Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 9, 1993 TAG: 9302090362
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
ARTHUR ASHE
IN LIVING and dying, Arthur Ashe was a man to be admired.He was a great athlete, yes - the No. 1-ranked tennis player in the world in 1968 and 1975, a U.S. Open champion and the first black to win the Wimbledon singles title.
He also was a great man.
There are many Wimbledon champions, many superb players on the court. Ashe was superb off the court.
The intelligence and discipline he brought to the game were matched by his dedication to civil rights and, for the past 10 months, to the fight against AIDS.
Ashe was angry last April when the media forced him to tell the public that he had AIDS. But typically, he did not hold onto his anger and become bitter. He turned it, instead, down an avenue that would help others. He raised money to fight the disease, he raised public awareness to slow its spread, and - by his courage and dignity - he raised our level of compassion for its victims.
Yet it would sully his memory to think of Ashe as a victim of it or anything else. He was never a victim of racism, though he certainly experienced it. And he was not a victim of AIDS, though it certainly defeated him, killing him at age 49. He was a fighter. He lived 4 1/2 good and active years after being diagnosed with AIDS, giving a speech on it as late as last week.
Ashe did not want to be remembered as a great tennis player, he once said, because that was something he did only for himself. He would far rather have been known for an achievement that helped others - say, for finding a cure for sickle cell anemia.
He will be remembered for helping others. But rather than curing disease, he succumbed to it. We are grieved there is yet no hero out there who has found a cure for the one that has taken him and so many others.