Days of Grace

by Arthur Ashe

  When Cordell Village reached the size of sixty-five apartment units, some strains in the business began to show. Our rents were falling short of expenses, and we put off our plans to expand. My brother and I were struggling to stay afloat, hoping against hope to succeed, when without any warning Iraq’s Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. At first, I saw no connection between Saddam and my investment in Cordell Village. Soon, however, the link was clear. When President Bush ordered the buildup of forces in the Persian Gulf in August 1990, we, the owners of Cordell Village, were on our way to ruin. Overnight, half of the apartments at Cordell Village emptied as our resident Marines headed for the sands of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

  In autumn 1990, not a moment too soon, we sold the complex to the people who had been managing it for us. They were happy with the deal; I was ecstatic to be getting out, because my financial loss was huge and growing steadily. It easily exceeded my Liberian disaster. Once again, my managers at ProServ took my failure calmly. But once again, I batted an eye.

  I suppose the word must be out that I fancy myself as an entrepreneurial type, because hardly a week passes without a new business offer coming my way. Most involve tennis. I listen politely and refuse almost all. Surprisingly few are unethical, and these I reject out of hand. The last thing I would want to do is to contribute to the current crisis in business ethics in the United States. I remember my shock when I learned that a benefactor had given $20 million to the Harvard Business School to start a program in business ethics—not to increase productivity, or to improve worker knowledge, but for ethics. That is a selfless gift, but also a sad commentary on the state of affairs.

  Although I still believe that I have the makings of a captain of industry, my record has been much better when I have worked for other people, including as a consultant. I am proud of the length of my association with my key employers, and I like to think that I have returned in kind their faith in me. For twenty-two years I have been with Head USA, the manufacturer of ski and tennis equipment and clothing; Head stuck with me even after losing a few accounts in the South because of my race. Since 1970, also, I have been with the Doral Resort and Country Club, the largest resort in southern Florida. I cannot forget that the Doral made me its director of tennis only nine years after the Admiral Hotel nearby refused to house me during the Orange Bowl tournament in Miami, although all the other junior players—who were white—stayed there. For more than sixteen years, I have been a consultant or columnist with Tennis magazine. My relationships as a columnist with the Washington Post and a consultant with Le Coq Sportif, the sports-clothing manufacturer, also go back many years. The longevity and human quality of these connections mean far more to me than the money they bring.

  WITHOUT QUESTION, MY single most fascinating and satisfying involvement outside of my family since my retirement has been as a board member of the Aetna Life and Casualty Company, where I have served for the past ten years. Membership on a board probably seems like a fairly humdrum business connection, but it is not. Tennis led me to Aetna, but my work with Aetna has taken me far away from the life of a tennis professional. From the inside, I have looked into the heart of a major American commercial enterprise, but one of a special kind, involved in the crucial matters of health, welfare, and finance. More than a hundred years old, and with 45,000 employees, Aetna is one of the giants of the American corporate world. Its assets total just under a hundred billion dollars; its income in 1991 was around nineteen billion. Aetna is the largest diversified financial-services firm in the United States.

  At some point in the 1970s, Aetna took over sponsorship of the World Cup, a tennis competition that pitted the United States against Australia, when the Australians were still a major power. The first Aetna-sponsored Cup tie in the Hartford area was memorable for me most of all because, after eighteen straight losses to Rod Laver, I finally beat him. But at least one other feature of the competition as sponsored by Aetna made the tournament worthwhile. Each year, before the first match, a private dinner brought the players together with Aetna’s top executives. For four or five consecutive years, I sat at dinner next to Aetna’s president, William “Bill” Bailey. Not once did he and I talk about tennis. Instead, we explored social and political matters, including the issue of health care.

  In the late 1970s, I became a consultant to Aetna. Previously, I had served as a consultant to Philip Morris, the tobacco company, along with my fellow tennis players Roy Emerson, Manuel Santana, and Rafael Osuna. Philip Morris’s president, Joseph Cullman III, became a second father to me, an invaluable mentor; and to this day, I remain close to him. I remember that almost from the start of my consultantship I had been troubled by the link between tobacco and lung disease; yet, unquestionably, tobacco had helped tennis when tennis needed help. The first sponsor of the U.S. Open in 1968, when I won it, was Marlboro cigarettes. Virginia Slims played an even more decisive role in the rise of professional women’s tennis. This link between smoking and disease troubled some of us among the players, but it did not become a major issue until later.

  I had also served as a consultant to the U.S. Army, after the Army suffered through some unpleasant incidents of racial friction among servicemen, in West Germany in particular. With Aetna, my task was somewhat different. I assisted Bill Bailey and his colleagues with minority recruitment, and especially the recruitment of employees who might become mid-level management and rise even higher within the company. At that point in the history of American race relations after the civil-rights struggle of the 1950s and ‘60s, many firms were competing to secure the most promising black American prospects in business. Aetna was eager to do well here, and I tried to help as best I could.

  Evidently, Aetna was satisfied with my effort. One day in July 1982, I was with the Davis Cup team in St. Louis, where we were playing Sweden. It was the day McEnroe and Wilander played their unforgettable match lasting more than six hours. I had returned exhausted to my hotel, ready to fall asleep, when I found a note to call Bill Bailey in Hartford. I returned his call at once.

  “Arthur, there is a matter of some urgency I need to talk to you about.”

  “Can we talk about it now, Bill?”

  “No, I don’t think so. When you are back in New York, in the city, I’ll come down at your convenience and we’ll meet at your apartment and we’ll have a talk.”

  “At my apartment?”

  “Yes, that would be best, I think.”

  “Can’t you give me a hint what you want to talk to me about, Bill?”

  “Sorry, Arthur,” he replied. “I can’t. It has to be face to face.”

  My first reaction was one of panic—a relatively mild attack, but panic nevertheless. What had I done wrong? What gaffe had I committed? What terrible rumor or report had Bailey heard about me that he wanted confirmed or denied? I was completely on the wrong track. When Bailey finally settled down in an armchair in the living room of our apartment on East Seventy-second Street, he did not complain about a gaffe or question me about a rumor.

  “Arthur,” he said, “we want you on the board of directors of Aetna.”

  I was flabbergasted. As the nature of his offer finally sank in, I became more and more elated at the prospect. I was happy for two reasons above all. First, the company had nothing to do with sports. Second, although it would take me into the corporate world, it also had everything to do with serving the basic needs of the masses of people. For me—as I sought to find ways of maturing and expanding the range of my activities and usefulness, my striving and achieving—this was almost the ideal assignment. I stood for election to the board. As Bailey assured me would probably happen, I was duly elected a director; and I have served on the board ever since.

  At our first meeting at the headquarters in Hartford, I had fresh reasons to marvel at the fact that I had been asked. At the age of thirty-nine, I was by far the youngest member of the board. And virtually everyone else was a superstar of American business. I sat in the company of Warren Anderson, the p
resident of Union Carbide; David Roderick, chairman of the board of U.S. Steel; Randolph Blatz, chairman of the board of Insilco; William Donaldson, founder of the asset-management firm Donaldson Lufkin Jenrette; Bayliss Manning, the former dean of the Stanford University Law School and a partner at the prestigious law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; Barbara Franklin, who served as the second Secretary of Commerce in the Bush administration, and her husband, Wallace Barnes, who heads a $500 million company called the Barnes Group; and Jack Donahue of Pittsburgh, the owner of Federated Investors and the largest single stockholder in Aetna.

  This was extraordinary company for an aging jock. The quality of the board was impressive. Make no mistake—I hardly felt an iota of social insecurity. These were powerful, affluent people; but I had met and socialized with many powerful, affluent people in my long career. Moreover, as a professional player I had traveled all over the world, which also put me at ease in elite company. No, I felt little insecurity on the social side. But did I have enough business acumen to make a contribution to this group? That was another matter. Bailey set me straight: “Everybody asks what they think of as stupid questions at first. Just ask your questions, like everyone else, and they’ll be answered, and that will be that.” Since I have never been one to feign knowledge I do not have, I at once felt much more comfortable on that score.

  But had I been brought in merely for window dressing? Only the most obtuse, self-deceiving black Americans fail to ask this question when they find themselves invited into an otherwise white circle. I knew that I was not the first African American board member at Aetna, but I also knew that I was only the second, and had been asked to serve on the board after the first, Hobart Taylor, had died. Was I merely a token of Aetna’s interest in social and cultural diversity? I wanted to be more than a token; I wanted to be an essential member of the board. Fortunately, I was soon satisfied that the board needed me, or someone like me; someone who was not a chief executive officer, with a gaping chasm between his or her lofty administrative position and the mass of poor or even middle-class people; someone who brought a different cultural history to discussions; someone who was acutely sensitive to the problems hovering over the health and financial services at the heart of Aetna, for minorities and others as well.

  I had never served on the board of directors of a business before, let alone a business with such vast resources. At first, I was impressed by the staggering sums of money we voted on—money transferred from one part of the company to another, or appropriated for a special reason, such as the opening of a new subsidiary in Mexico or Malaysia. However, the novelty of big money quickly passed. I had to come to terms with some of the contradictions involved in the board’s duties. We vote on every important aspect of the company but do not manage Aetna, which has its own managers. We vote on all major decisions affecting the company, but these decisions have been thoroughly screened by the time they reach us; almost all of our votes are unanimous. Are we then simply a debating society and a rubber stamp? No. We serve the stockholders and must answer to them at the annual meetings. In the long term, the company is in our hands.

  At almost every board meeting, as polite and as civilized as we are, we feel the sharp tension between abstract ideals and our obligation to perform for the stockholders. We face the phenomenon of redlining, for example, practiced by many banks and insurance companies. The lender draws a red line on a map. He or she lends to people on one side, but not to people on the other. Those on the other side of the red line are frequently people of color. The lender speaks of the need for prudent investment. The people cry for justice.

  As an African American, I feel an obligation to speak up for the people across the red line. My special task, however, is to speak so that we come closer to a solution that will satisfy both the lender and the people. Therefore, the task is also to avoid at all times hypocrisy, demagoguery, and insult. In this respect, too, my experience as a board member has been gratifying. I do not have to convince the CEOs and the superlawyers around me that justice must be for all. From a practical as well as an ethical point of view, they know that justice must be for all. They know better than most that sound business decisions must result in more than an instant windfall of dollars. The long-term consequences of our decisions will also translate into dollars—or a lack of dollars—in the future. If you prick a CEO, he bleeds, too. I will never forget Warren Anderson’s personal agony as he faced the tragic consequences of the accident at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, in 1984, when more than 3,000 people were killed.

  Probably far more than the color of my skin, my personal assault by heart disease and AIDS has helped me to find my identity as a board member. While I am surely not the first board member to fall seriously ill, my first heart attack, at the age of thirty-six, undoubtedly raised my interest in health insurance and life insurance to an acute pitch. If my interest started to flag, my second heart operation, in 1983, the year after I joined the board, definitely brought me back into line.

  Ironically, I had just attended an Aetna board meeting in Hartford in April 1983 when this second round of heart trouble began. After the meeting, I was in a limousine with other board members, on our way to catch the company helicopter for a swift ride back to New York City, when a pain in my chest became so uncomfortable that I knew I could not get on that aircraft. When we had arrived near the helicopter, I got out of the car without raising an alarm, then spoke casually to everyone else after they had gotten out. “Sorry, guys,” I said. “I just realized I forgot to do something. I have to take care of it. Go on without me.” Then I turned to the driver. “Please take me to Hartford hospital. Right now.” Two months later, in New York City, I underwent my double-bypass operation.

  My discovery that I had AIDS complicated my concern with health care in ways that I could never have anticipated. Once I found out I was infected, I informed the chairman of Aetna, Jim Lynn, and later passed the word to his successor, Ron Compton. I also revealed it in confidence to Bayliss Manning, the senior member of the board in length of service, and my mentor there. I would have resigned if they had suggested it, but all were eager for me to continue to serve as long as I could.

  More than thinking of myself as a spokesman for racial minorities and the poor in the inner sanctum of this mighty life-insurance company, I perhaps more acutely believe that I represent the army of the sick in America and around the world. In a way, I also represent all male gays, all hemophiliacs, and all intravenous drug users who might become infected with HIV. And perhaps I also represent the dying.

  Without becoming morbid or unduly sentimental, I try to respond practically to these feelings. I accept my board membership on a giant insurance company as a trust. Thus in 1992, I was distressed to read in The Village Voice, a newspaper I read regularly and respect, an article attacking Aetna and me, by name. The writer accused Aetna of cruelly denying insurance policies to people who are either HIV-positive or suffering from AIDS. I was accused of colluding with the company despite my own condition. The truth is that I would never have remained on the Aetna board if it had such a policy; but I have certainly voted in support of prudent and sensible changes in connection with individual life-insurance policies. At a certain point, Aetna decided to stop selling individual health-insurance policies to anyone. No individual is exempt from this decision. We did so for a simple, sufficient reason: we were losing money on individual policies. To make a profit, we would have had to raise premiums sharply. We insure groups of people. We absolutely do not require these groups to test its members or its prospective members for AIDS. And most groups do not require tests for basic individual coverage, only for excessive amounts of coverage.

  I am proud of Aetna and of my association with the company. In Hartford, the company has enjoyed for many years the reputation of being an excellent employer and a conscientious citizen. In fact, many people there used to talk about “Mother Aetna,” who takes care of her children and is a concerned neig
hbor. It has also developed the reputation of being a fair employer of minorities, including blacks.

  In the absence of a national health-care program, which I hope will come one day to the United States, Aetna and companies like it stand between many people and the destitution caused by the runaway cost of medical treatments. That fact is very important to me.

  MY LAST IMPORTANT area of work since my retirement has been in the world of social programs and foundations—that is, those programs and foundations I have started or helped to start. The first was the Ashe-Bollettieri Cities program, or ABC. Then came, with a somewhat different focus, an organization called Athletes Career Connection (ACC). Still later I formed the Safe Passage Foundation. And most recently, I established a foundation in my own name to fight AIDS. These are my main ventures into the world of public service.

  As the name suggests, I started ABC with Nick Bollettieri, who is probably the most famous tennis instructor in the world and the head of the Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Bradenton, Florida. Nick has a gift for working with the young. At the academy and elsewhere, he has nurtured and trained some of the finest players in tennis, including Jimmy Arias, Andre Agassi, Jim Courier, Monica Seles, and Aaron Krickstein. I myself have known Nick since I was fifteen years old. Originally from Pelham, which borders the Bronx in New York, Nick likes to stress that despite his fame he is basically an average guy from a neighborhood where Italians, Jews, Irish, and blacks lived together in harmony. If so, he is above average in almost all other ways. A master salesman, promoter, and teacher, he is a man of high energy and practical enthusiasms.

  ABC had its germination one day at Roland Garros Stadium in Paris in 1987, when Nick and I sat together watching one of his charges play a match at the French Open. Between points, we were talking about the deteriorating conditions in American cities, about violent crime and drug abuse and rampant juvenile delinquency, when Nick turned to me almost explosively.