Muhammed Ali is a legend in the sport of boxing. He had won many titles during his career. However, all this meant squat on this day (19 January) in 1981. He was able to talk someone off a ledge and thus prevent a potential suicide.
"Joe," as he was named in reports, had been up there for hours. According to a police spokesman, "he seemed to think he was in Vietnam - with the Viet Cong coming at him." A crowd had gathered on the street below, goading Joe to jump to his death. Police officers, a psychologist and a chaplain leaned out of a nearby window, imploring him to come inside. "I’m no good," he shouted, dangling his feet over the side whenever someone got too close. "I’m going to jump!"
Ali’s best friend, Howard Bingham, was at the scene. He called Ali, who lived nearby. "About four minutes later," Bingham later told reporters, "Ali comes driving up the wrong side of the street in his Rolls-Royce with his lights blinking."
By The Los Angeles Times' account, Ali leaned out and shouted to Joe: "You’re my brother! I love you, and I couldn’t lie to you." Soon, he made his way to the fire escape, put an arm around Joe and guided him inside. The two walked out of the building together, got in Ali’s car and drove, after a stop at a police station, to a nearby V.A. hospital.
The day Ali saved Joe’s life, he had already begun to crumble. He was five years removed from, "The Thrilla in Manila," the fight against Joe Frazier that many believe irrevocably destroyed something inside him. Back in October, he fought his friend and former sparring partner, Larry Holmes, who gave him a beat down so vicious that Ali didn’t come out for the 11th round; afterward, Holmes was reduced to tears.
In three short years, Parkinson’s would be diagnosed. However, as Robert Lipsyte - a former Times reporter who has spent much of his life chronicling Ali’s — remembers it, Ali was still "the most beautiful creature on the planet."
Ali spent three and a half years of his athletic prime stripped of his boxing license for protesting the very war that haunted Joe. Perhaps he felt a kinship with the vet. Or perhaps it was something else. One of the main things Lipsyte remembers about Ali was, "the narcissism, the wanting to be loved, the need for constant attention.” What kind of guy gets in his car and drives toward a potential suicide, to save the life of a man he has never met?
The answer, of course, is a guy who thinks himself a hero. The one constant in Ali’s life — from the 12-year-old boxer passing out fliers for his own fights to the man who withdrew from public life as Parkinson’s took hold — was his unyielding, nigh-oblivious self-belief. It was there in 1964, when a 22-year-old named Cassius Clay called himself, "The Greatest," before his championship bout against Sonny Liston and it was still there when he was ultimately dismantled by Holmes. It wasn’t just that his confidence informed his speed, skill, wit and beauty. It was that his confidence made him a beacon. People in need of strength could affix to him whatever symbolism they needed: black pride, the strength of protest, the senselessness of war. In turn, Ali could energise them.
The ledge story wasn’t quite as simple as it appeared. The police reported that Joe was, "badly disturbed," and later in the week, The Los Angeles Times published a follow-up: Joe, it turned out, was only 21; too young to have served in Vietnam. On Wednesday, 21 January, at a news conference for a beverage company, Ali announced that he was going to buy Joe clothes and travel with him to his home state, Michigan, though it’s unclear if they ever made the trip.
Ali’s narcissism, as Lipsyte remembers it, was only one part of why he would try to talk a man off a ledge. "The other part was he was capable of acts of kindness; almost casual acts of kindness," Lipsyte said. In other words, Ali showed up to the office building not only because he thought he could help Joe but because he wanted to. "In some sort of ways, he talked a lot of people off the ledge," Lipsyte says. "I think about a guy who made people brave. That’s what he did."
Bruce Hagerty, an L.A. police officer who was present at the scene, described how Ali stepped in. He said, "It got pretty nasty down below, there was a crowd of [200], 300 people [...] They were chanting, "Jump! Jump!" So that kinda got tense, it was awful [...] The man was agitated and not being reasonable, and you can’t reason with unreasonable people, so we were concerned that he may in fact jump."
"We saw a Rolls Royce drive up [...] Muhammad Ali came out and shook my hand, and we talked a little bit, made kind of a game plan, and some kinda rules of engagement, we didn’t want him to grab the guy or do any of that kind of stuff. So he went up there, talked to the man, and kept him in conversation for some time [...] He was kind of the last resort, I didn’t have any tools in my toolbox, he was kind of a gift."
"[...] When they came down Ali said that he had promised the man a ride in his Rolls Royce. [...] I said yeah, he can [ride with him] as long as we have a police officer in the car as well."
Hagerty said he had no idea what happened to the young man after that. "Nobody really knows what the guy’s name was," he said, after a movie producer called him decades later wanting to cover the story.
According to a CBS News report from 1981, which showed video of the event, Joe appeared to recognise Ali, and opened the fire escape window for him. The whole conversation took 20 minutes.
I somewhat feel an emotional connection to this story. I've had those kind of feelings and thoughts before. I haven't gone as far as "Joe" went but I have thought about it. In this instance, Ali should be praised for his actions. It's never easy to talk someone move off a ledge. To me, everything about Ali, both the good and the bad, should've been forgotten about for that one day, due to his heroic act.