Fifty-one years after he departed on the Dog, Joe came back in September 2010 to receive the Order of the Palmetto, the highest honor that can be bestowed upon a civilian in South Carolina. At the ceremony, held at the Henry C. Chambers Waterfront Park, near where, years before, Dolly Frazier had peeled and deveined shrimp from the ocean trawlers, Governor Mark Sanford observed, “It is magnificent when you think about the odyssey, the journey that has been his life.” Frazier had asked Kalinsky to come along with him on the trip, during which he visited with relatives and old boyhood friends. Along with all but two of her children—Joe and Mazie—Dolly had been gone now for ten years, led to her crypt deep in the woods by horse-drawn carriage. Twelve hundred people had come to her funeral. When Joe and Kalinsky stopped by the house where Joe was born and grew up, they found it weathered by age but still standing. In the back yard, the hog pen was gone but the big oak where Joe hung his do-it-yourself heavy bag filled with rags and corncobs was still there. Upon seeing it again, he walked up to it and wrapped it in a hug.
* * *
Finally, Denise had Joe to herself. Although it was not the big house on the hill that he had once promised her, the twentieth-floor apartment that she had found them at the Windsor Arms on the Ben Franklin Parkway was more than enough room for the two of them. For Joe, it was an overall better arrangement than the one he had at the gym, which now had a history of unpaid taxes and had become increasingly hazardous with each passing year. Richard Slone would remember an occasion when Frazier slipped and went head-over-heels down the steep, narrow steps that led to his living quarters. “When he got to the bottom, I thought he was dead,” said Slone. “But he popped up and with a laugh said, ‘They’re tryin’ to get me.’” Emotionally, leaving the gym would be a sad parting. But the Windsor Arms had an elevator, and he had Denise there to care for him, which she did in the same unstinting way she always had.
The years had flown by since Denise had met him at the City Squire in New York, after the Mathis fight. She had been so young then. When she looked back at herself, she would sometimes think how “ridiculous” it had been for her to follow her heart and not her head when it came to her relationship with Joe. For years, good friends would urge her to see other men, and occasionally, when she and Joe were on the outs, she would go on dates and pretend to enjoy herself. But she had fallen in love with Joe and would always remain in love with him, even though she found herself troubled as the years passed by an unintended consequence of their affair. “The time he spent with me was time he could have been spending with his children, taking them to the movies or whatever,” said Denise. “Now that I am older, I can see how selfish that was of me.” Weatta said that Denise apologized to her and that she appreciated that. “Look, it takes two to tango,” said Weatta. “My father should have married Denise once he and my mother were divorced.” But it was enough for Denise that it was just the two of them now, and that they would grow old together. Sadly, there would not be enough time.
Even well into his sixties, Joe had been spared the tragic outcomes of his profession. With the exception of George Foreman—who had struck gold pitching grills and mufflers—nearly all of his most celebrated opponents came to a sad ending. Eddie Machen: plagued by clinical depression and dead at age forty from a fall from a second-story apartment window. Oscar Bonavena: gunned down at age thirty-three outside of a brothel in Reno when the owner caught him sleeping with his wife. Buster Mathis: beset by an array of health problems as his weight ballooned to 550 pounds, the victim of a heart attack at age fifty-one. Jerry Quarry: unable to dress or feed himself, claimed by dementia pugilistica at age fifty-three; his younger brother Mike would die at fifty-five of the same syndrome seven years later. Jimmy Ellis: he also battled dementia pugilistica and would outlive Joe by three years, dying at age seventy-three in 2013. And Ali: he appeared to become only more diminished as the years went by. By comparison, despite having cut off a big toe while mowing the lawn and having severely burned his arm taking the cap off a still-hot car radiator, Joe seemed to be doing better than he could have hoped for. Even so, he battled diabetes and hypertension and was in and out of the hospital for surgeries on his neck, shoulder, and back. Lens implant surgeries were performed by Dr. Yanoff in 1997 and 1998 that corrected the vision in both of his eyes to 20/20.
Doctors who examined Joe in his later years at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania observed that he had developed “significant cognitive impairment.” Given the warrior style that he favored and the punishment he had received, it is likely that he also came away from the sport with some degree of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a progressive degenerative disease found in people who have suffered recurring brain trauma. Common among boxers who have had long careers, it was known as dementia pugilistica since it was addressed by Dr. Harrison Martland in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1928. By virtue of the work performed at the CTE Center at the Boston University School of Medicine, in conjunction with the Concussion Legacy Foundation, it has since been discovered in football players and athletes in other contact sports. Of 111 former National Football League players whose brains were autopsied, 110 of them were found to have CTE, which can only be detected after death by an autopsy of the brain tissue. It has been linked to an array of behavioral symptoms that could be found in Frazier, including a lack of judgment, explosive anger, anxiety and depression, binge drinking, and sexual promiscuity. According to Dr. Robert Cantu, clinical professor of neurology and neurosurgery and cofounder of the CTE Center at the Boston University School of Medicine, the presence of these indicators would suggest “an overwhelming likelihood of CTE.” Dr. Cantu added, “I would say it is consistent with the profile we so often see, but we would not be able to nail that down unless an autopsy was performed.” Frazier would not receive an autopsy.
Joe was in a good mood when I visited with him at his apartment in June 2009. He was sixty-five and still on the go. As he sat at his dining room table and picked at a bowl of cherries, he told me he was leaving in a few days for the United Kingdom for a series of appearances. It was a trip he had been both looking forward to and dreading. Flying still spooked Joe. Were it not for the small matter of the Atlantic Ocean, he would have packed up and driven to the UK, even if it required extending his journey by days and days. Sheepishly, he said, “If there was only a way I could just snap my fingers and be there.” On the wall above a sofa hung the classic photograph from the Fight of the Century of Ali buckling to the canvas in the fifteenth round. Joe looked over at it, chuckled, and said, “There he goes!” Thirty-eight years had passed since he had delivered that blow and still it gave him a thrill. I asked if it upset him that Ali aide Dr. Ferdie Pacheco had called him “dumb” in the documentary Thrilla in Manila. “Ah, they rip me so Muhammad can come out smelling like a rose,” he said. “Guys who were on his payroll, they would say anything. And Muhammad, we were friends back in the beginning. When he was out of boxing for dodging the draft, I went down to see President Nixon to help him get his license back. I went along with him because he seemed sincere. But whenever a crowd was around, he would go off on me and shout: ‘Joe Frazer is no champion!’”
Joe chose a cherry from the bowl and sucked on it. “He said once I would have been nothing without him. But what would he have been without me?”
Less than two years later, Joe’s health began to fail. When he flew to Las Vegas in September 2011 for the Floyd Mayweather–Victor Ortiz bout at the MGM Grand, he appeared gaunt as he sat at a promotional event with Ken Norton and Leon Spinks and signed autographs. Richard Slone, who now lived in Las Vegas, had not seen him in five years and had prepared an itinerary for him that would have been in keeping with the pace he once set: they would have dinner, hit a casino, and perhaps stop at one of the local strip clubs. But as soon as he saw Joe, Slone could see that he was not up to the chase. When Slone picked him up at the South Point Hotel and Casino, Joe told him, “I think somebody poisoned me. Eve
rything I taste is like metal.” At an Asian restaurant that evening, Joe ordered as lavishly as he always did yet could only eat a half cup of soup. Eyeing the unfinished food, he told Slone, “Get them to pack it up.” Slone would later say, “Seeing him in that state was very shocking.” At McCarran International Airport that Sunday, as Joe sat in a wheelchair and waited for his flight back to Philadelphia to be announced, L.A. matchmaker Don Chargin spotted him and stopped by to say hello. Forty-five years had elapsed since Chargin had worked with him on his bout against Eddie Machen.
“Whenever he saw me through the years, he called me ‘Machen,’” said Chargin. “When I saw him at the airport, he was in a wheelchair and told me that he thought he was coming down with something. He said, ‘Hey, Machen, go get me a bottle of water, would ya?’”
Within days of arriving back in Philadelphia, he was seen at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Denise was by his side. By now, he had shed thirty-seven pounds in less than a year. Initially, it was suspected that his weight loss and poor appetite were related to his “relatively mild” dementia, yet in the assessment of his attending physician, a “more sinister condition such as [a] . . . malignancy” could not be excluded. On September 23, he was diagnosed with hepatocellular carcinoma—liver cancer—which develops in a setting of chronic liver inflammation and is linked to chronic viral hepatitis infection or exposure to alcohol. The tumor was large and inoperable. In the ensuing weeks, he was in and out of the hospital, where he underwent chemoembolization to stem the blood flow to the growth and later palliative radiation therapy to keep him comfortable. With the help of her sister Trudy, Denise saw to his needs as his condition deteriorated in the final weeks. Trudy would remember that while he was still able to speak, she and Denise one day joined him in song. “We were in the room with him and he turned on his boom box,” said Trudy. “We held hands with him and sang ‘My Way.’”
Even loved ones were discouraged from stopping by and seeing him. “Joe did not want anyone to see the condition he was in,” said Denise. But he asked Rodney to get him a bottle of Aramis, his favorite cologne, and Michael Averona stopped by the apartment with a prayer blanket. Averona would remember, “He was a shadow of himself. Sickly, withdrawn. I looked at him and started to cry. He pulled the covers back, scooted himself up, and raised his left fist in the air. He said, ‘Don’t do that. I’m gonna be all right.’” But he soon slipped into stillness. Marvis sat with him and held his hand in prayer. With only hours remaining, Weatta and her husband Gary Collins came by with Mazie, his only remaining sibling. She had been with him sixty-seven years before when he had come into the world on that January day in Beaufort and she was with him at the end. On the evening of November 7, 2011, he passed away with Denise lying at his side.
“Daughter, be sure they clean me up and dress me nice,” Joe had once told Weatta. Denise chose a blue suit for him to be buried in. She asked Rodney—who cut hair in his spare time—to give his uncle a trim at the funeral parlor. Sensing that he was apprehensive, the undertaker told him, “Rodney, the only way you are going to be able to do this is if you talk to him like he is still alive.” So Rodney secured a cape over his chest and began conversing with him. “Uncle Billy, I’m going to shape you. I’m going to clip the top of your head and then your sides.” Rodney then groomed his mustache and got out the bottle of cologne that he had purchased for him. “Uncle Billy, you asked me to get you some Aramis,” Rodney said. “I never got a chance to give it to you, but here it is.” He sprayed him with it, packed up his gear, and left.
Four thousand people attended the funeral at the Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church. Helping to defray the cost of it was Floyd Mayweather, who volunteered close to seventy thousand dollars. Florence and her children came to the church in one car, Denise and Trudy came in another, and Sharon Hatch, Sheri Gibson, and Janice Cottom and their children came in still another. Ali—five years before his own death in June 2016—was guided to a seat by his wife, Lonnie, as other stars of the boxing world looked on: Larry Holmes, Leon and Michael Spinks, Bernard Hopkins, Gerry Cooney, and others. Civil rights activist Reverend Jesse Jackson called Frazier “an ordinary Joe who did extraordinary things.” When Jackson asked the attendees to “rise and show your love” in remarks during the service, Ali stood unsteadily and clapped. At the end of the three-hour service, the remains were taken to Ivy Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia and placed in a temporary crypt. Later, they would be accorded a memorial more befitting of a champion: a handsome granite crypt with a picture of Joe Frazier in his boxing stance. Surrounded by flowers, it is just what Joe would have hoped for, a place far from South Carolina and its deep, dark woods.
* * *
Someone once said that to bear a grudge and not forgive someone is like swallowing a cup of poison and expecting the other person to die. I occasionally thought of that phrase as I pondered the life of Joe Frazier, a good man but not a perfect man, and wondered how long he held on to the anger he carried. Did he ever find a way to let it go and forgive, or did it just eat him up? I was hopeful that it would be the former and came upon a heartening clue when Eva Futch sent me a copy of a letter that Joe sent her husband, Eddie, in 2000. The occasion was an award Eddie was to receive from the NAACP. (Futch passed away the following year, at age ninety.)
The letter read:
Eddie:
Please forgive me for not being able to be with you on this special occasion. Receiving an award from the NAACP is a great honor.
You are truly a man worth honoring. You are loyal to the titles father, husband, friend and Trainer. Ever since I have known you, you have been nothing less than compassionate. And in the sport of boxing, that is something you rarely see.
I remember the ‘Thrilla in Manila,’ the fans were on their feet and the butterfly and I were at war. We had both taken severe punishment and I could not see out of my eyes. Between the 14th and 15th rounds, Eddie, you lovingly looked into my eyes, put your hand on my shoulder and said, ‘it’s over, Son.’ I was upset—I thought I could go on—but in your infinite wisdom and compassion, you halted the fight. Now that I am older and wiser, I see the wisdom of that decision. You loved me—and you loved my family. You wanted me to live to enjoy my children and grandchildren.
I wish I could be with you tonight, my friend. Even though I am not there, know that the name Eddie Futch is forever engraved in my heart.
Sincerely,
Smokin’ Joe Frazier
Given the hostility that underscored their timeless fights, it would have been cheering to think that Joe and Ali had come to the same soft landing. But it was always hard to know. In their final years, a reporter would come along, catch Joe in a sour mood, and suddenly, the old grudge would be back in the headlines. People who knew him for years told me they were sure that Frazier carried his animus for Ali to the grave, that he had been wounded so deeply that he could never let it go. But others were certain that he had come to peace with Ali, particularly those who knew him from his boyhood days in South Carolina. Nearly all told me some variation of “Billy never hated a soul in his life.” No one can know for certain, of course; any conclusion either way is perhaps clouded by your own thoughts of how forgiving you would be in the same circumstances. Probably, some of it also has to do with your own belief in the power of reconciliation, how you define “unforgivable,” and the enchantment of happy endings. But then a story was told to me by Darren Prince, CEO and president of the Prince Marketing Group.
While it is fairly well known that Joe and Ali got together at the NBA All-Star Game at the First Union Center in February 2002 and brokered a peace, only Prince and a handful of others were aware of what had occurred the evening before. According to Prince, he received a call the day before the game from Ali representative Harlan Werner. Lonnie Ali had contacted Werner and asked to pass along an invitation to Joe, Marvis, and Prince for dinner at the Alis’ hotel in Philadelphia. Remembering how Frazier had reacted to the offer to join Ali and his
wife on the red carpet at the movie premiere, Prince was not optimistic. In fact, he was certain that Joe would say no when he told him of the invitation. But Frazier surprised him. “All right,” he said. “I’ll go see the Butterfly.”
Joined by one of his associate agents, Nick Cordasco, Prince arrived at the hotel with Joe and Marvis and got on the elevator. As they were riding up, Cordasco looked down and gasped. He grabbed Prince by the arm and whispered, “Bro, Joe has a gun in his sock.” When they got off the elevator, Prince pulled Marvis aside and said, “Marvis, what the fuck, Pop has a gun in his sock?” Marvis doubled over in laughter. He told Prince, “Pop got a license to carry that years ago from being harassed and having some issues. Nothin’ to worry about.” Prince remembered, “So that kind of loosened up the mood. And then we knocked on the door.”
Lonnie opened it, gave Joe a hug, and led them inside the suite. Ali was sitting on a couch. Nearby were his longtime friend and photographer Howard Bingham and Bingham’s son, Damon. With a big smile, Joe half trotted over to his old rival. “Having been around him, I could see it had been a rough day for Ali,” said Prince. “Maybe it was his medication. He was bloated.” But Prince would remember that Ali beamed when he saw Joe. He leaned forward and Joe helped him up. He grabbed Ali under his arm and Ali embraced him in the hug. “Like a baby, Muhammad stood there with his face on Joe’s shoulder,” said Prince. “Both of them had tears rolling down their faces.” Prince remembered that Lonnie said, “Joe, thank you. Muhammad just found peace.”
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