When I met Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali)
On live and love after 50
By Tom P Blake June
10, 2016
Today, June 10,
2016, Muhammad Ali was laid to rest. Our country lost a legend. I had the
pleasure of meeting him when his name was Cassius Clay. The occasion
was the 1960 Rome Olympic Games where he won the light-heavyweight gold medal in
boxing.
That summer of 1960,
I traveled for 85 days throughout Europe with four other guys. We slept in a VW
bus, which we had picked up at the VW factory in Hannover, Germany. We spent the
last 17 days of the trip living at a campground outside of Rome, driving into
the city each day to take in the Olympic Games.
I was 20, and kept a
dairy of the trip. After seeing Cassius Clay box in a preliminary round, I wrote in the diary, “Clay is
quite promising,” perhaps the biggest understatement of my life.
The four of us got tickets to the September 5
boxing finals at the Pallazo della Sport and watched along with 16,000 others
as Henry Crooke, Wilbert McClure and 18-year-old Cassius Clay won gold medals
for the USA.
One of
the four men riding in our bus, Mike Natelson, was a swimmer for The University
of Michigan. Mike and I had been classmates and swimming teammates at Jackson
High School, Jackson, Michigan.
A few of
Mike’s University of Michigan teammates were on the USA Olympic swimming team. So,
we got to interact with them often at the Rome Olympic Village and at some
restaurants near to the Village. After the games were over, if USA team
athletes wanted to stay in Europe to travel, they were allowed to sell their tickets
on the Pam Am charter back to the USA.
For the
four of us, our scheduled return flight was on a KLM 707 from Amsterdam. But, we
wanted to stay at the games as long as we could. To drive to Amsterdam would
take three days. So, we scrounged our money together and bought four seats on
the Olympic charter for $120 a ticket from some of the athletes.
The
charter plane was not a jet, but a 4-engine job. It took forever to get to the
states. Mike Natelson slept on the floor of the plane a good share of the time.
We made a refueling stop in London.
We met
Cassius Clay on the charter flight. My memory of him was that he was talking a
lot and was very ebullient. He was happy to meet and talk to anybody and everybody
on the flight.
My seatmate
on the flight was Donna de Verona, a 13-year old swimmer who had made the team
as an alternate. In London at the duty free shop, she wanted to buy a bottle of
booze for her father as a gift and she asked me what to buy. I told her Beefeater’s
Gin. Sadly, she dropped the bottle on the concourse when we got to the states.
In the Olympic games four years later, she won two gold medals and became very
well known as a sports commentator and athlete.
The scene
I remember the most about Clay was when the plane landed in Boston, where we
went through customs. Cassius was wearing his gold medal around his neck, as
were all the athletes who had won medals were encouraged to do. When he opened
his suitcase for the customs agent to inspect it, he put the medal right on the
top of his clothes so the agent would see that first. The agent waived him
through immediately. As I recall, he raised his fist in triumph as if he had
just won a boxing match.
Of
course, none of us had any idea of how famous Cassius, who, of course, changed
his name to Muhammed Ali, would become or how significant he would be in
American history.
Fifty-six
years later, I am grateful for having had that experience in my life.
Tom Blake's websites
No comments:
Post a Comment