Arthur Ashe

by Raymond Arsenault

  Released from the hospital three days later, Arthur resumed his busy schedule. On the evening after his morning release, he was sitting at the desk in his home office when the phone rang. Despite the demands of his presidential campaign, Bill Clinton had taken time to wish Arthur well and “to express the hope” they would meet in person in the near future. This unexpected gesture renewed the spirit of a man who had every reason to be discouraged. “As I sat in my office after hanging up,” he recalled several weeks later, “I thought of him and Hillary Rodham Clinton and the grueling, sometimes humiliating, and still unfinished campaign, they were pursuing simply to have his message heard and believed and his integrity accepted, and I was encouraged to carry on my own campaign. I decided to strike nothing from my schedule but to plunge ahead.”

  During the next ten days, he demonstrated both his energy level and continuing commitment to public service. As he recounted in Days of Grace, the second half of September was one of the busiest periods of his life: “Four days later [after the Clinton phone call] I flew to Atlanta to speak to a gathering of officials of community health centers on ‘Health Concerns of the Uninsured.’ Just after my return, I engaged a lively call-in audience on WLIB, the New York radio station. I then flew to Gainesville for a lecture at the University of Florida. The next day I was in Hartford, Connecticut for an Aetna board meeting, then dined on September 24 at a fund-raiser in Manhattan for Governor Clinton, where I had the opportunity to meet and talk with him. The next day I returned to Hartford by company helicopter for another Aetna meeting, then I flew to Duquesne University in Pittsburgh to give a speech. The last day of September found me in Richmond, discussing with the mayor of the city a project dear to my heart—an African American Sports Hall of Fame to be located there. Then I returned to New York to attend a special showing of the Matisse exhibition of the Museum of Modern Art before heading out that evening to Baltimore, where I was to speak the following day.”35

  October brought no letup in his schedule. After joining the Olympic swimming champion Donna de Varona as the co-master of ceremonies for a fund-raising dinner for the Women’s Sports Foundation, an event held in midtown Manhattan, he and Jeanne flew to Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, to attend a gala celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the ATP. Proud of his leadership role during the early years of the ATP, he was thrilled to take part in a reunion that probably would be his last opportunity to see many of his fellow pioneers. The list of attendees was a virtual who’s-who of ATP veterans—Laver, Emerson, Rosewall, Stolle, Drysdale, Borg, Nastase, Smith, Pasarell, and Lutz, among others. But throughout much of the evening Arthur was the center of attention. “I could not help notice, after a while,” he recalled, “that I was obviously one of the special attractions of the hour, that my old tennis comrades were seeking me out and spending time with me. I seldom sat down without a small group gathering around my chair.”

  Everyone knew, of course, that this might well be their last chance to spend time with a man they loved and admired, a suspicion that tinged the reunion with bittersweet moments. But it did not stop Arthur and his buddies from indulging in the boys club ritual of poking fun at each other. After thanking his friends for allowing him to use the gala as an AAFDA fund-raiser—the gathering raised $50,000—and after receiving a standing ovation from the crowd, he could not resist teasing his old rival Nastase, commenting that he had never seen him “participate in a standing ovation on behalf of anyone except Nastase.” The Romanian just smiled and waved, but Drysdale later extracted a measure of good-natured revenge by roasting Arthur’s golf game. “Arthur could practice his swing in a telephone booth,” Drysdale offered with a grin, “and even with that short of a swing, I’ve never in my life seen anyone lose more golf balls.”36

  While nothing could quite match the camaraderie of the ATP reunion, Ashe seemed to value and enjoy all of his public appearances during the closing months of 1992. In early November, he received the Helen Hayes MacArthur Award, an honor recently established by a New York hospital foundation to recognize “the achievements of individuals who help and inspire other people to live their lives to their fullest potential.” Ashe took great pride in receiving the Hayes award, in part because the presentation ceremony coincided with Magic Johnson’s reluctant decision to abandon his effort to rejoin the NBA as an active player. Some players, it turned out, were not comfortable having him on the court. During the ATP reunion, Ashe had acknowledged Johnson’s activism as a model “paradigm of living with AIDS,” so the Hayes Hospital Foundation’s recognition of his own attempt to live a fruitful life free of despair was welcome.

  In mid-November, Arthur traveled to Richmond to help Governor Wilder preside over the annual banquet of the Virginia Heroes sixth-grade mentoring program, an organization he had helped found two years earlier. From there he flew to Boston to receive the AIDS Leadership Award from the Harvard AIDS Institute. A month earlier, he had become a member of the institute’s international Advisory Council, in recognition of his forceful advocacy of confronting the AIDS crisis on a global scale. In the seven months since his original AIDS announcement, he had emerged as one of the nation’s most knowledgeable and articulate commentators on the disease, and the institute wanted to acknowledge his contributions.

  Senator Edward Kennedy said as much in his keynote address at the awards ceremony in Cambridge. Privacy issues and other personal concerns had delayed Arthur’s engagement in the public fight against AIDS, but once his engagement began, Kennedy assured the audience, the level of his commitment was virtually unparalleled. As if to prove the point, the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation devoted to improving access to health care around the world, named Arthur to its board of directors the following week.37

  December began with notification that two leading universities—Yale and New York University—planned to honor him with honorary doctoral degrees. But far more important in his view was the World AIDS Day address to the United Nations General Assembly that he delivered on December 1. Invited to speak by Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Arthur made the most of his opportunity to speak his mind on AIDS. “I considered that speech one of the most significant of my life, perhaps even the most significant,” he wrote a few weeks later. Most of the speech was a passionate plea for greatly enhanced government action against a disease that had precipitated a worldwide crisis. Unfortunately, he pointed out, “It has been the habit of humankind to wait until the eleventh hour to spiritually commit ourselves to those problems which we knew all along to be of the greatest urgency.” In his view, AIDS was one of those problems, and the situation was complicated by a woefully unequal distribution of medical resources: while developing countries would account for an estimated 80 percent of future AIDS cases, the current proportion of funds spent on AIDS patients in those countries was only 6 percent of worldwide expenditures.

  He insisted this imbalance was an intolerable disgrace—a needless risk that represented a danger to the entire world. “All of us world citizens—Eastern and Western, developed and developing, regardless of ethnicity, national, or geographic origin—must see AIDS as our problem,” he maintained. AIDS is a formidable enemy, he acknowledged, but “we must succeed or our children and grandchildren will one day rightfully ask us why in the face of such a calamity we did not give our best efforts. What shall we tell them . . . if we don’t measure up? How shall I answer my six-year-old daughter and what do we say to the estimated ten million AIDS orphans by the year 2000?”38

  He knew expanding the fight on a global scale would take time—and that it was unlikely he would be around to see it. In the meantime, his strategy was to focus on small but significant initiatives that might serve as models for progress elsewhere. Two days after delivering the U.N. speech, he appeared at the State University of New York Health Science Center in Brooklyn to announce the establishment of the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health (AAIUH). Several months earlier, he had toured the Health Science Center with the Reverend Paul Smit
h, a former student of Howard Thurman’s who served on the board of the Thurman Trust. Ashe had met Smith through Jeff Rogers in the late 1980s, and the Brooklyn minister had become his trusted friend and spiritual counselor since the discovery of his AIDS affliction.

  Through his affiliation with the Health Science Center, Smith familiarized Ashe with the center’s innovative approaches to medical care in an inner-city setting. In particular, their tour of a ward for children suffering with AIDS left Ashe in tears but also with renewed determination to do something concrete to help the youngest and most vulnerable of those stricken with the disease. Perhaps the work of the Arthur Ashe Institute in Brooklyn would inspire similar efforts in other cities. With this multiplier effect in mind, he also began to lay the financial foundation for the establishment of a chair in pediatric AIDS research at the renowned St. Jude’s Hospital in Memphis. Everyone had to step up before it was too late, he told his friends and anyone else who would listen.39

  Ashe refused to view his fate in tragic terms. “You have to stop thinking of yourself as a victim and become a messenger,” he told a reporter in August; and that is exactly what he accomplished during the ensuing months. As Robert Lipsyte observed in early December, “it’s hard enough to fight a lethal disease without trying to satisfy people who want to build role models.” But Ashe was more than up to the task. According to a reporter for Tennis, instead of fading from view and losing public favor after his AIDS announcement, he became larger than life as his “influence and power . . . increased geometrically.”

  Being honored for surpassing all reasonable expectations of a role model was not something Ashe sought. But he recognized that each awards ceremony and its accompanying publicity gave him an added opportunity to spread his message. At the annual banquet of the American Sportcasters Association, held in Manhattan on December 5, he received the Sports Legend Award as several hundred sports industry luminaries looked on. The association had traditionally dedicated its fund-raising activities to elementary school antidrug programs, but Ashe urged the organization to broaden its efforts to include AIDS education.40

  Later in the week, Sports Illustrated announced the magazine’s editors had selected Arthur Ashe to be 1992’s Sportsman of the Year. Arthur had known about his selection for some time and had already granted a lengthy interview to Kenny Moore, a Sports Illustrated feature writer assigned to write a cover story that would appear later in December. As the first retired athlete to receive the award since its inception in 1954, he was, in his words, “literally floored” when he received word. Two tennis players—Billie Jean King in 1972 and Chris Evert in 1976—had previously received the award while still active on the tour. But Arthur was the first athlete in any sport to be honored by Sports Illustrated for nonathletic accomplishments.

  Despite some embarrassment, he welcomed his selection as an affirmation of the value of former athletes such as Jackie Robinson, Senator Bill Bradley, and Justice Byron “Whizzer” White, individuals who had demonstrated a “lifelong commitment to political and social causes.” As he told Richard Finn of USA Today, “They were people who after their active days as an athlete were finished decided they were not finished. They were not going to rest on their athletic laurels and decided to do what they could do in society.”

  By all indications, Ashe was an extremely popular choice as Sportsman of the Year, and Moore did his best to dispel the notion that the magazine was honoring him as “a good victim.” “To give it to him for that reason, to somehow use the award as a eulogy while there is still time diminishes what Ashe has been,” concurred Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News. “Here is Arthur Ashe, who could sit it all out now, who could spend his remaining time with his wife and daughter and let others try to make everything right, still out there. . . . He goes from one podium to another, one city to another. He fights. He fights AIDS and racism and poverty.”

  Bernie Miklasz, writing in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, agreed: “This wasn’t a gesture of sympathy from the magazine but the recognition of a lifetime of achievement.” Among the hundreds of like-minded endorsements, perhaps the most emphatic came from Mike Celizic of the Bergen County Record, who claimed: “it’s impossible to argue against Ashe receiving any award. Whatever they give him isn’t enough for what he’s given—and continues to give—us.”

  This outpouring of affection and respect touched Arthur deeply. Appearances on ABC’s Good Morning America and NBC Nightly News allowed him to express his thanks to Sports Illustrated, the press, and the public at large for lavishing him with praise that he wasn’t sure he deserved. But the best way to repay these kindnesses, in his view, was to carry on with his public life for as long as he could. At this point, there was no indication his medical condition would worsen anytime soon, so he continued to make plans for activities that would take place well into the next year. Despite the inevitable problems facing him down the road, he felt strong and confident. “As Christmas drew near,” he recalled, “I had every reason to be happy.”41

  Arthur knew this situation could not last indefinitely, but the jolt that shattered his hopes came much sooner than he expected. On December 21, he helped Jeanne coordinate the celebration of Camera’s sixth birthday. It was a joyous occasion, a family milestone that he decided to capture on videotape. He assumed the role of videographer, a task that unexpectedly tested his strength and endurance. “Walking through the streets lugging the videocamera proved more onerous than I had thought,” he confessed, adding: “I was left feeling weak and tired, so that I did little for the next two days.”

  The realization his fatigue had little to do with carrying a heavy camera came on Christmas Eve, when he braved the cold to take a walk around his Upper East Side neighborhood. “I was startled by how freezing cold the air was,” he remembered. “I walked for about twenty minutes, but after five minutes I began to regret having come out at all. I was frozen to the bone and gasping for air.” The next day—as he, Jeanne, and Camera celebrated the Christmas morning ritual of opening presents—he remained concerned about his breathing. Not wanting to spoil the day, he kept his fears to himself as Camera tore open her brightly colored packages and Jeanne delighted in the Hasselblad camera he had picked out for her. But in the late afternoon, when it was time to resume a cherished family tradition of taking toys to needy families, he had to beg off.

  “When I was a boy, on Christmas, my father always took me late in the day to visit families who were less fortunate than we were,” he explained. “We brought food and toys—and Daddy always insisted that we give away not simply old toys but one or two of the new toys we had just received.” Continuing this generous tradition with Camera meant a great deal to him, and for the preceding three Christmases he had taken her to Harlem hospital wards to distribute toys. But on what he suspected would be his last Christmas, he just couldn’t manage it. While he felt terrible about skipping what he regarded as “the most important ritual of the day,” he had to face the fact that he simply “was not well enough” to risk going out into the cold.42

  His best hope, at this point, was to recover his strength in Florida, where he was scheduled to close out the year. The day after Christmas, the Ashes flew to Miami for a week of golf and relaxation interrupted only by a series of tennis clinics at Doral. The weather was ideal, and Jeanne’s parents and brother Claude joined them to help ring in the New Year. For the first few days, Arthur seemed to be on the road to recovery, but this trend didn’t last. While playing one of his last golf games of the year in a foursome that included his father-in-law, he noticed his breathing had become strained and irregular. He suddenly felt very tired even though he was “riding comfortably from tee to green in a golf cart.” Even more alarming, he soon began to cough. As he recalled, “the cough persisted,” and by the time he reached the seventh green he was on the verge of panic: “As I waited to putt, I took out my cellular telephone and called my main AIDS physician, Dr. Henry Murray, in New York. He advised me to see a doctor as soo
n as possible.”

  Thus began a trying week of uncertainty and worrisome medical examinations. A few hours after the call, he was at the office of Dr. Barry Baker, an AIDS specialist, who immediately ordered a chest X-ray. When the X-ray proved inconclusive, Ashe made an appointment with Dr. Michael Collins at Miami Baptist Hospital. Fourteen years earlier, Collins had been one of the New York cardiologists who treated his heart disease. At this point, Arthur doubted his shortness of breath had anything to do with AIDS, and he hoped Collins would confirm that his current problem could be traced to a partial blockage of the arteries leading to the heart. Back in September, following his heart attack, tests had revealed a blockage that would have to be addressed sooner or later, probably via an angioplasty. So he assumed his current problem could be alleviated in that manner.

  An echocardiogram soon proved otherwise, however. The problem did not reside in his heart but rather in his lungs, though it would take additional tests to determine the exact source of his shortness of breath and persistent cough. Relieved that the doctors at Miami Baptist did not seem especially alarmed by his condition—not enough, at least, to admit him to the hospital—he spent the afternoon playing golf with Butch Buchholz and two other friends. Though still short of breath, he began to think that perhaps he was just suffering from an ordinary cold. That evening he and Jeanne had a great time at Joe’s Stone Crab in Miami Beach, one of their favorite South Florida eateries, and by the time he went to bed he felt “pretty fine,” as he later put it.

  The next day, however, brought him back to a sobering reality. It was New Year’s Eve and the closing day of his Doral tennis clinic. He managed to finish the clinic without incident, but during an afternoon golf game he found it difficult to walk more than a few steps from his golf cart. By the end of the round, it was clear “that in addition to angina discomfort, the mere act of drawing air into my lungs was causing me some pain.” Though alarmed, he did his best to keep up with the family’s New Year’s Eve festivities—dinner with Jeanne’s parents, her brother Claude and his wife, and a few friends, followed by a small house party at Claude’s home. But long before midnight his labored breathing prompted Jeanne to call an end to the day. Fearing Arthur’s condition was worsening, she convinced him it would be advisable to shorten their stay in Florida and return to New York.