Clayton couple recalls friendship with ‘The Champ’
Late summer 1960. Rome.
Two young athletes competing in the Games of the XVII Olympiad would each win gold medals that year. Don Bragg, then 25, set a new world record in pole vault. Cassius Clay, who would later embrace Islam and change his name to Mohammed Ali, was not yet 18 when he stunned the world with a gold medal in light heavyweight boxing. The unlikely pair began a friendship that year that lasted more than five decades.
While their careers would take widely different directions, their friendship was constant. Don Bragg, now 81, is retired and lives in Clayton with his wife, Theresa. After Ali’s death last week, the two sat down with us to share some very personal and special memories.
In the late 1960s, the Braggs had a summer camp in South Jersey for kids. Every year Ali would visit the camp for a few days and work with the kids. Don Bragg was always kidding him about “taking him out” in a fight. He prodded at him every year, until finally, Ali said “Okay” and they put on the gloves.
“We danced around the ring for a few minutes, poking and swinging until I saw my chance,” Bragg recalled. “I delivered the punch I’d been practicing in my dreams for years.”
“It landed,” Theresa Bragg laughed. “And it bloodied his nose.”
“I scored a first,” Don said.” I was the only one to ever give The Champ a bloody nose.”
Theresa says they could never bridge Ali’s name change. “He was always Cassius to me,” she said. “I couldn’t call him Mohammed. So, we just always called him ‘The Champ.’”
It was during that same visit that Ali’s wife Belinda, who was expecting twins, went into early labor. Ali had no driver’s license. It had been revoked along with his boxing license when he refused to be inducted into the Army and go to Viet Nam.
It was up to Theresa to get him to the hospital in Philadelphia, an hour and a half away.
They set out in her brand new Pontiac station wagon and made great time until they hit the city traffic. “We were crawling and The Champ was frantic,” Theresa recalls. “He begged me to let him drive. He didn’t have a license, but he was insistent.”
Ali took the wheel and promptly went up on the sidewalk where a motorcycle cop roared up beside them. When Theresa rolled down the window, Ali yelled at the cop “My wife is having a baby. I have to get to the hospital.”
The surprised cop didn’t hesitate, Theresa said. “I got this, Champ,” he said and got on the radio.
“The waters parted. We had an eight-cycle escort through the Philadelphia traffic. We made it to the hospital in time, but The Champ was a mess,” she said.
“We sat in the waiting room, just the two of us, and he asked me to pray with him. I did and it was a very special, private moment that I will never forget. With both God and Allah working for us, Belinda delivered the girls and everyone was fine.”
Four years ago, Theresa and Don attended The Champ’s 70th birthday party. The twins were there and Theresa was able to tell them the story of the day they were born.
And how their father would always be, in their eyes, “The Champ.”
