On Dec. 13, 1979, and June 21, 1983, a married, middle-aged, very physically active black Virginia man has heart surgery. In the June operation, he receives a tainted blood transfusion.
In 1988, complaining of numbness in his right arm, the man goes to the hospital and learns he has toxoplasmosis, a fungal infection in the brain signifying a severely compromised immune system. The nature of the infection is not publicly disclosed.
On this date four years later, the man holds a press conference to announce something he’d wanted to keep private. He says he’s speaking only because a newspaper has told him it will push and possibly publish the story without his consent.
The man is Arthur Ashe, and the private issue is that he has AIDS.
That a great social equalizer contracted the great social equalizer is irony enough for this world and the next.
I did not know who Arthur Ashe was when I heard that he had AIDS (I was only barely aware of who Magic Johnson was when he announced the same thing less than six months before), but I knew that in 1992, AIDS was a death sentence. Nobody lived. It was a matter of time, everyone said, before the silent human immunodeficiency virus became acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, and at that point you might as well live in a stainless-steel room and take your meals intravenously, because eventually, a cough would kill you.
When my father told me about Ashe's life and works, how he used his fame, money and drawing power to fight social inequality, I came to care a lot more about his condition. Here was a man who had acted for what was right, and in return, his right to live had been given a loud, ticking timer.
What surprised me more, though it shouldn't have, was how Ashe reacted. He did not retire to the country to live out his last days privately mourning what could have been. He went out and made sure what could have been was. He didn't stop trying to make the world a better place just because his days were more decidedly numbered. If anything, he tried to do more once he knew he didn't have decades.
Arthur Ashe tried to outrun mortality. He wanted to do it privately, but celebrities lose their privacy when they command the media to make their actions known to all. So instead he dared the world, media and all, to run with him; then, when he could run no more, to walk with him; then, when he could walk no more, to watch with him; then, when he could watch no more, to care with him.
And when he closed his eyes for the last time and left life-sculpted legs lying peacefully, running and walking foreign where they had been frequent, his surgically repaired heart's cares charged to us, his battles to be waged until they were won finally, for the last time, he dared us to run, to walk, to watch and to care in his stead.
Today Arthur Ashe's legacy is diverse, and it is through greatness. His legacy is as a pioneering black tennis player. His legacy is as a fierce competitor on the court or in the streets. His legacy is as a man who took barriers and broke them, who carried the wishes of the segregated on his shoulders and lifted them up with him. His legacy is as a man who used his natural athletic gifts to raise up the public awareness, to dare ordinary people to care about other ordinary people they did not know.
His legacy is such that one of the pinnacles of sporting and civil achievement is winning the Arthur Ashe for Courage Award.
Life gave Arthur Ashe many lemons. He squeezed them for strength, made lemonade of them for sustenance and finally planted their seeds so others might grow stronger and, in so doing, learn how to strengthen those around him.
In running with Arthur Ashe, let us outrun injustice, stop it in its tracks and show it back whence it came — without a trail of lemon seeds.
In walking with Arthur Ashe, let us walk a path that leads us to social fulfillment — not because it is easy but because it is right — and let us walk to a lemon tree and water it.
In watching with Arthur Ashe, let us see where we have come from and where we have to go, and let us not blink when reality stares us in the face — and let us watch the lemon trees grow.
In caring with Arthur Ashe, let us care for ourselves and so see that in a global community, helping others helps us — and let us make lemonade and teach others to care for their own lemon trees.
Donate to the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health.