Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 9, 1993 TAG: 9306090404
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
Ashe politely but decidedly slam-dunked the basketball heroes for proudly telling tales of their promiscuous ways.
Ashe said he felt "pity" for Chamberlain - who claims to have bedded 20,000 women - and said the HIV-positive Johnson "seemed to be boasting" about his sexual past even as he warned against the danger of AIDS.
"African-Americans have spent decades denying that we are sexual primitives by nature, as racists have argued since the days of slavery," he wrote in "Days of Grace," which hits bookstores this week.
"These two college-trained black men of international fame and immense personal wealth do their best to reinforce the stereotype."
But the heart of the book is a letter to 6-year-old Camera Ashe, in which the tennis legend put into words a father's dream of a proud future for his daughter, while admonishing her to never forget the importance of family.
"Along the way you will stumble, and perhaps even fall," he wrote. "Get up, get back on your feet, chastened but wiser, and continue on down the road.
"I may not be walking with you all the way, or even much of the way.
"Don't be angry with me if I am not there in person, alive and well, when you need me . . . I will be watching and smiling and cheering you on."
The book, written with Arnold Rampersad and published by Knopf, chronicles the tennis hero's final days as he battled AIDS and takes on topics ranging from sex to politics to religion.
Ashe told how he channeled his anger at being virtually "outed" as an AIDS patient last year to become a powerful spokesman for those with the disease.
"Yes, I felt pain," he wrote, "but I also felt something like pleasure in responding purposefully, vigorously, to my illness. I had lost many matches on the tennis court, but I had seldom quit."
Ashe said he never feared death - even after he was diagnosed in 1988 with AIDS, contracted through a blood transfusion. But he said he would have been "devastated" if he discovered he had infected Camera or his wife, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe.
Both have tested negative for the AIDS virus.
"With AIDS I have good days and bad days," wrote Ashe, who died Feb. 6 at age 49. "The good days, thank goodness, greatly outnumber the bad. And the bad days are not unendurable."
The Wimbledon and U.S. Open winner also:
Defended himself against criticism that he wasn't a strong enough political leader.
"The problem with you, Arthur, is that you're not arrogant enough," Ashe quoted Jesse Jackson as saying in the early 1970s.
"You're right, Jesse," Ashe answered. "But I don't think my lack of arrogance lessens my effectiveness one bit."
Revealed that he mulled running for Congress from the upper East Side of New York City in the mid-1970s, as a Democrat. But he also admitted to voting for George Bush in 1988.
Revealed that he wanted to slug John McEnroe after the tennis superbrat hurled an expletive at him during a Davis Cup match that Ashe coached.
"I have never punched anyone in my life, but I was truly on the brink of hitting him," the gentle scholar and athlete wrote.
by CNB