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Message: [QUOTE="Cowtown, post: 1781281, member: 2350"] Thanks for sharing those stories. I'm 65, so we both know something of what it was like to be a teenager in America when Ali was in his prime. Ali was an eye-opener for me. I was a skinny white kid from upstate NY living in a town of 5,000, but where there was only one black family. I don't think I ever noticed that as "unusual" until I got a little older, competing in sports with city schools (mostly around Binghamton) where there were more black kids and athletes. Anyway, my teen years were very different from those of a black kid who grew up in an inner city neighborhood. And while I didn't actually understand it at the time, Ali helped me to see, understand and accept there was another way of seeing the world around me, different from the way I had grown up: John Wayne movies, Mom, God and apple pie, '57 Chevies and the Beach Boys & Beatles, etc. I hadn't liked Ali much at first because he was different, said different things from what I'd been brought up to think I believed in. So, through him I began to understand that other people had different life experiences and a different story to tell. So when I got to college in the late 60's - and I'm sure we both remember how complex it all was then - I was more receptive to first acknowledging there were these differences, and then to try to understand more about them. When Ali stood up for a principle - or several of them - what was important was [I]why[/I] he did. I had to think about what was really being said and done, both by him but also in the world in which he lived. And the older I became, the more I understood just how great were the steps he took, how brave and tough he had to be to continue being the man he was. Now, I'm pretty sure he was no saint, and neither am I, but he showed me it was important to take a wider view of my life, and if that meant I believed in something outside the norm, that was okay, too. And so although I never met him, I was better for knowing of him. [/QUOTE]

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