At Home with Muhammad Ali

by Hana Ali

  I remember Tom Bradley, Los Angeles’ first black mayor, visiting the house when I was a little girl. He was a nice man—quiet and dignified. I think my father was always ahead of his time; instead of letting the wrongs of the world weigh his spirit with the burdens of his era’s prejudice, he set goals, held fast to his vision, and lived into his future. But I don’t think my father ever imagined that America would see a black president in his lifetime.

  Dad supported President Obama and what he stood for. Not just because he was black but because my father could see that he was a caring, decent, intelligent, charismatic, and exceptional human being. The fact that he was black was the icing on the cake.

  One morning, sometime during Obama’s first term, I walked into my father’s bedroom at his home in Scottsdale, Arizona, and handed him a bowl of freshly rinsed grapes. When I was a little girl, Dad would fill his bowl with water and shake the fruit clean. He did this at home and in hotel bathrooms when visiting in Los Angeles after my parents’ divorce. If we were in a restaurant, he’d pour his water into his fruit bowl and rinse it himself—to make sure it was clean.

  “Here you go, Daddy,” I said, handing him the bowl. “Freshly rinsed grapes, the way you like them.”

  Dad usually ate grapes and green apples as a morning appetizer, while Lonnie and her sister Marilyn, whom she hired to help with my father, cooked his breakfast: steak, eggs, oatmeal, and a tall glass of orange juice. They always prepared a large meal for him. Sometimes they added buttermilk pancakes and cheese grits to the menu. It was easier for Dad to get the food down in the morning. As the day progressed, the symptoms of Parkinson’s were more challenging. I’m not sure why that is, really. But as the hours passed, it was more difficult for him to do even the simplest of tasks. Like to button his shirt, tie his shoes, hold his spoon without shaking, chew and swallow his food, speak or stand up on his own, and walk across the room. Even in the face of his illness and its challenges, there were exceptional days—magical moments when my father was his old self again. Bright-eyed and speaking clearly.

  Whatever the situation on any given day, Dad would want the world to know he wasn’t in pain. He was happy. Through the ups and downs, he always enjoyed being Muhammad Ali.

  As I lay beside my father that morning, watching him pop grapes into his mouth as we watched old westerns—his morning ritual—I asked Dad if he wanted a glass of water.

  “Yeah,” he said, popping another grape into his mouth.

  As I stood, he asked, “What do we have, sweet?”

  “Daddy, it’s 8 a.m. Lonnie’s cooking your breakfast.”

  “What’s she cooking?”

  “Steak and eggs, and oatmeal with bananas and brown sugar,” I said.

  “How much longer?” he asked. With all his patience, he never liked waiting for food.

  “I’ll go check,” I said, walking out of the room.

  I returned in a few minutes with a full tray. He ate breakfast in bed that day, but he usually was dressed and sitting at the kitchen table next to the living room, with Boston and Fenway, Lonnie and Asaad’s two Yorkshire terriers, waiting by his feet. Dad would toss a spoon of his oatmeal and pieces of bread, steak, and eggs on the floor for them when she wasn’t looking.

  “Don’t we have a black president?” he asked as I helped him with his food.

  “Yeah, Obama, remember? You were at his inauguration.”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” he said, chewing his food. “Tell Lonnie to get him on the phone and see if there’s anything I can do to help with public relations . . .”

  I lived for moments like those. Now I cherish the memories.

  * * *

  I continued rummaging through the boxes. There were old files and folders; my parents’ prenuptial agreement; Dad’s original will, dated June 8, 1977; old passports and credit cards; the script of Freedom Road and The Greatest (two movies Dad starred in). I piled everything into a neat stack. A framed certificate stamped with a gold seal and signed by Tom Bradley caught my eye. I wiped off the dust and read the inscription.

  CITY OF LOS ANGELES PROCLAMATION MUHAMMAD ALI DAY

  WHEREAS, MUHAMMAD ALI will be honored with the World Boxing Council’s “Lifetime Achievement Award” on May 22, 1985, AND

  WHEREAS, MUHAMMAD ALI’S professional boxing record consists of 56 wins and 5 losses. He won the Gold Medal in boxing at the 1960 Olympic games in Rome, Italy; Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) Championship in the United States in 1960; USA Golden Gloves Championship in 1960; AND

  WHEREAS, HE made his professional boxing debut on October 29, 1960, in Louisville, Kentucky, VS. Tunney Hunsaker. He won the heavyweight title in 1964 at the age of 22 by defeating Sonny Liston, after only 20 professional bouts; AND

  WHEREAS, HIS GREATEST FIGHTS OF ALL TIME include “The Rumble in the Jungle”—ALI VS. FOREMAN, 1974 in Kinshasa, Zaire; “THE THRILLA IN MANILA”—ALI VS. FRAZIER, 1975 in Manila, The Philippines; AND

  WHEREAS, MUHAMMAD ALI risked his position in boxing, sports, and society because of his principles and respect for his religion; AND

  WHEREAS, MUHAMMAD ALI is the only boxer in history to win the World Heavyweight Championship THREE TIMES. He is the most charismatic and popular athlete of ALL TIME; has been welcomed and received by the Pope, Kings, Queens, and Presidents all over the world and is highly respected for his love and philanthropic achievements on behalf of the children of the world:

  NOW THEREFORE, I, TOM BRADLEY, MAYOR OF THE CITY OF LOS ANGELES, JOINED BY THE LOS ANGELES CITY COUNCIL, DO HEREBY PROCLAIM MAY 22, 1985, “MUHAMMAD ALI DAY” IN LOS ANGELES IN RECOGNITION OF HIS RECEIVING THE WORLD BOXING COUNCIL “LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD” FOR HIS TREMENDOUS CONTRIBUTION TO THE SPORT OF BOXING, AND IN DEEP APPRECIATION FOR BEING THE GREATEST SPORTS HERO AND SETTING AN OUTSTANDING EXAMPLE TO THE YOUTH OF THE WORLD.

  May 22, 1985

  Tom Bradley

  Mayor

  Pat Russell

  Councilwoman 6th District

  President, Los Angeles City Council

  I set the proclamation aside, imagining it framed in gold on my office wall beside my father’s boxing ring drawings, a portrait of him smiling, and my favorite image—a memory frozen in time of Dad sitting on the patio steps at Fremont Place with all his children around him.

  I was reading one of my father’s old training journals when my mother found the letters. From the corner of my eye I saw her sit on the floor. It’s not normal for her to sit down in the middle of a filthy storage-room floor, so that should have tipped me off, but it didn’t. I was too preoccupied, reading my father’s notes about his bills and finances. The endless list of names of people he was taking care of—how he gave up sex and salt and only ate fish for three months before the Foreman fight.

  His scratchy, handwritten notes and inspirational quotes on random loose pages: Love is the net where hearts are caught like fish; If fate throws a knife your way, you can catch it in two ways: by the handle or by the blade; Life would be unbearable if we couldn’t dream; Your happiness, your health, and your success depends on the way you think; Death is so near, and the time for friendly action is so limited; Enjoy life, it’s later than you think. And his impressive penciled sketches of my mother’s face drawn on lined yellow paper: In Africa, Zaire, Veronica: By Muhammad Ali, October 3, 1974.

  I reached deeper into the box and pulled out a small framed photo of a modest log cabin nestled amongst pine trees and rolling hills, surrounded by snow. It looked familiar, as though I had been there before. I turned it over and read the inscription. Fighter’s Heaven, 1975. It was my father’s log cabin at his training camp in Deer Lake, Pennsylvania. As I stare at the image, a faint memory resurfaces.

  I’m four years old watching my father put on his gray jogging suit, lace up his black army boots, and set out into the biting cold for his jog up “Agony Hill,” the name he gave the mountain he climbed every morning before the first glimmers of light poured over the horizon. Dad always jogged in big black a
rmy boots (instead of tennis shoes), so that his feet would feel light in the ring.

  As I stared at the photo, remembering my father training for his last fight, I could feel the chill of the mountain air brushing against my cheek, as my little head hung out the window of the heated car following behind him in case he tired. No matter how steep the hill or trying his course, he always kept going.

  “The real training begins when the pain sets in,” he once said. “Those are the only miles I count—they’re the only ones that matter. It’s what you can do after you’re tired that counts in the ring.” Watching my father in his later years, from a different vantage point, I could see the same was true of life.

  I put the photo in the pile of keepsakes I was taking home and continued rummaging through the boxes. There were old airline tickets, receipts, date books, invitations to White House dinners, our drawings and scribbles, signed in my father’s handwriting at the bottom: By Hana at the LA home on 55 Fremont Place, 8 PM, December 4, 1979, by Muhammad Ali. Neither of my parents threw anything away. I was grateful for that. Perhaps my most amusing discovery was a small bundle of letters with my name on them—addressed to my parents from my nursery-school teachers. I pulled the first from the bunch and read:

  The staff and director of Pilgrim Foundation are quite concerned with the continual misbehavior of Hana. If improvement does not take place soon, it has been suggested that a different atmosphere and or school be sought! Any questions? Please see Mrs. Beckel. Thank you for your cooperation.

  —Nursery Staff

  It wasn’t the first or last letter home to my parents. I was kicked out of two nurseries and a couple of kindergartens. The result of all my weekend sparring lessons with my father, no doubt. I was a handful at best, and I always acted out when Daddy was away. When he was around, I was perfectly fine. But when he left, the letters followed me home. The days seemed longer when he was gone, and the nights were lonely. I used to sit on the edge of my bed, staring out the window, waiting for his headlights to appear in the driveway, watching our Dobermans, Sheba and Samson, lying on the steps leading up to the swimming pool. I think they were waiting for him too.

  I worried that my father might lose his keys, get lost, or drive his car off the road. Dad had a difficult time staying in his own lane. He swerved a little when he drove, especially at night. He once went in the wrong way on an off-ramp. The police would stop him, but they’d usually just get an autograph and then point him in the right direction. But there was one occasion when Dad was asked to get out of the car and walk a straight line. The officer, noticing him swerving in the lane, mistakenly assumed he’d been drinking. Laila and I were in the back seat, and Mom was up front. I watched my father from the window as he tried to walk a straight line, but he couldn’t. Dad was noticeably irritable and the officer, realizing he hadn’t been drinking, let us go. No one understood it at the time, but it was one of the first signs of his Parkinson’s. And he still had two fights ahead of him: Larry Holmes and Trevor Berbick.

  I worried about him all the time, but he always made it home; his headlights always appeared in the driveway at Fremont Place.

  “Hana,” he said on a recording after reading the note, “say ‘I’m a good girl.’”

  “I’m a good girrrrl.”

  “Say ‘I’m a pretty girl.’”

  “I’m a pretty girrrrl.”

  “Say ‘I won’t bite the boys no more.’”

  “I won’t bite the boys no more.”

  “Say ‘I won’t scratch the boys no more.’”

  “I won’t scratch the boys no more.”

  I was a little terror—a mini tornado passing through unexpectedly, leaving everything in my path in disarray. When Laila started boxing, people who knew us when we were young assumed the press had got it wrong, that it was me who had become a fighter.

  “No,” they said, watching the evening news. “That can’t be right . . . they must be talking about Hana.”

  My sister was sweet, shy, and quiet. No one could fathom the thought of her in the ring. Even my father had a hard time accepting it in the beginning. At first he tried to reason with her, talk her out of it. “Women shouldn’t box,” he said. “You bear children, you have breasts. Your body wasn’t made to get hit.” But when he saw that she was serious, and good, he was proud and supportive. When Muhammad Jr. was a little boy, a reporter once asked my father, “What would you do if your son wants to become a boxer?”

  “First, I would do everything I could to try and change his mind,” he said. “Then I’d do everything in my power to help him.” Years later he made good on his statement, only it wasn’t his son but his youngest daughter who followed him into the ring.

  After Laila won her first fight, Dad walked into her dressing room. She was surrounded by friends and family, who parted like the Red Sea when they saw him. Laila stood as he made his way across the room. He hugged her, kissed her, then looked at her proudly.

  “You get it from me,” he said. “Hana writes books, Laila throws hooks.”

  Whenever we did something impressive, like write a poem, help a friend in need, or give a homeless person money or food, Dad would smile at us and say, “That’s me in you.”

  I opened another box, overjoyed with the prospect of unearthing further buried treasures. And deep down, in the corner, among assorted newspaper clippings and photographs, my eyes widened: a micro audiotape labeled For my Veronica, 1976.

  “Mom! Look what I found!”

  She didn’t answer.

  I was overjoyed. The tape recordings my father had given me had changed my life. I had listened to them countless times, laughing, crying—remembering. I couldn’t wait to get home and see what was on this tape. The fact that it was addressed to my mother—dated the year I was born—fascinated me. I dug through nearby containers, hoping to discover more audiotapes, but instead I found a handful of my mother’s old diaries. Agendas from 1982 to 1987. I opened the one from 1986—the last year we lived together as a family. I skimmed the wilted pages cautiously. A small sheet of paper was attached at the top with a rusty paper clip. In flawless handwriting it read:

  11/29/1985 New address as of December 6, 1985

  Hana Ali

  841 Longwood Los Angeles, California 90035

  213-934-4001

  Mail to:

  P. O. Box 36121

  Los Angeles, California 90036

  Veronica Porche Ali

  I browsed the yellowing pages and found a folded set of papers wedged into the back pocket of the book. I opened them. As I read, it became clear what I had found. In my hands was an original copy of the listing agreement to Fremont Place, signed by both of my parents. Attached at the top was a photo advertisement of the house: Behind the Gates—55 Fremont Place. I opened it and looked at the collection of photos of the house and grounds. At the top left corner was a picture of my bedroom. My heart sank. Tears welled in my eyes. I couldn’t understand how, after all these years, images of my childhood home affected me so deeply. I took a long breath and read the sales description beneath the photos:

  Like its owner, Muhammad Ali, this magnificent estate is world class. Behind the gates in prestigious Fremont Place, a private gated park-like residential community near Hancock Park, this stunning home stands supreme. Elegant fixtures surround the home, including a large mahogany paneled entry, richly upholstered walls, carved African striped mahogany, gold-leafed fixtures, newly finished hardwood floors, lovely cast and carved moldings, and fine polished woods. The library [Dad’s office], paneled in oak, has a massive fireplace, and a half circle solarium features Ernest Batchelder’s gothic period tiles as lustrous as the day it was installed.

  Beautiful craftsmanship is part of everyday life. A large Tiffany glass screen dominates the second floor, which has five large bedrooms, including a master suite with fireplace, a sleeping porch, solarium, linen room, five bathrooms, and servants’ quarters. There is a billiard room, ballroom, laundry room, dark roo
m, wine room, a tremendous amount of storage area, and a five-room garage apartment. Spacious yards, a swimming pool, and decking, arbors, fountains, flower beds, and ornamental gates make this home a royal paradise.

  As I read, memory stirred and Fremont Place came rushing back to me.

  4

  In the early hours of the morning, when Mom and Laila were still asleep, Dad used to carry me downstairs in my pajamas. I’d watch wide-eyed as he tore out a few pages of lined yellow paper from the notepad on his desk, crumpling and rolling them into a long cone shape. Then I’d follow him down the hall to the kitchen, where he lit the tip of the paper on the stove.

  My heart beat rapidly as we rushed back down the hallway to his office, Dad’s attention fixed tensely on the paper, his eyes widening with every step as the tiny flame burned swiftly toward his fingers. My eyes were glued on him. He was so theatrical. More entertaining than any of my favorite cartoons: Scooby Doo, Tom and Jerry, Casper, Bugs Bunny, Yogi Bear, The Road Runner, Felix the Cat—even Wonder Woman had nothing on my father.

  When I close my eyes and remember with my heart, I can still feel the rush of excitement and anticipation I felt as we made the long trip from the kitchen to his office, sometimes two or three times on the occasions when the flame burned too quickly.

  When we finally arrived, Dad would toss the burning paper into the fireplace. We watched as the flames crackled, growing high and bright. Then he’d sit at his desk and drink his coffee. As always, I sat on his lap trying to emulate him, writing in cursive while he made random phone calls or spoke into his recorder, practicing his speeches:

  “Where is love? Where is charity? Where is mercy? Where is God? We can answer each of these questions by saying ‘In the heart of man’ . . . If you were to look at what gives us courage to stand firm in the struggle on the battlefield of life, that which gives us the patience to endure all that comes, that which gives us will and power . . . it is your heart . . .”

  We repeated the fireplace ritual every morning. Looking back, I wonder why he didn’t just use a match to light the paper right there in his office. It would have been much easier and far less dramatic, and it would have saved him the time and trouble of running back and forth from his office to the kitchen. But if he had done things conventionally I wouldn’t have my adventurous memories to share, and his tape recordings may have never existed.