If the funeral services for Muhammad Ali last Friday in Louisville, Ky., seemed interminably long, it was necessary to accommodate a procession of speakers in their attempts to capture the essence of the great fighter. The service, with a host of interfaith representatives, was almost scripted by Ali, as if he were speaking from the grave about his greatness.
The string of encomiums and eulogies for Ali, who died June 3, at 74, after a long and courageous bout against Parkinson’s disease, began an hour late and extended beyond three hours. Comedian Billy Crystal aptly noted the length of the services before offering his words about his close friend. Stroking his beard, he quipped, “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We’re at the halfway point. I was clean shaven when this started.”
Crystal then poked fun at Ali, noting,“He was funny, he was beautiful. He was the most perfect athlete you ever saw—and those were his own words.”
The comic’s imitation of an exchange between Ali and broadcaster Howard Cosell, who was often Ali’s foil, was a special moment and stood in contrast to his comments about Ali’s stance against the war in Vietnam.
But it was the religious and spiritual remarks that were a persistent theme at the ceremony, none more poignant than those delivered by Lonnie Ali, his widow. “He was a champion of the ages,” she said. “He indicated that when the end came for him, he wanted to use his life and death as a teaching moment. He wanted to remind people who are suffering that he had seen the face of injustice.”
She said her husband “did not fear death.” “Even in death, Muhammad has something to say,” she stated. “It is far more difficult to sacrifice one’s self in search of peace than to take up arms.”
“He was a man of faith,” said former President Bill Clinton, the last speaker, who divided Ali’s eventful life into two parts. Ali he said, “Decided very young to write his own life story … he decided he would not be ever disempowered.” Ali, he continued, should be remembered for the second half of his life in which so much was ably assisted by Lonnie Ali. “He perfected his gifts that we all have,” Clinton said. “Every single solitary one of us have gifts of mind and heart. It’s just that he found a way to release them in ways large and small.”
President Obama didn’t attend, but sent Valerie Jarrett, his close friend and aide, to
deliver his comments. “Muhammad Ali was America,” she read, “a work in progress, and greater than the sum of his parts.”
It was hard not see Ali’s connection to Malcolm X when his daughter Attallah Shabazz stood behind the podium. She said that Ali “was part of a treasured fraternity, bequeathed to me by my dad.” She added, “A unifying topic was faith—an ecumenical faith, respect for all faiths, even if belonging to one religion or none, the gift of all faiths.”
Ali would have appreciated the abundance of faiths and their representatives assembled to honor him. Two Buddhists chanted and beat drums; Rabbi Michael Lerner delivered a powerful, passionate speech about the need for peace and harmony, indicating that Ali “refused to follow the path of conformity”; former Sen. Orrin Hatch offered God’s grace from a Mormon perspective; and Imam Zaid Shakir, who officiated, and Dr. Timothy Gianotti provided the Islamic praise for Ali.
Two of Ali’s nine children graced the stage. Maryum read a poem that at its core expressed how proud she was of her father’s legacy. Similar regard for her father flowed from Rasheda Ali, and she explained that her father always determined to be who he was without anyone dictating his or her will on his way.
The Rev. Kevin Cosby observed that Ali “loved everyone”; John Ramsey ruminated at length about unforgettable moments with Ali; student scholar Natasha Mundkur said Ali “changed my life”; and television personality Bryant Gumbel said that after more than a half century, he was still convinced that Ali “was the greatest.”
And so were hundreds of people who lined the streets of Louisville as the funeral procession visited for a final time the places where Ali lived, went to school and trained to become a boxer. The tour of the old neighborhood took almost as long as the funeral services, and the combined length of the day is only a beginning to mark the majestic template of Ali’s iconic and increasingly mythic life.