Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 10, 1993 TAG: 9307100277
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
Gov. Douglas Wilder, poet Maya Angelou and civil rights leader Andrew Young were among those expected to attend a private service today to dedicate a granite monument at Ashe's grave.
"After he achieved his world-renowned fame, he never forgot Richmond," Wilder said Friday. "He would always come back and we would . . . see each other and talk about how Richmond has changed, how the state has changed, how the South has changed, and how pleased we were to be products of some of that change."
Wilder, the nation's first black elected governor, was a close friend of Ashe and one of the few people Ashe called before the tennis star revealed to the world that he had AIDS.
Ashe died Feb. 6 of AIDS-related pneumonia in New York City and returned to Richmond a final time to be laid to rest.
Born July 10, 1943, Ashe left a segregated Richmond just after high school to pursue a tennis career. The only black man ever to win the Wimbledon and U.S. Open championships, he wrote several books chronicling the struggles, heartaches and triumphs of blacks in sports.
He also worked tirelessly on behalf of human rights and AIDS research, founding the Arthur Ashe Foundation for the Defeat of AIDS, and joined the boards of the Harvard AIDS Institute and the UCLA AIDS Institute.
A portrait of Ashe by Richmond artist Louis Briel was donated Thursday to the Smithsonian Institution by the state and Virginia Heroes Inc., a mentoring group for which Ashe served as an honorary chairman.
Briel's painting will be on display in November at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery in Washington.
by CNB