Until that pause, Ashe, 48, had been typically dispassionate in confirming that he was indeed, as rumor had it, HIV positive, that he had known of his condition since 1988, that the infection most likely occurred by way of a blood transfusion shortly after a 1983 heart-bypass operation. What the silence confirmed as well, however, was Ashe's righteous anger, a quietly patrician rancor that stung with its very dignity. He was angry that someone had leaked his condition to the press, forcing him into what he called "the unenviable position of having to lie" in order to protect his family's privacy. "No one," Ashe said, "should have to make that choice." But Arthur Ashe had to—and did. He would not lie.
Tennis great Pancho Gonzalez once said of Ashe, "He won't duck a thing, and he won't let anybody down." The son of a park caretaker in Richmond, Va., Ashe learned tennis on that city's segregated courts and, with his amazingly varied repertoire of shots, went on to desegregate men's tennis almost single-handed. (Earlier, Althea Gibson broke the race barrier for women.) He was keenly aware of his role as a pioneer—playing whites in clubs where the only other African-Americans were waiters and locker-room attendants. "It's an abnormal world I live in," he said in 1966. "I don't belong anywhere."
But he conquered racial adversity. And he seemed to be able to overcome physical infirmity over and over again. He rebounded from a foot injury on the pro circuit. And in 1979 and 1983 he survived heart-bypass surgeries. At first, Arthur and Jeanne, a photographer he wed in 1977, put off having kids, fearful of passing on a predisposition to heart trouble. But in 1986, they chose to have Camera. Then in 1988 came the fateful discovery.
During a TV interview that year with CBS's Harry Smith, Ashe discovered that his right hand had gone dead. He covered up the loss of motor function during the taping, but a biopsy of brain tissue revealed that the deadening of the nerves was caused by toxoplasmosis, a usually benign infection. Toxoplasmosis is a marker for the AIDS virus, and subsequent tests confirmed that Ashe was HIV positive. "We are 100 percent sure that the cause of my HIV infection was a blood transfusion," said Ashe. "And 95 percent sure it was after the 1983 opera-lion. (Standard testing of all blood products to detect the virus was not in place until 1985.) Treasuring his family's privacy and believing that the world was then unprepared for any celebrity's admission of infection, Ashe chose to keep quiet. Until last week.
At the press conference, Ashe's thoughts seemed to be with his daughter, who, like his wife, has tested negative. "Even though we've begun preparing Camera for this news," read the lines Jeanne spoke for Arthur, "beginning tonight Arthur and I must teach her how to react to new and sometimes cruel comments that have very little to do with her reality." Her father can teach her well. He has overcome just such injustice before. A verse from a poem Ashe learned in junior high may help: "Out of the night that covers me black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever Gods may be for my unconquerable soul."
HOWARD C. CHUA-EOAN
GAVIN MOSES in New York City
- Contributors:
- Gavin Moses.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
