{"id":143,"date":"2016-06-05T21:33:57","date_gmt":"2016-06-06T01:33:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meersworld.com\/blog\/?p=143"},"modified":"2016-06-05T21:37:44","modified_gmt":"2016-06-06T01:37:44","slug":"celebrating-muhammad-ali-my-twin-brother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.meersworld.com\/blog\/2016\/06\/celebrating-muhammad-ali-my-twin-brother\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating Muhammad Ali– My “Twin” Brother"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ali_Home_w_AF_Journalists\"<\/a>

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.<\/p><\/div>\n

For 50 years, I have been saying that Muhammad Ali is my \u201ctwin\u201d brother.\u00a0 We were both born in Louisville, Kentucky in January 1942.\u00a0 He was actually two weeks older having been born on January 17 and I on January 31.\u00a0 During the many years I have lived away from Louisville, Ali has been an important connection to my hometown.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I attended a ceremony in Downtown Louisville in 1995 which launched the campaign to establish the Muhammad Ali Center which was opened in 2005.\u00a0 He visited the Naval Ordnance Station in Louisville where I worked in 1994 or 1995 during Black History Month.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Even then, he was already showing the ravages of Parkinson\u2019s.<\/p>\n

In 1991as a member of the Louisville International Cultural Center, I accompanied journalists from three West African countries\u2014 Cameroun, Congo, and Cote d\u2019Ivoire\u2014 during their visit to Louisville.\u00a0 Like many other African visitors, they requested to meet Muhammad Ali.\u00a0 Unfortunately, he had not yet returned to Louisville to live.<\/p>\n

So I arranged for us to meet his mother, Odessa Clay.\u00a0\u00a0 The day before we had planned to visit, Muhammad Ali\u2019s brother Rudy phoned with the news that our meeting had to be cancelled due to his mother\u2019s illness.\u00a0 Our son Ben still remembers getting a call from \u201cMuhammad Ali\u2019s brother\u201d with his strong, deep voice.<\/p>\n

As an alternative, I took the journalists to see his boyhood home at 3302 Grand Avenue in Louisville\u2019s West End\u2014a very small, unremarkable pink frame house.\u00a0\u00a0 I took a photo of the three of them together in front of the house.\u00a0 One of them took a photo of me alone.\u00a0 To get the photo accompanying this article, I cut out my image and pasted it in their photo.\u00a0 It seemed they had left a place for me, but I must have asked them to stand so they didn\u2019t cover the front of the house.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure our visit helped connect them to Ali and to Louisville.<\/p>\n

I am pleased that Ali\u2019s childhood home was just restored and was opened to the public for the first time at the end of May 2016.\u00a0 http:\/\/www.alichildhoodmuseum.com\/<\/a>\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Both are smiling.\u00a0 She is not worried he will drop her;\u00a0 she is obviously very proud.\u00a0 Photo: http:\/\/www.nndb.com\/people\/487\/000022421\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For 50 years, I have been saying that Muhammad Ali is my \u201ctwin\u201d brother.\u00a0 We were both born in Louisville, Kentucky in January 1942.\u00a0 He was actually two weeks older having been born on January 17 and I on January<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meersworld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meersworld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meersworld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meersworld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meersworld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.meersworld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":162,"href":"https:\/\/www.meersworld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions\/162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meersworld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meersworld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meersworld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}