Celebrating Muhammad Ali– My “Twin” Brother
Bill Meers, 2nd from right, with journalists from Cameroun, Cote d’Ivoire, and Congo in front of Muhammad Ali’s childhood home on Grand Avenue in Louisville, Kentucky. 1991.
For 50 years, I have been saying that Muhammad Ali is my “twin” brother. We were both born in Louisville, Kentucky in January 1942. He was actually two weeks older having been born on January 17 and I on January 31. During the many years I have lived away from Louisville, Ali has been an important connection to my hometown.
Although our life experiences were very different, we shared ideals, such as opposition to the Vietnam War in the 1960s and a timeless belief in a humanity that includes people of all faiths and races.
I attended a ceremony in Downtown Louisville in 1995 which launched the campaign to establish the Muhammad Ali Center which was opened in 2005. He visited the Naval Ordnance Station in Louisville where I worked in 1994 or 1995 during Black History Month. I served on the Black History Committee at the Station and am thankful to the black members of the committee for providing the opportunity for Station employees to see him up close. Even then, he was already showing the ravages of Parkinson’s.
In 1991as a member of the Louisville International Cultural Center, I accompanied journalists from three West African countries— Cameroun, Congo, and Cote d’Ivoire— during their visit to Louisville. Like many other African visitors, they requested to meet Muhammad Ali. Unfortunately, he had not yet returned to Louisville to live.
So I arranged for us to meet his mother, Odessa Clay. The day before we had planned to visit, Muhammad Ali’s brother Rudy phoned with the news that our meeting had to be cancelled due to his mother’s illness. Our son Ben still remembers getting a call from “Muhammad Ali’s brother” with his strong, deep voice.
As an alternative, I took the journalists to see his boyhood home at 3302 Grand Avenue in Louisville’s West End—a very small, unremarkable pink frame house. I took a photo of the three of them together in front of the house. One of them took a photo of me alone. To get the photo accompanying this article, I cut out my image and pasted it in their photo. It seemed they had left a place for me, but I must have asked them to stand so they didn’t cover the front of the house. I’m sure our visit helped connect them to Ali and to Louisville.
I am pleased that Ali’s childhood home was just restored and was opened to the public for the first time at the end of May 2016. http://www.alichildhoodmuseum.com/ I hope visitors will feel his generous spirit there and be inspired to join him in working to make a more just and peaceful world.
I have on my refrigerator a B&W photo postcard my daughter gave me of Ali holding his mother horizontally at his waist high as if she were just a small child. Both are smiling. She is not worried he will drop her; she is obviously very proud. Photo: http://www.nndb.com/people/487/000022421/
Recent Comments