First published: April 22, 1981
Joe Louis became Barrow again Tuesday. In death they returned the name by which he began life and returned the body to the soil. The beginning and the end were of contrasts as broad as a chasm, and reflect the American legend. Joe Louis Barrow came out of a sharecropper's cabin in east Alabama and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, a ground sacred to Americans who come here to honor their military dead. Just a few days ago, Gen. Omar Bradley was put to rest here. Just up the hill from the old heavyweight champ's grassy spot is the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. In death, he'd be keeping good company.
When he came into the world the odds were about as long as they can get. He left with millions watching. The services were nationally televised by Cable News Network from the Memorial Chapel, an oddly shaped creation that looks as if it may not be finished yet.
This was the second service. The first was in Las Vegas and was akin to a carnival. The casket was placed in a boxing ring in the sporting annex of a gambling casino, performers featured Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, and at the end they gave the corpse a standing ovation.
The service here was left to the clergy, representing a broad spread of faiths, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Muslim participants were advertised and all performed except the Muslim, who was a no-show. The interior was lighted up by the frequent flashes of photographic bulbs, most of them belonging to free-lance fans responding to the appearance of anyone of fame.
In that sense, it was like a Hollywood premiere set to the score of "Amazing Grace" and "Rock of Ages." Several hundred gathered along the street, in parking lots and across the way in front of the Fort Myers Base Exchange, straining the gallery ropes for a glimpse of anyone of notoriety. They were disappointed.
Muhammad Ali arrived about noon, unusually stoic, but wherever he went, the center of attention. He never became quite convinced that this wasn't his show. Jersey Joe Walcott entered quietly. Joe Frazier came later and equally as noiselessly. Billy Conn came in the company of Edward Bennett Williams, lawyer, franchise owner and butterfly of Washington society.
They would have been late, but this was one time the corpse was late for its own funeral. Services were scheduled to begin at 1. It was 1:15 before the honor guard wheeled the casket in from McGuire's funeral parlor where it had been on display during the morning.
A few old cornermen and fight handlers were there. You can always pick them out, bent and gnarled, looking out of place without a towel on one shoulder, a water pail in one hand and a mouthful of cotton swabs. They were like sponges for a kind word or recognition.
Before any of them, a fellow in a jacket that said "World Champions 1958″ on the bosom stood around the church door as any onlooker would. He turned out to be Lenny Moore, the old Baltimore Colt, who had driven over.
"I never met him, but I wanted to be here, " he said. "He was the black man we could all look up to, before Jackie Robinson, before Campanella, before any of them."
Joe Louis didn't have to go around calling himself "The Greatest." "Brown Bomber" said all that needed to be said of him. He never had to pound himself on the chest or his ego on the back. He held the world heavyweight title longer than any other man, and that said enough for him.
He was solid American gold. It may read like solid American corn, but here was a man who loved his country and put it where his heart was. Out of the purses of two championship fights he peeled off $100,000 for the Army and Navy Relief Fund. He had 96 exhibitions for fighting troops around the world during WWII, and that can't be translated into a cash figure.
The money he earned in the prime of his time was frittered away by people he trusted. Leeches were onto him. It was never accounted for. The disgrace of it all is that he wound up living on the house in Las Vegas. "Greeter" they called him at Caesars Palace. It had a nice ring to it.
It was there that I was about to sit on the periphery of one of Louis' richer moments in later life. They threw open the hall and put on "A Testimonial to Joe Louis" at Caesars one night. From all up and down The Strip they came in for a gig, the big and the loud and the small and the grasping. Of all the guests of the evening, one in particular stood out. He had come all the way from Hamburg, West Germany, to pay tribute to Joe Louis.
Americans have made much of the triumph of Louis over Schmeling in 1938, gaining much, much more of a political nature in time than was relevant. It was a blow for democracy over Nazism, or so it became. Above the fact that it was the launching of Louis.
On this night in Las Vegas, Max Schmeling, now a gentleman of distinction and affluence, had come to speak his testimony to the Brown Bomber who had knocked him into humiliation. They stood on the stage and embraced and they spoke like brothers of each other, and that was a moment to remember. Really, more so than this day they put Joe Louis to rest on a hillside at Arlington National Cemetery with a 21-gun salute. Then they lowered him into the ground, and that is all that remains of the great fighting man, except a memory that shall become a national resource.
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