Days of Grace (5 page)

THE DAY AFTER
my press conference, I made sure to keep the two appointments on my calendar because I was anxious to see how people would respond to me after the announcement. I was thinking not only about the people I knew personally, even intimately, but also about waiters and
bartenders, doormen and taxi drivers. I knew all the myths and fears about AIDS. I also understood that if I hadn’t been educated in the harshest possible way—by contracting the disease and living with it—I would probably share some of those myths and fears. I knew that I couldn’t spread the disease by coughing or breathing or using plates and cups in a restaurant, but I knew that in some places my plates and cups would receive special attention, perhaps some extra soap and hot water. Perhaps they would be smashed and thrown away.

That morning, I accompanied Donald M. Stewart, head of the College Board testing service, on a visit to the offices of the New York Community Trust. We were seeking a grant of $5,000 to support the publication of a handbook aimed at student-athletes. The appointment went well; we got the money. And in the evening, I went in black tie to a gala dinner to celebrate the eightieth birthday of a man I had known for thirty years and regarded as one of my key mentors in New York City, Joseph Cullman III, a former chairman of Philip Morris. At the event, which took place at the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, I felt anxiety rising as our taxi drew up to the curb. How would the other guests respond to me? The first person I saw was an old friend, John Reese. An investment banker now, in his youth John had been an up-and-coming star with me in junior tennis. He saw me, and hurried over. There was no mistaking the warmth of his greeting, his genuine concern but also his understanding of my predicament. We walked inside together and I had a fine time at the celebration.

Did I feel a sense of shame, however subdued, about having AIDS, although I was guilty of nothing in contracting it? Very little. I could not shake off completely that irrational sense of guilt, but I did my best to keep it in check, to recognize that it was based on nothing substantial.

I was glad, in this context, that I had not concealed my condition from certain people. I had reminded myself from the outset that I had an obligation to tell anyone who might be materially hurt by the news when it came out. I have
been both proud of my commercial connections and grateful to the people who had asked me to represent them or work for them in some other way. Several of them had taken a chance on me when they knew full well, from the most basic market research in the early 1970s, that having an African American as a spokesman or an officer might cost them business.

Among these organizations, the most important were the Aetna Life and Casualty Company, where I was a member of the board of directors; Head USA, the sports-equipment manufacturer that had given me my first important commercial endorsement, a tennis racquet with my very own autograph on it; the Doral Resort and Country Club in Florida, where I had directed the tennis program; Le Coq Sportif, the sports-clothing manufacturer; Home Box Office (HBO), the cable-television network for which I worked as an analyst at Wimbledon; and ABC Sports, for which I also served as a commentator.

Not one of these companies had dropped me after I quietly revealed to their most important executives that I had AIDS. Now those executives had to deal with the response of the public. I would have to give them a chance to put some distance between their companies and me because I now carried the most abominable and intimidating medical virus of our age. In business, image is everything. And one would have to go back to leprosy, or the plague, to find a disease so full of terrifying implications as AIDS carries. AIDS was a scientific mystery that defied our vaunted claims for science, and also a religious or spiritual riddle—at least to those who insisted on thinking of it as possibly a punishment from God for our evil on earth, as more than one person had publicly suggested.

As far as I am concerned, these companies did not owe me anything. They had products and services to sell, and employees and stockholders and their families who were dependent on them. If I hurt their business, I believe, they would be obliged to revise our arrangements. I would not have waved my contract in anyone’s face, or hidden behind
an ingenious lawyer. I understand business and free enterprise. My university degree is in the field of business administration, and I have profited from business and the free-enterprise system.

I waited for the phone calls and the signs that my services were no longer needed. None came.

I READ SOMEWHERE
that in the two weeks following his announcement that he was HIV-positive, Earvin “Magic” Johnson received thousands of pieces of mail, and that months later he was still receiving hundreds of letters a week. Well, I received nothing approaching that volume of correspondence following my press conference, but I certainly had a mountain of reading and writing to do in its aftermath. And every time I appeared on one of the few television interview shows I agreed to do, such as with Barbara Walters or Larry King, there was another surge of correspondence. I heard from the famous and the completely unknown, people I knew and people I had never met.

The most moving letters, without a doubt, came from people who had lived through an AIDS illness, either their own or that of a loved one. Often the loved one was now dead. These writers, above all, understood why I had made such a fuss about the issue of privacy. Many probably understood better than I did, because they were more vulnerable than I am, and had suffered more. One Manhattan woman wrote to tell me about her father, who had received HIV-tainted blood, as I had, through a blood transfusion following heart surgery. Without knowing it, he had passed the infection on to her mother. For some years, they had kept their illness a secret from their daughter. After they could keep the secret from her no longer, she in turn had worked to keep their secret from other family members and friends, and from the world. Although both parents were now dead, she wrote, “I share your anger at that anonymous person who violated either your trust or their professional ethics.”

Another woman, writing from Toronto, told of her husband’s
similar infection. He, like me, had received a transfusion during his second bypass operation. One summer five years later, he was plagued by unaccountable bouts of fatigue and flulike symptoms. In the winter came a cough that would not go away. The spring brought pneumonia, and death. Virtually to the end, his illness seemed inexplicable. Only three days before his death was he finally tested for AIDS. The test was positive.

A grandmother in New England, HIV-positive after a transfusion, shared with me her terror that the company she worked for would dismiss her if they found out; she was awaiting the passage of a law that might protect her. From Idaho, a mother told me about her middle-aged son, who had tried to keep his AIDS condition a secret even from her: “My son kept it to himself for six months before he told me and I’ll never forget that day as we cried together.” His ordeal included dementia, forced incarceration in a state asylum, and ostracism by relatives and friends. But mother and son had spent his last “four difficult months” together. “I’m so thankful to have had those days with him.”

I heard from people whom I had not thought of in years, and some of them had been touched by their own tragedy. A woman I remembered as a stunningly beautiful UCLA coed, as we called them in those days, told me about her younger brother, who had been diagnosed with full-blown AIDS about five years before. “He is gay,” she reported, “and I saw how he lost so much self-esteem and hope” because of intolerance. “No one can speak as eloquently as you and Magic to allow the stigma to disperse regarding this situation.” Another letter illustrated the power of the stigma. Signed simply, “Sorry I can’t identify myself, but you understand,” it came from a man who had been diagnosed with HIV three years ago. “I’m the father of six children and many grandchildren. I’m not into needles or the gay life. Don’t know where it came from (really).”

As for my daughter, Camera, more than one writer underscored my fears about what she might have to undergo
from insensitive people in the future. A woman whose son had died of AIDS about a year before, following the death of his wife, was now bringing up their young son: “I struggle with how this little child is going to deal with the insults and rejections that people will inflict on him when they find out that his father died from AIDS.”

Perhaps the most unusual letter I received from someone with an ailing relative came from a woman in Florida who offered an anguished apology to me and others who had been infected from blood transfusions. As she told it, her mother had become HIV-positive two years before, following a personal history of drug addiction. “I realize that your situation, and [that of] many others who have contracted the virus, has been caused by people like my mother who have lived their lives with such disregard for the sanctity of human life.”

Needless to say, I am grateful to all those who have taken the trouble to write. Most of the letters left me humbled. Among those famous people who wrote immediately after my announcement was Nelson Mandela, who is one of my genuine heroes, and whom I had met both in South Africa and here at home. He sent a long letter on the stationery of the African National Congress of South Africa. “I can never forget my own joy at meeting you,” he wrote. “I hope you feel my embrace across the continents and that it serves to let you know that we love you and wish you well.” Elizabeth Taylor, whose work on behalf of AIDS sufferers is to her eternal credit, sent a bouquet of tulips, and a lovely note: “My thoughts, prayers and admiration are with you and your family.”

(I had never met her. Some months later, I read a story about her AIDS work in
Vanity Fair
and was startled to see my name. She had been annoyed when a colleague in their AIDS foundation, American Foundation for AIDS Research [AmFAR], contacted Magic Johnson after his announcement, to try to get him to join their effort. “I don’t want to use him,” she said about Magic. “It’s the same with Arthur Ashe.” She called my press treatment “appalling. The way
[somebody] chooses to die is their own goddamn business.”)

In addition to the telephone call from President Bush, I also received kind letters from former presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. An avid sportsman, Nixon had credited a meeting with me years before with stirring his interest in tennis. Given his wars with the press, I was not surprised that he backed my position against
USA Today:
“Your privacy should have been respected.” Ford evidently concurred: “Betty and I congratulate you on your superb handling of a very difficult and personal matter. You and Mrs. Ashe have our highest admiration and affection.”

Much more surprising to me was a letter from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, whose own television ordeal I had watched with dread fascination, and without being convinced of his guilt or, indeed, his innocence. “You have been an inspiration to me for most of my life,” he wrote. “I admire & respect you; I will continue to remember you & your family in my prayers.”

A woman who had cleaned my hotel room during a tournament in Tucson, Arizona, fifteen years before in 1975, wrote to Frank Deford after reading a story of his about me in
Newsweek
. She praised my “kindness, gentleness, and serenity.” I was glad to get her letter.

Many tennis players called or sent me cards, notes, and letters, including Charlie Pasarell, one of my best friends from tennis and someone I’ve known since I was fourteen, and Pam Shriver, who generously sent a contribution in my name to the United Negro College Fund. I also heard from Tracy Austin, Brian Gottfried, Jeff Borowiak, Tom Okker (who had watched my news conference on CNN in Holland), and Rod Laver. I was a little surprised at the intensity of Laver’s reaction. Rod and his wife, Mary, wrote about their “concern, emptiness, and yes, also anger” at the news. Since my tennis victories over him had been rare—two wins in twenty-one matches—I was pleased to be saluted by “the Rocket” now as a “great champion, both on & off the court.”

A telegram came from the soccer star Pelé—Edson Arantes do Nascimento; two messages from the boxer Sugar Ray Leonard; a touching note from Lynn Swann, who had been a star wide receiver with the Pittsburgh Steelers football team and who always impressed me as being so much more than a professional athlete. John Thompson, the renowned basketball coach at Georgetown University, with whom I had sparred at one point on the telephone over the question of academic requirements for black student athletes, expressed the “good feeling that you’ll be around to irritate me for a long time; this is my very sincere prayer.” I received a card from the tennis team at the University of Chicago, and from Terry Donahue, the football coach, and various athletes at UCLA, my alma mater. I was pleased to hear from students at various elementary schools, including some I had visited, as I often do.

Many of these letters brought back powerful memories or associations, as did one from the outstanding golfer Gary Player. We had had our differences about his country, South Africa, where I had been banned twice, and about apartheid, which he could never bring himself to attack and which I found impossible for anyone to defend. Telling me about an educational foundation he had started in South Africa, he sent his sympathy and kind wishes: “Whilst we have perhaps at times had different views on South Africa in the past, I think we have both shared a common interest in people and mankind and have tried to contribute to society as a whole.”

Race and politics crossing medicine and disease. One card I received called me “an inspiration to many people during your career. Our thoughts and prayers are with you and your family as you face this new challenge.” It was signed: “A white family in Mississippi.”

Believe me, these letters helped. I think I know better than to accept that all or even most of the praise heaped on me is deserved; but I felt good to know that so many people thought so highly of me. On the other hand, I know that sympathy clouds the judgment, especially when the object
of sympathy has an illness we think of as terminal. Or an illness that
is
terminal. I began to have a sense in reading many of the letters and the essays on me in newspapers and magazines that I was reading my obituary, but I could not say, as Mark Twain did, that the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. Exaggerated, but not greatly.