E-mail a friendLonnie Ali
airdate August 24, 2007
Lonnie Ali is a business leader, activist and partner to one of the most beloved men in the world, Muhammad Ali. She prefers to avoid the limelight and has used her own impressive credentials (degrees from Vanderbilt and UCLA) to make her mark. She oversaw the realization of a 13-year dream in building a $54 million center in Louisville, KY, named after her famous spouse. She also educated herself on Parkinson's and has joined the Fight For MORE campaign—an initiative which connects caregivers.
Muhammad Ali's wife explains the Fight For MORE campaign. (2:34)
Lonnie Ali
Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome Lonnie Ali back to this program. The long-time activist, philanthropist and wife of some guy named Muhammad Ali is the national spokesperson for "Fight for MORE," the education initiative helping to support Parkinson's patients and their caregivers. She is also the Vice Chair of the Board of Directors at the Muhammad Center in Louisville. Lonnie, nice to see you, as always.
Lonnie Ali: Wonderful to see you, Tavis.
Tavis: Let me start by asking you how is the Center? As you know, I was honored to be a part of the group that was there for the Center when it opened. What a great place it was then, and everything wasn't even complete at that time. How's it coming along?
Ali: It's doing great. It's doing great. We've celebrated our first anniversary in November and we're getting visitors from all over the world. It really is what we intended it to be, the legacy for Muhammad, for generations to come and it's a beacon to all people and it brings them right to the city of Louisville.
Tavis: Tell the audience more about the Center because you and the Champ are always very clear about making the distinction that this is not a museum.
Ali: Oh, no.
Tavis: It's a Center. If you're anywhere near Louisville, you got to go check it out, but tell us what the work of the Center is and what you see on the inside of the place.
Ali: Well, the Center is the legacy of Muhammad, as I said, to generations to come. It really is an expose of the values that Muhammad has lived by throughout his life that has sort of molded him into who he is today.
It is a very active and dynamic place. It has interactive exhibits, it has things where people can talk to and leave memos to Muhammad and it has a learning component which is extremely important, we think, for people to learn how to find greatness within.
It's doing a lot of great work, a lot of great programming. We're getting a lot of wonderful groups coming in and wanting to hold events there as a result of it being there and being under the auspices of Muhammad. Hopefully, it will be one of those things that in a century will still be standing and doing good work.
Tavis: It even has a gallery featuring the work of some guy named Howard Bingham.
Ali: Howard who?
Tavis: Yeah, exactly. Howard who (laughter)?
Ali: Yeah, it does. It has a wonderful gallery featuring the work of Howard and Leroy Neiman. Howard has been part of Muhammad's life for far too long (laughter), so how could you have the Center and not have part of it being to Howard.
Tavis: We are razzing Howard Bingham in part because he is Muhammad Ali's long-time best friend. He's sitting off-camera. You can't see him and we're going to keep it that way. He's sitting off-camera and you can't see him, but what a great piece of the Center to see this longstanding relationship between the two. How's the Champ doing, by the way?
Ali: He's doing great, Tavis. He's doing great.
Tavis: You've been doing this for quite some time, but I'm curious as to how the work evolves from being the wife of the Champ and taking care of him to trying now to spread this message to everybody else who's a caregiver, everybody else who is dealing with this illness. How do you find the time to do this and take care of the Champ?
Ali: Well, you know, it's not easy, of course. Being a caregiver is - it depends on what stage the person's in. It can be a twenty-four hour a day job. I think it's important, and Muhammad supports my efforts in this, that I am able to share with the experiences of the last twenty years of being a care partner or caregiver to Muhammad, share that with others who are going through the same experiences that I have gone through and am going through.
Tavis: When you say care partner, that assumes that there's a role for the Champ to play in this process in his own health.
Ali: Absolutely.
Tavis: Which means what?
Ali: Well, you know, not everybody - when you start out with this disease, everybody is afflicted differently. You know, you're very self-sufficient usually at the beginning. Muhammad started out with a small tremor in his hand. It wasn't so much that I was a caregiver then. I was there more to be his partner in this process, this journey, of learning what this illness was about and getting him through it.
As times progresses, you know, you become more and more of the caregiver, making sure that he's getting the proper medical treatment, he's getting his meds, he's doing this, he's doing that. You know, it does become more of a caregiver role.
Tavis: I want to talk more about the work you're doing and these suggestions that you offer to other people. We'll get to that in just a second here. If I'm getting too personal, tell me here.
When you watch the Champ every day and you work with him every day, how do you keep your mind from going to this place where you know the time is going to come that he will deteriorate to a point where it's going to be difficult for you to do it by yourself and that eventually - and this is not just true of him, but whether you have Parkinson's or not, we can't get out of here alive.
Ali: That's true.
Tavis: I mean, none of us can navigate this thing.
Ali: Haven't found one who's done that yet.
Tavis: Only one, but that's a sermon right there. Only one came, went to the grave and came back. Shout hallelujah, but that's another story (laughter). The point is, that's going to happen for each of us. But to watch somebody deal with this and know that over time they're going to debilitate here and there, how do you keep that in perspective every day?
Ali: Well, Tavis, you know us. We're very, very positive people and we always look at what you can do, not what you can't do. That's just been the story of Muhammad's entire life. He's always been a very positive person. He's never been one to focus on the negative. He never worried about that kind of thing, never carried that baggage forward, and I'm very much the same way. So I really don't think about that.
You know, I live in the here and now. It's what am I dealing with today and not really so much what I dealt with yesterday even. It's what am I dealing with today and it's not about what I'm going to deal with in the future. It's just getting through that day, giving him the quality of life that he deserves and the dignity that he deserves for that day. You know, if you bite off a little bit at a time, it's better than trying to chew the whole thing at once.
Tavis: He is obviously beloved the world over. He's still traveling, of course, moving around and doing lots of stuff?
Ali: Not as much as he used to.
Tavis: He's cut back from doing stuff?
Ali: Right, exactly. We have.
Tavis: I suspect that he still moves, though, and people still gather around him like always.
Ali: Absolutely. He always creates a crowd. You know, that's the one thing that Muhammad has always enjoyed are his fans. The day he's not able to really garner that kind of attention and that kind of love from people I think will be a very sad in his life, but I don't think that day will ever come.
Tavis: I don't think it will either, as long as he gets outside the house (laughter).
Ali: That's right (laughter).
Tavis: And leave it up to him inside his house.
Ali: And he always has Howard (laughter).
Tavis: Inside the house, he always has Howard Bingham.
Ali: That's right.
Tavis: Tell me more about the work and what the message is of the work of "Fight For MORE."
Ali: Well, "Fight For MORE" is a national education campaign that is geared toward Parkinson's caregivers and the millions of people who are giving care to Parkinson's patients and the patients themselves. What it is, it's a chance to connect those people into a community of caregivers. This has never been done before.
Valiant Pharmaceuticals, you know, I have to applaud them because they thought to do this. I don't know how much you know about caregivers individually, but we don't think about ourselves. Sometimes caregivers get caught up with the idea that I'm doing this all by myself. This campaign lets that caregiver know that there's someone in their corner who understands what they're going through every day.
The campaign has a wonderful component where it raises money for research. It has partnered with the Parkinson's Unity Walk that took place in Central Park this year in the spring. That's a grassroots organization that raises money for Parkinson's research.
So anybody who goes to the website of www.fightformore.com - let me ask everybody to go there and sign up - then Valiant will donate ten dollars per person to the Parkinson's Unity Walk. It's a great way to raise money for Parkinson's research. I had a researcher tell me years ago early in this whole process with Muhammad that finding a cure for this disease was simply a function of money, so this is a great way to raise that money.
Tavis: I'm curious about how this new campaign allows people to link up, to hook up, with other caregivers. How does that happen exactly?
Ali: It's a great, great thing because I've had people come up to me and ask me in travel who have been recently affected with someone in their family with Parkinson's, "What do you do?" They expect me to know the answers and, plus, to be plugged into the very best of what is out there. What it does is, it allows them to go online to share their story and then to actually enter into a Blog site where they can actually converse back and forth.
It sort of gives information to them from other people who may be further down the line, more experienced as caregivers, and maybe they're having a particular challenge that they don't know how to get through. They post that and there may be someone out there who is online watching and reading what's being posted and be able to assist as well.
Tavis: Let me ask a question you may not know the answer to, but then again, you may. I mentioned earlier that there are about a million and a half people who are dealing with Parkinson's as we speak in the country at least. While we don't have a cure yet, is there any evidence that suggests that it's getting worse? I hope it's not getting worse since we don't have a cure yet.
Ali: As far as the amount of people who are getting Parkinson's?
Tavis: Yeah.
Ali: Not so much. But I have to tell you, to be quite honest, you have to look at the research. You have to look at the numbers and you have to respect the numbers because there are very competent people who are doing the research.
But I meet people every day, Tavis. It's amazing how many people come up to me who are being affected by this disease and this illness. You know, someone in their family has it, some friend they know has recently been diagnosed and it's just amazing. And it's with increasing frequency. So I don't know.
Tavis: It may be more than a million and a half.
Ali: Well, no, I don't think it is. I don't think it's more than a million and a half.
Tavis: But you're just hearing about it a lot more.
Ali: Yeah, I hear it a lot, a lot.
Tavis: The things that you're encouraging others to do to learn about the disease, to keep it in perspective, all the things that you've laid out and the website gives a lot of good advice about how to deal with this and how to keep it in reach. How did you do that? I'm curious about your story about what you had to do when the Champ was diagnosed with this for your own benefit.
Ali: You know what? I'm a person who likes to learn. I'm an academic and I'm a person who likes to converse, so it was important for me -
Tavis: - that would help with you living with a guy named Ali (laughter), if you can get a word in (laughter).
Ali: (Laughter) That's right. You know, it was easy for me to be able to connect with the medical professional specialists out there in Parkinson's disease specifically because we had that kind of exposure. So I was talking to three or four different types of researchers in the area in three or four different places, four or five Parkinson's specialists.
You know, Muhammad has been to some of the best in the nation. Just because of who he is, his celebrity, I was able to keep abreast of the research and the information that was being gleaned over a process of twenty years. I mean, even twenty years ago, they didn't know as much as they know now. They're finding new things that are going on with Parkinson's patients that they didn't realize twenty years ago that they're identifying and trying to treat.
So I've been a recipient of all that knowledge and that's what's so great about this campaign. I get to share this with a lot of other people who are going through the exact same thing.
Tavis: And you can find all of that and more by going to -
Ali: www.fightformore.com.
Tavis: See, the Champ taught her well. Promote your stuff. Put it out there. Nice to see you, Lonnie. Give my best to Ali. Good to see you.
Ali: Thank you so much. I will. I appreciate it.
Tavis: I appreciate you.
Back to August 24, 2007