, this time in Johannesburg. Visiting at Mandela’s request, he was part of a “Democracy Now” delegation of black leaders and celebrities that included the composer Quincy Jones, the publisher Earl Graves, and Randall Robinson. The highlight of his brief stay was what he later termed “several stirring conversations” with Mandela, but he also visited several old friends, including the poet Don Mattera, and held a “private lunch with a group of whites, who peppered me with questions about President Bush’s attitude to the changes that were beginning to sweep their country.”
During their flight back to the United States via London, Ashe and the other African American delegates discussed what they had just experienced, and they all agreed the situation seemed to be moving faster than they ever could have imagined. Their mood was almost euphoric, but Robinson eventually broke the spell with a disturbing caveat. “We are all getting excited,” he said, “and yet I keep thinking about one thing. . . . For all the changes we have seen, Nelson Mandela still cannot vote in his own country.” It would take two and a half years of additional negotiation and struggle before that democratic milestone became a reality. On April 27, 1994, Mandela not only cast his vote; he was also elevated to the presidency of South Africa by the votes of millions men and women realizing full citizenship for the first time.43
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