Former President Bill Clinton has closed out the memorial service to Ali by calling him a “man of faith” who took “perfect gifts we all have” and released them to the world.
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“He was amusing. He was handsome”.
“He was amusing, he was handsome, he was the most amusing man you ever saw … and those were his words”, he told the audience.
The huge gathering of fans was joined by a cross-section of sports and movie stars, religious and political figures who paid their respects to arguably the greatest sportsman of all time. The KFC Yum! Center was at full capacity with roughly 15,000 watching as Ali was eulogized by family members and well-known friends.
“Ali stood up to immoral war, risked fame to speak truth to power”.
One of his enduring contributions was to restore pride in African Americans after centuries of being denied a sense of “somebody-ness”, said Rev. Kevin Cosby, senior pastor of St. Stephen Church in Louisville. “The way to honor him is to be like him today”, Lerner said, railing against anti-Muslim bigotry, drone attacks, the gap between rich and poor and racist policing. At the end of the route, he was laid to rest in a private burial, one week after he died at the age of 74.
The casket, draped with an Islamic tapestry, was loaded into a hearse outside a funeral home.
“If Muhammad Ali said he was the greatest, it is true”.
Actor Will Smith – who earned an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Ali on the silver screen – and former heavyweight champions Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis served as pallbearers. Its 130,000 graves represent a who’s who of Kentucky, including Kentucky Fried Chicken founder Colonel Harland Sanders.
Clinton noted that Ali never felt self-pity because of the Parkinson’s disease he battled for three decades, and said he continued to give himself to the world as “a universal soldier for our common humanity” long after his diagnosis.
Adding levity to the service was Billy Crystal, who reprised bits of his trademark comedy routine in which he imitates Ali and sportscaster Howard Cosell, an important early supporter of Ali during his most polarizing years.
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Ali’s widow, Lonnie, in her first public remarks since his death, took the stage in an oversized hat that shielded her eyes. “In effect, he wanted us to remind people who were suffering that he had seen the face of injustice, that he grew up in a segregation and that during his early life, he was not free to be who he wanted to be”, she told attendees at the service. “He never became bitter enough to quit or engage in violence”.
