Barack Obama admired Arthur Ashe as a man and learned from him

I'll keep this short. Arthur Ashe was a great man born into a poor family and a disciplinarian father who suffered a lot of bad luck but he was born with a great talent as well. He was born with intelligence and athletic ability. He is known for his tennis; as a great tennis player with three grand slam wins and 76 titles but he did not want to be remembered for his tennis. His mother died when he was young and he said he can't recall ever holding her hand.

Barack Obama admired Arthur Ashe as a man and learned from him. Ashe playing against Dennis Ralston at the 1964 Southern California Intercollegiates. Image: Wikipedia.

He wanted to be remembered for what he achieved in contributing to bettering humanity. He fought against racism and he fought for a cure for AIDS because he contracted AIDS as a result of a blood transfusion he received after a heart operation when he was aged 36.

He needed a heart operation at the age 36 because he had a heart attack. He inherited a heart problem. And then the hospital who treated him ultimately killed him slowly because they gave him blood that was infected.

He dealt with AIDS with great dignity because at that time there was a lot of misconceptions about it and people with AIDS were stigmatised. Of course he was stigmatised as a black person as well.

Throughout his life he acted with great intelligence and dignity combined with passion and a commitment to right wrongs and better the world. He used his superb achievements as a tennis player to achieve, for him, more important goals in achieving better rights to people of colour for instance. His tennis gave him celebrity and an entry into white society and he used it as a platform to change attitudes.

He married a woman who was intelligent too and she was a photographer. She used Leica cameras which interests me because I was once a photographer.

But the point here is that Barak Obama, another intelligent person, looked up to 2 sports men as people from whom he learned how to be a man; men who he admired as sportsmen and as men you had the right qualities. These two men were Arthur Ashe and Muhammad Ali.

Arthur Ashe died of pneumonia related to his HIV-positive illness. He died aged 49 in 1993. A life cut tragically short. I believe his brother is still alive.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.