Word: muhammad
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...enough for a would-be hero to have talent and persistence. A real hero must have a kind of professionalism about the job, a desire to deliver for those who watch. Muhammad Ali did it with his sweetness and sass, Mother Teresa with her saintly stubbornness. America's G.I.s showed a selfless commitment to a larger cause...
...Muhammad Ali, heavyweight boxing champion --The American G.I., a soldier for freedom --Diana, Princess of Wales --Anne Frank, diarist and Holocaust victim --Billy Graham, evangelist --Che Guevara, guerrilla leader --Edmund Hillary & Tenzing Norgay, conquerors of Mount Everest --Helen Keller, champion of the disabled --The Kennedys, dynasty --Bruce Lee, actor and martial-arts star --Charles Lindbergh, transatlantic aviator --Harvey Milk, gay-rights leader --Marilyn Monroe, actress --Emmeline Pankhurst, suffragist --Rosa Parks, civil rights torchbearer --Pele, soccer star --Jackie Robinson, baseball player --Andrei Sakharov, Soviet dissident --Mother Teresa, missionary nun --Bill Wilson, founder of Alcoholics Anonymous
Oliver Wendell Holmes once observed that every profession is great that is greatly pursued. Boxing in the early '60s, largely controlled by the Mob, was in a moribund state until Muhammad Ali--Cassius Clay, in those days--appeared on the scene. "Just when the sweet science appears to lie like a painted ship upon a painted ocean," wrote A.J. Liebling, "a new Hero...comes along like a Moran tug to pull it out of the ocean...
...they approve of his personal behavior: the self-promotions ("I am the greatest!"), his affiliation with the Muslims and giving up his "slave name" for Muhammad Ali ("I don't have to be what you want me to be; I'm free to be what I want"), the poetry (his ability to compose rhymes on the run could very well qualify him as the first rapper) or the quips ("If Ali says a mosquito can pull a plow, don't ask how. Hitch him up!"). At the press conferences, the reporters were sullen. Ali would turn on them...
...ceremonial leave-taking of great athletes can impart indelible memories, even if one remembers them from the scratchy newsreels of time--Babe Ruth with the doffed cap at home plate, Lou Gehrig's voice echoing in the vast hollows of Yankee Stadium. Muhammad Ali's was not exactly a leave-taking, but it may have seemed so to the estimated 3 billion or so television viewers who saw him open the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. Outfitted in a white gym suit that eerily made him seem to glisten against a dark night sky, he approached the unlit saucer with...