Class News

Larry Crutcher ’64 adds to Muhammad Ali story

January 26, 2022

Larry Crutcher took note of the earlier class news article about Muhammad Ali when he saw classmate Owsley Brown’s name. Larry wrote:

On a personal level, I was fairly close to Owsley II, having also grown up in Louisville.

We drove back and forth together, roomed together one year, attended weddings, visited his place in Canada, went to his funeral, etc. I can also tell you that my family plot, and indeed my own (pre-planned) marker in Cave Hill Cemetery, is just around the corner from Ali’s. Col. Sanders, on the other hand, is on the other side of the cemetery.

When the syndicate just got underway, Ali had a September fight (Sep. 1961) in Louisville’s un-air-conditioned Freedom Hall. I sat with the Browns in the front row, not necessarily the best seats because you have to look up. The fighters were sweating profusely, and if they were on our side of the ring and one got hit, we got showered with their sweat.

Here are some other unrelated observations: Bill Faversham indeed had a theatrical background and I remain convinced that he fed Ali some of his endearing lines (“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,” “ain’t I beautiful,” and so on). The syndicate was out, however, when Ali gave my favorite one-liner: “I ain’t got no problem with them Viet Congs.”

As for some of the others in the syndicate, Possum Norton ended up driving a taxi in Marin County and died about ten years ago, probably an overdose. A Zete at Yale. Ross Todd (St. Anthony Hall) only made it to 1969, dying at 32. Words would be hard to describe him… maybe 300 pounds, flamboyant, married a divorcee old enough to have been his mother, richer than Croesus, a cousin of mine (different branch, they married the dough, Chicago real estate), a hard person to take seriously.

Worth Bingham was driving in Nantucket one day in a convertible with a surfboard on the back floor but one end extended outside the car; a passing vehicle clipped the outer end, prompting the lower end to spring up and decapitate him, with wife and kids in the car.

Bill Cutchins was more conventional, but a big shot. He entertained large at the Louisville Country Club, scrawling his signature on the chits, which sometimes ended up in my father’s account (Bill Crutcher). I used to hang out with his daughter Tani (a nickname for Alexandra?), now back in Louisville as “Tanya.”

Pat Calhoun was a certified descendant of VP John Calhoun, who at one time had a college at Yale named for him. And on and on.

A couple more, and I’ll stop. I never clearly understood why Ali got in the grips of the Muslim nation and threw out the syndicate. After all that was over and he retired to Louisville, he lived in the East End in a gated community otherwise occupied by whites, in a development on the former estate of a Brown-Forman advertising vice president, miles away from West Louisville, where blacks have historically lived and where he grew up.

And his cemetery plot is not only in a seriously waspy cemetery, but one of the few which continues to have a sacred section devoted to the Confederate fallen, with a Confederate flag flying! It’s complicated.

It was only when I climbed into the ring at the Ali Museum that I realized that the floor is cushioned… it doesn’t hurt that much to fall. Oh, and who do you think paid for the bulk of the museum? Ina Brown (Bond), Owsley’s sister.

The Ali Museum had to knock down an existing structure before its construction — a rather crumbling concrete edifice called the Crutcher Bros. Garage. My father used to get free parking there.

I was dining in the 21-C a few years ago (owned by Laura Lee Brown, they don’t call that part of Louisville “Brown Town” for no reason) when an Ali Museum trustees’ meeting broke up and several came for supper. Included were Lindy Street (now a widow of Bill Street, a former Brown-Forman president) and Lonnie Ali. I knew Lindy who came over to say hello, and she introduced me to Lonnie. Lonnie is no small lady; she could take me down with a glancing elbow.

Going back to the summer of 1961, I was interning in the Courier-Journal newsroom when then-Cassius Clay came to meet the sports editor. It was a pretty exciting moment; he passed right by my desk, but we didn’t meet nor greet. I also saw him across the room in a New York hotel, toward the end. What a contrast. Sad.