People June 20. 2016. [antikvár]

editor's letterA Great DayBACK IN 2001,ASAN EDITOR FOR Time, I spent the day with Muhammad Ali on his farm in Michigan. When I met him, he was seated at a conference table making a drawing. In the center of the paper was a boxing ring with two stick figures: a larger one that he had labeled "Muhammad Ali," and a much smaller one called "Joe Frazier." With a black marker, he tapped out hundreds of dots all around the boxing ring, all the way out to the edge of the paper, each dot representing a spectator. I sat down and he showed off his artwork. "Thrilla in Manila," he said, struggling to speak in a low, gravelly whisper. By this point he had been battling Parkinson's for nearly two decades, and it had diminished his verbal skills. (His wife, Lonnie, and his close friend Howard Bingham patiently helped translate during my conversationwith him.) But Ali was still sharp, and he had retained his famous sense of humor. I'd come to interview him about director Michael Mann's movie A/;' and when I told him that Will Smith had put on 30 lbs. of muscle and transformed his body into a replica of Ali's in his prime, the Champ looked up from his drawing and joked, "They say we all look alike." Ali still enjoyed shocking his audience. But in the endafter all his bravado in the ring and his politics that were so controversial during the civil rights and Vietnam erasAli seems more like a prophet than a provocateur. He followed his heart and spoke his mind and willingly paid the price for doing so. He refused to bow to disease just as he had refused to bow to bigotry. The greatest thing about the man who called himself the Greatest is his inspiring, unforgettable courage.JESS CAGLE, EDITORIAL DIRECTOR