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Dear Bill,

We have worked together on the Paving The Way Project. I too have stories to tell about meeting Muhammad Ali and seeing your account made me want to share this with you. I first met 'The Champ' in Jackson, Mississippi in 1967 during the period when he had been banned from boxing. I was a public school teacher at the time and a fellow teacher and I were chaperoning some high school students on a field trip to Jackson. As we were waiting outside of an arena for the students, out walks Muhammad! We went "that's Muhammad Ali, we have to go meet him!" So we chased him down the street, met him, and had quite the good conversation. In fact it was such a good conversation that he invited us to have dinner with him. Well, you know these two newly minted young teachers really wanted to do this. Of course, our teacher obligations won out and we told him what we were doing and that we had to get back to our students!

Fast forward 20 years, 1987 and I am at the airport in Jackson, Mississippi going to the Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of America and I walk into the airport and there stands Muhammad Ali! Of course, I walked right up to him and again start a great conversation. I told him about meeting him 20 years ago and he said "oh yeah, you were the one in the blue dress", he went on with more jokes. Later he walked by where I was sitting with a group of colleagues and pointed to me and said "watch my feet." He then did his famous levitating trick, it was quite impressive. We got a chance to talk later and he was telling me of marketing some cologne. Just a few nights earlier I had seen him on The Arsenio Hall Show so we talked about that. It was a wonderful couple of hours interacting with him.

In 1997, I moved from Mississippi to Niles, Michigan and flew in and out of the South Bend Airport quite often. I would run into Muhammad another three to four times and we got to recognize each other and would stop and chat briefly. So I too have great memories of "The Greatest."

Willye Bryan

Lansing

entpeople@yahoo.com