I
pick up another article and my jaw drops. My father is on the front page of the
Detroit News, standing on the ledge of a nine-story building. In the photo it's
Monday, January 19, 1981, two days after his birthday. The same time next year,
one week after Dad's last fight, Mom will throw a small surprise dinner party
for him. A vague memory resurfaces.
?
I'm
seven years old. Laila and I are peeking through the stair rails in our pajamas
as my father and his guests - Cary Grant, John Travolta, Mayor Tom Bradley,
Kris Kristofferson, Lou Rawls, Zev Braun, and friends - are gathered around a
belly dancer. Mom and Aunt Diane are in black cocktail dresses, complete with
ruffled white aprons. The evening was all jingles, cheers, and laughter.
Glasses were raised, toasts were made, jokes were told, all in celebration of
Dad's fortieth year. "I'm getting old," he told them. "It all
goes by so fast."
?
I
exhale slowly, lean back in my chair, and read the story. The photo is
overwhelming. Dad is leaning over a balcony, his arms wrapped around a
stranger, pulling him over the railing to safety.
?
"Muhammad
Ali reaches fora distraught man who was threatening to jump from the ninth
floor of a Los Angeles building yesterday. The former heavyweight champion
happened to be driving by the building while police were trying to talk the man
out of jumping and asked if he could help. He leans out the window to speak to
the man threatening to jump, then helps him back onto the balcony."
?
The
man he talked out of plunging to his death was a twenty-one-year-old from
Michigan who was convinced he was a "nobody." At 2:20 p.m. the man
climbed out on a fire escape balcony of a building at 5410 Wilshire Boulevard.
He locked the door behind him and screamed that he was going to jump.
?
"He
said he couldn't find a job, that he was depressed," Dad told the reporter.
"He said his mother and father don't love him, that nobody loves him. He
asked, 'Why do you worry about me? I'm nobody.' I told him he wasn't a
'nobody.' He saw me weeping and he couldn't believe I was crying, that I cared
that much about him ... I'm going to help him go to school and find a job, buy
him some clothes. I'm going to go to Michigan with him to meet his mother and
father. They called him. nobody, so I'm going home with him. I'll walk the
streets with him and they'll see he's BIG."
?
He
did the same thing for my sister Miya. She called him crying one day after
school. A few of her classmates had been teasing her. They didn't believe her
father was really Muhammad Ali because she didn't look like Dad and they never
saw them together. My father was on the next flight to New Jersey. He drove her
to school and called an assembly. When all of the kids were in the auditorium,
he told them all he was her father. Then he took her home and walked up and
down the streets of her neighborhood holding her hand, so everyone could see
them together.
?
Dad
escorted the man to the police station in his Rolls-Royce. Then he rode with
him in the police car that took him to the hospital for a seventy-two-hour
psychiatric observation.
?
Saving
the man was neither a quick nor an easy task. As my dad's involvement began, he
went to the nearest window on the ninth floor and began to talk to the man.
?
"You're
my brother," he said. "I love you, and I couldn't lie to you. You got
to listen. I want you to come home with me, meet some friends of mine ...
" A few breathless minutes later, the man opened the door and father
walked out onto the fire escape with him.
?
He
put his arm around the man, then took it away when he became apprehensive. They
talked for a while longer, and with a suddenness no one had expected, it was
over. The man relaxed, hugged my father, and wept as he led him to safety.
?
I
don't know what became of the young man or his troubled soul, but my father
kept his promise.
?
"What
did you say to get him off the ledge?" Mom asked later that evening.
?
"He
thought nobody loved him," said Dad. "I told him I loved him or I
wouldn't be there."
?
As
I stared at the image of my father pulling the man to safety, a story he liked
to tell came to mind. There was once a hunter who was walking through the
forest. He saw two birds sitting on the branch of a tree. He shot one and it
dropped to the ground. It took a few minutes for him to arrive at the spot
where the bird fell. While he was walking, the other bird had come down to look
at his fallen mate. The bird touched his companion with his beak and realized
he was dead. When the man arrived, he found both birds dead.
?
"One
was such a friend to the other," said Dad, "that when it discovered
there was no life in its mate's body, it died on the spot. From that day on,
the huntsman gave up shooting birds. He said, 'I found a friendship among birds
and animals that cannot be found among mankind.'
?
"This
is a simple lesson that we all must learn. Today, when nations are against
nations, races against races, one community against the other, one religious
group bombing the other, now is the time when friendship is most needed. For
someone who learns the lesson of friendship in this world, this lesson, in the
end, develops into a friendship with God himself."
?
?
Hani Ali "At Home with
Muhammad Ali: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Forgiveness" (2019)
