This year marks the 50th anniversary of TENNIS Magazine's founding in 1965. To commemorate the occasion, we'll look back each Thursday at one of the 50 moments that have defined the last half-century in our sport.
It may be hard for some of us to remember now, but in 1992 AIDS was still a mysterious, highly stigmatized, and sometimes panic-inducing disease with no remedy, let alone a cure. The previous fall, Magic Johnson had shocked the sports world when he became the most high-profile athlete to announce that he has contracted HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. But there was another, equally famous African-American sportsman who had kept his own HIV-positive status under wraps for three-and-a-half years. In the spring of ’92, though, Arthur Ashe could keep his secret no longer.
It began with a call from Doug Smith, a reporter from USA Today and a friend of Ashe’s. Smith said that he had learned that Ashe had the disease, and that his editor wanted to run the story. Ashe, outraged by the intrusion, called the editor to make his case for privacy. Since finding out in 1988 that he had received an infusion of tainted blood during heart surgery, Ashe felt that going public with the news would compromise the lives of his family and take valuable time away from the activist work that he still wanted to do. Now he realized there was no way to avoid it.
Rather than having the paper report the news, the 48-year-old Ashe made his announcement in a nationally televised press conference at the offices of HBO. “Some of you heard that I had tested positive for HIV,” Ashe said. “That is indeed the case.”
“I am angry,” he continued, “that I was put in this position of having to lie if I wanted to protect my privacy.”
Ashe died the following February, three years before the management of AIDS became possible with drugs. Tennis had lost perhaps the most important figure of its last half-century before he was 50 years old.
In making the announcement his way, Ashe had, as always, spoken truth to power. He ended his sadly short life in the same dignified way that he had always conducted it.