The Greatest

In March of 1963, seventeen year-old me and my parents went on a vacation to Miami Beach, Florida.  We stayed at the Eden Roc Hotel, a very fancy place then.  Those were halcyon days for me.  I was the only child left at home as all my brothers were out in the world on their own.  I was a senior in high school counting the days until graduation with several letters of acceptance in my pocket from very good universities asking me to join their freshman class that fall.  I remember several events from that trip.

One morning I walked into the hotel’s coffee shop by myself to have breakfast.  I sat at the counter with my back to a group of teenage girls sitting at a nearby table.  Before I left, the waitress told me all the girls were looking at and talking about me.  I didn’t believe her.  Why would they be doing that?  I had such self-confidence.

One night there was to be a hotel-organized party for the teenagers whose families were guests at the hotel.  What a frightening idea!  I was hiding in our hotel room that afternoon when a girl my age knocked at the door.  I opened it and she came in.  She was there to invite me to come to the party.  I was non-committal.  I didn’t go.  Too scary!

Another night my parents and I, along with my mother’s sister, Aunt Babe, and her husband, Uncle Jack, went to a night club.  As part of the entertainment, a professional male-female dance team performed.  Afterwards, they invited members of the audience to join a contest where they could dance the dance of their choice.  I thought it would be cool to dance “the twist” with the very attractive female dance pro.  In the middle of my public debut, the male dancer picked me up and twirled me around on his shoulders like they do in professional wrestling.  At first I resisted, but that proved to be useless.  Everybody laughed, but later when the audience was asked who should win the trophy for best male dancer, I think they felt sorry for me and I won.  I still have a photo of me and the trophy, but sadly I no longer have the trophy.

Another of my mother’s relatives was there in Miami Beach as well, my Uncle Sam Friedland.  He was not really my uncle; he was married to my mother’s first cousin, but we always called him uncle.  One afternoon, he invited me, along with a couple of teenage girls whose families he knew from his hometown of Rochester, New York, to accompany him on a “business trip” to nearby Fort Lauderdale.  We went on the beach there (which was popularized by the 1960 film, Where the Boys Are) to see how many of the vacationing college students were wearing clothes manufactured by Champion Knitwear (now Champion Athleticwear), for whom he was a salesman.

On the way back to the hotel, Uncle Sam invited me to join him the next day when he was going to the 5th Street Gym in Miami Beach.  It was a well-known site where professional boxers trained.  I was a big fight fan, so I gladly accepted his invitation.  From the street, you had to walk up a long staircase to get to the second floor’s dingy gym.  I sat and marveled at the many boxers I recognized from TV fights, such as Florentino Fernandez and Mike DeJohn.      

However, the hightlight of this day and of this vacation trip was when Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. (later to be known to the world as Muhammad Ali) and a small entourage of young black men entered the gym.  He was all of twenty-one years old and a good looking guy, tall and well built, dressed in a three-piece suit.  Ali had just won a unanimous decision over Doug Jones, a fight I had seen on television.  He immediately started talking to a group of waiting reporters gathered at the gym about wanting to fight the reigning heavyweight champion, Charles “Sonny” Liston, whom he called an “ugly bear.”

Uncle Sam was a friend of Ali’s trainer, Angelo Dundee, whose fighters trained at the 5th Street Gym.  When there was a lull between all the talking Ali was doing with the journalists who were eating it all up, Uncle Sam introduced himself to Ali and showed him the t-shirt he had commissioned at Champion Knitwear.  It was all white with Ali’s image on the front and the words which Ali had coined, “I am the Greatest.” Ali immediately stripped to his waist and put on the t-shirt, strutting around to show it off.  Before leaving, Uncle Sam introduced me to Ali.  We shook hands.  I was taught to always give someone a firm handshake, but Ali perhaps thought he would crush my hand if he had done that, so his handshake was not firm.  No problem!

This past Friday, Muhammad Ali died, fifty-three years after our historic encounter.  Rest in peace, champ.  You are the greatest.