Goodbye, Champ...

I cried yesterday.

We all lose people. Family. Friends. People in the public eye that we admire. But when I heard several days ago that Muhammad Ali had passed, it was something more. The loss was tangible. It was real. And like him or not, care that he is no longer living or not, his passing is a true and real loss for every inhabitant of this planet.

When I was a kid and boxing was still a revered and respected sport, with champions of the recently passed and present like Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, Max Schmelling, Rocky Grazianno; Joe Frazier, George Foreman, Ken Norton, etc., Ali stood tall above them all. I remember walking through the Weinstock's department store with my parents the night of the first Ali/Frazier fight, sneaking over to the stereo/tv department every chance I got, because they were playing the fight on the radio. But I remember more, the interview just a few weeks prior, with Howard Cosell on ABC's Wide World of Sports, and at the end, being in awe of this twenty-something young man who had stood before the world and said what so many at the time felt, "This war was wrong, and I will not go across the world to kill other people who were poor like me, people I have no quarrel with." At the time, I was eleven, and it was the first time a hero-athlete of mine had ever taken a stand for anything more important than whether lite beer tasted great or was less filling.

As years passed after the Champ had retired, we all saw Ali, now involved in civil rights and humanitarian causes; here in the States and all around the world. From feeding and sheltering the homeless, visiting schools to encourage children to read and obey their parents, and Senior Centers to let the elderly know they were appreciated, to small, war torn villages in long-forgotten lands, where he brought hope, and food, and medicine, to the halls of kings and despots, where he stood tall and eye-to-eye with them, convincing them their actions were inhumane, and in many cases, shaming them into releasing hostages, ending slaughter, and helping those without hope to live again.

Listening to the many speakers, known and not, during yesterday's service, people who knew and whose life's were a part of Ali's, one could not escape the conclusion that, aside from his incredible physical talents and stellar achievements, without his humorous, infectious personality, without the world-wide fame and acclaim, Cassius Marcelleas Clay, aka Muhammad Ali, was, quite simply, a very, very, very good, decent, and caring man. But as he was with virtually everything he did in his life, Ali was not just a good man, and his purpose of this Earth was for far more than pummeling his opponents into submission.

As I listened to President Clinton offer the final eulogy, all the words spoken previously, all the actions and speeches and writings of the Champ's I had heard and read over the years, everything that he did and believed and was throughout the decades; the purpose of all of it became calmly and abundantly clear; like that empowering instant you gain control of a bicycle for the first time, balance and speed and progress, the concepts all come together into one immense understanding, and you wonder why you hadn't been able to do this your entire life. The purpose of the life of Muhammad Ali now made perfect, reasonable, give-yourself-a-V8 forehead slap-sense.

The Champ was our example. He was our model. Muhammad Ali was what the very best us of could be.

In fact, early on in the service, Rabbi Michael Lerner said it most succinctly, asking those in attendance, "Did you ever hear him speak maliciously toward anyone? Even those in the government who took away everything he had for standing in prescription to his spiritual and religious principles, did he once speak angrily to or of them? Did any of you who knew Muhammad personally, ever see him turn away from a difficult situation, ignore someone in need or distress? Did anyone, ever, know this man to even once, look upon any man, woman or child as someone who was less deserving or important than himself?"

The rabbi went on to suggest that, in the final analysis, while Ali may have physically left this Earth, his spirit, the truest, best essence of who and what Muhammad Ali was will never completely leave humanity; because, in each of us is Ali. "We are Ali. I am Ali", he stated, matter of factly.

And the rabbi was right. So long as even one of us remembers one of the Champ's favorite sayings..."Service to others is what we pay, for our time here on Earth."... Muhammad Ali will live on and serve humanity and the world, as he always has.

And that was what made him, The Greatest of All Time.  Thanks, Champ. You rest easy, now.

We got this...