Everyone, it seems, has a Muhammad Ali story.
Some of these stories have popped up more often than George Foreman over the years, and they show up again in “Ali,” the new Will Smith film that opens Dec. 25.
But some of them are less familiar, like the one told by Dick Gregory, who as a young comedian met Ali in Chicago in the early ’60s and who became a lifelong friend.
Early in his days as a social activist, Gregory was running across the country to bring attention to world and domestic hunger. Ali ran with him part of the way, helping Gregory’s cause while getting himself in shape for an upcoming fight. Promising to hook up with Gregory along the route later, Ali left for his match — Gregory recalls that it was in Germany — leaving the comic to continue his cross-country mission.
“We were in Arizona,” Gregory says, “in some remote area. Someone asked me to stop in at a hospital and say hello. There was this older white lady, and she saw me and said, ‘I thought Muhammad Ali would be with you!’ I told her he was out of the country.
“When he rejoined us, I guess we were, like, 150 miles away from that place. And when I told him about that woman, he got in the car with me and drove back to that hospital. And he went in — the woman’s dying, you know — and he hugged her and held her and kissed her. And just to sit and look at him react to this person, and her to him. . . . that was something.”
Many of the Ali stories making the rounds these days have a Chicago connection. He lived in this city on and off for almost 20 years and still has ties here in the form of family and friends.
Ali was married in Chicago, started his family here and trained here. He also lived here during the most tumultuous time of his career, the mid-1960s, when he was dealing not only with the likes of Sonny Liston and Ernie Terrell, but also the U. S. Selective Service office and a hostile press as well.
Ali was a fixture on the South Side and lived in several places. After his marriage in 1964, he and his wife moved into an apartment at 70th Street and Cregier Avenue. Later, he and his second wife lived in an apartment at 85th Street and Jeffrey Boulevard. One friend recalls Ali living at 77th Street and Constance Avenue and at 92nd Street and Jeffrey. Eventually, Ali bought a home in the 4900 block of South Woodlawn Avenue. He trained at Coulon’s Gym on East 63rd Street, and enjoyed frequenting local restaurants and businesses. He was, as another friend sums it up, “a real neighborhood guy.”
To get a flavor of Ali’s Chicago ties, the Tribune contacted some of the friends and associates who were with him in his Chicago days. Here’s some of what they remember about the champ:
W. Deen Muhammad
Muhammad chuckled when asked about his early memories of Ali. The first story he passed along had to do with an Ali visit to a business owned by the Temple of Islam, as the Nation of Islam was known in the ’60s. It’s one of the stories recounted in the movie.
“I heard — I wasn’t there — that one of the young ladies who worked in the bakery, he had come in or he had heard about her . . . and he saw her, and the first thing he told her was, `You’re going to be my wife.’ And they did get married — that turned out to be Khalilah Ali [Ali’s second wife],” says W. Deen Muhammad, the son of Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad and the leader of the Muslim American Society.
Ali’s strong Chicago ties were largely because of religion. He announced his conversion to Islam and the Chicago-based Nation of Islam after he defeated Sonny Liston in 1964 for the world heavyweight title. He renounced his “slave name” of Cassius Clay and was given the new name of Muhammad Ali by Elijah Muhammad.
“He was very excited about the religion,” Wallace Deen Muhammad says. “He said, `I met your brother’ — my brother, Herbert, [who] eventually became his manager — and he said, `I’m speaking with your brother because your brother can tell me what [Elijah Muhammad] says, so I will know what I’m to do.’ So I saw Muhammad Ali right from the very beginning of my acquaintance with him as a man who wanted some authority over him; he didn’t want to make his own decisions.
“He always had a lot of confidence in himself as a fighter, but his faith in himself as a believer in God, I think it grew after he retired from fighting. He began to devote all of his time to trying to make friends for Muslims.”
Ernie Terrell
Former heavyweight champion Terrell first saw Ali — then Cassius Clay — at a Golden Gloves tournament in Chicago in 1957. He still remembers his initial impression.
“He ran his mouth a lot,” Terrell says with a laugh.
Young fighters from all over the country were at the old Chicago Stadium for the tournament, Terrell remembers, “And Ali got up and said, `I want every light heavyweight to stand up.’ And they did. And he said, `I just want to tell you, you know who’s going to win this thing? It’s gonna be me!’ He just left us standing there looking at each other. That’s the first time I noticed him.”
Their paths didn’t cross in the ring until a decade later. Terrell was the World Boxing Association heavyweight champion and had been hoping for a matchup with Ali, still considered the world heavyweight champ at the time. Finally, Ali called.
“He said he decided he was gonna fight me,” Terrell says. “I came by his office; I think it was on 71st Street, or something like that. It was really a nightclub with an office in there. And I came in and he told me he was going to give me a shot.”
Planning for the fight, scheduled for March 29, 1966 in Chicago, began. But Ali’s conversion to the Nation of Islam and his anti-draft stance and public statements (“Man, I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong”) — along with what may have been some quintessential Chicago factors — scuttled the fight.
The Illinois Athletic Commission refused to sanction the bout. Popular opinion was that it was a reaction to Ali’s anti-war stance, but “I don’t think that was the reason,” Terrell says. “I just think it was because certain people weren’t cut in. I believe that’s what it was.”
The two eventually met on Feb. 6, 1967, in Houston, with Ali winning a 15-round decision. As he pummeled Terrell, Ali taunted him — “What’s my name?” he shouted over and over as he delivered punches, his response to Terrell’s insistence on referring to him as Cassius Clay.
That’s all been forgotten, says Terrell, who has been in touch with Ali over the years and who even traveled to Louisville to help launch a boxing tournament that carries Ali’s name.
“I’ve seen him a lot since then. We’ve talked. One time he stopped by [Terrell’s business] and kissed everybody. He was very congenial. We’re all right.”
Dick Gregory
“We just loved one another,” Gregory says of the youthful friendship he and Ali struck up in Chicago. “He loved me because he knew when he saw me coming, he knew I’d make him laugh. And when I saw him coming I knew he was gonna laugh.”
Gregory turned from comedy to social activism and health and nutrition issues. He was part of Ali’s training camps — doing roadwork with the champ and advising him on vitamins and diet. He especially remembers how Ali had an impact on a wide variety of people.
“To see how he cut across everything,” he says. “I don’t know anything that was like Ali, where you had religious people [following him] because of his religion, you had peace people, the moral and ethical forces of the world, and they’re sitting there with pimps, hustlers and dope pushers — I mean, Ali appealed to everyone. And that’s something few people — if anyone — have done.”
Alonzo Johnson
Johnson first met Ali in a Louisville gym in 1960, around the time Ali won the gold medal in the 1960 Olympics. Johnson was training for a fight when Ali walked in. He offered Johnson some advice and the two developed a friendship.
Two years later the pair met in the ring, with Ali earning a 10-round decision.
“It wasn’t tough fighting him,” says Johnson, who today lives in Dolton and remains in boxing as a part-time trainer. “That’s just the point of the fight game. You fight whoever you have to fight. You’ll fight your brother if you have to.”
Johnson retired in 1963 and was soon after offered a chance to be Ali’s sparring partner, a job he kept until the champ retired.
“I worked with him, trained with him,” Johnson says. “We did exhibitions all over the world. Everywhere he went, I went with him.”
A lot of that time was spent in Chicago.
“Every day he came to the hotel and got me. We’d go to his house, then go to the gym and work out. Then we’d go out — dinner or to a show. Just hang around. And afterward he’d go his way and I’d go mine. But we were very close.”
And is he looking forward to the movie about his old friend?
“I ain’t paid no attention to it,” he says. “Maybe I’ll go see it. Maybe not.”
Maude Patterson
Howard “Pat” Patterson was a Chicago police officer who used to attend Ali’s fights. He later began taking time off to work security at the fights, and when Ali became a Chicago resident he was assigned by Mayor Richard J. Daley, the current mayor’s father, to be Ali’s full-time bodyguard.
Patterson, who died last May, was kept busy by the champ, according to his widow, Maude.
“Ali usually had something going every day — special events or training,” she says.
She recalls how something as small as Ali just going out for some air turned into an event.
“Everybody knew him,” she says. “He could not walk down the street without people yelling to him, `Hi Champ!’ And he loved children. We could be out and he’d see a playground full of children and he’d say, `OK,’ and we’d stop. He liked to tease children, and he’d do magic tricks with them. . . . His eyes would just light up when he’d see children. Especially little girls — he’d love to flirt with them, wink at them.”
In his early days in Chicago, she says, Ali enjoyed neighborhood restaurants, particularly those along 79th Street.
“Izola’s, I think, was one of them,” she says. “And there was another restaurant, next door to the Tiger Lounge on 79th Street — I can’t remember the name now — but 79th was a street he liked.”
After Pat Patterson stopped working as Ali’s bodyguard in the `80s, he became chief of police in Dolton.
“Even then,” Maude said, “he could drive down the street, especially in the old neighborhood, and people would yell out, `Hi, Pat, how’s the champ?’ “
Gene Kelly
Kelly has been sharing his knowledge with Chicago boxers a long time, “damn near 60 years,” says the now-retired trainer. He used to handle fighters at Johnny Coulon’s gym, one of Ali’s Chicago training sites. He says the champ was fun — and dedicated.
“He liked to kid a lot,” says Kelly. “But he was serious about his training. He would never forget that.”
Ali’s training sessions were typical, Kelly says.
“He would do what he was supposed to do, but he’d do it with sincerity. Some guys train, they just go through the motions. But he did it with sincerity. And if you’re not sincere, you’re not going to go anywhere in this game.
“When he was training, he’d let everybody know he was Muhammad Ali, that he was the greatest.
“He was fun to watch. Definitely so.”
Gene Kilroy
Like Maude Patterson, Kilroy has memories of Ali’s fondness for children.
“I always said that Muhammad Ali won his title with his fists but he won the world with his heart,” says Kilroy, Ali’s former business manager and now an executive with the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. “I used to see him always with children. He was great with children — he’d pick them up and hug them and kiss them then put them down. I was in awe of how he loved children, but it was related to his own children, whom he couldn’t be with.”
Ali also loved Chicago.
“Every restaurant was his favorite. He loved the people of Chicago. He had a great relationship with the people,” Kilroy says.
Sadrud-din Ali (The name as published has been corrected here and in subsequent references in this text.)
Ali sees Muhammad Ali as a charming, generous person. And a good father, “a very good dad, one of the best besides myself.”
Sadrud-din’s daughter Khalilah became Ali’s second wife in 1967, and Sadrud-din and his wife, Aminah, raised Muhammad and Khalilah’s four children.
“He knew he couldn’t be with them all the time, so he’d always visit whenever he was in town, he’d call them on the phone, he’d talk with them,” Sadrud-din says. “They have a very close relationship with each other.”
Those visits often were hectic.
“There was always a lot of schoolchildren here when they’d find out he’d be here; seemed like the whole school would come down to get his autograph. They’d hear in the neighborhood he was here, they’d tell their friends, and they’d tell their friends, and my house would have all kinds of activity going on.
“And he loved it. I would always tell his fans, you know, kind of give him a little breathing room, and he’d say, `No, no, don’t tell them that. I’m the champ, and if they want to talk to me, let them talk to me.’ He never refused no one. He always wanted to help someone. That was just his makeup.”
