When a 12-year-old boy had his new red Schwinn bicycle stolen in Louisville in 1954, he sought out a man that he’d heard could help him fill out a police report. That man, Joe Elsby Martin, was an officer who ran the Columbia Gym, a recreation center that is now part of Spalding University’s campus.
It was a rainy October night, and the boy had tears in his eyes when he spoke with Martin.
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“He kept talking about how he wanted to ‘whup’ whoever it was who stole his bike,” Martin remembered in a 1980 interview. “I told him before he started talking about whupping somebody, he’d better learn how to fight.”
That conversation launched the boxing career of the boy, then known as Cassius Clay, who would go on to become an Olympic gold medalist, a three-time world heavyweight boxing champion, and “The Greatest” to ever “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee”: Muhammad Ali.
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Martin — a Louisville native who died in Louisville in September 1996, just two months after Ali carried the torch at the 1996 Olympics — was an amateur boxing trainer, and he introduced Ali to the sport through that chance encounter.
In his autobiography, Ali wrote that he was so overwhelmed by the excitement of seeing the boxing gym, that he nearly forgot about his red bike.
“A feeling of awe came over me,” Ali wrote.
For Ali, that was his “Red Bike Moment” — a turning point in his life. The stolen bike introduced him to Martin, who introduced him to boxing; Ali began training at the gym and just six years later, won Olympic gold.
In conjunction with the Ali Center and with your help, The Courier Journal is collecting Red Bike Moments from readers ahead of the five-year anniversary of Ali’s death, on June 3, 2016.
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The Ali Center says of a Red Bike Moment: “Most of us can reflect on our own personal history and identify a transformational event in our lives that occurred because of a challenge or some type of adversity.”
Was there a time when challenging circumstances led to a positive change in your life? Do you have a Red Bike Moment? Or, do you know someone who has had one?
If so, we’d love to hear about it. Please fill out the Google Form below. Some stories will be selected for publication.
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Hayes Gardner can be reached at [email protected]; Twitter: @HayesGardner.
Source: https://t-tees.com
Category: WHO
