In the cramped, otherwise silent confines of an Oldsmobile in the predawn darkness, Muhammad Ali suddenly made the tempting boast once again.
"No man alive has ever run up my mountain!"
In the backseat, shoulder to shoulder with a couple of the heavyweight champ's handlers, Mike Gaffney — who first picked up a camera at the University of Dayton and now found himself and his Nikons at the base of the mountain leading up to Ali's Deer Lake training camp in Pennsylvania — finally took the bait:
"Stop the car!"
That was 35 years ago, but Gaffney has never forgotten his verbal counterpunch ... and what happened next:
"Bundini Brown was driving and Ali was next to him in the front seat. I got out and though it was still dark out, the headlights lit up the road, so I started running. I was in good shape back then, but halfway up the hill I was dying and thought about quitting."
That's what everyone in the car expected.
Gaffney was a young photographer for a small New Jersey newspaper who — on a bit of a lark — had ended up at the camp where Ali was training for his upcoming title bout with hard-punching Earnie Shavers at Madison Square Garden.
"I'd read in the New York Times about three Ohio guys who had gotten into their car and driven out to Deer Lake," Gaffney said. "They hadn't expected to get in, but instead they'd had a great time with Ali. I saw that and said, "I'm gonna try that, too.'"
At the time Gaffney also was doing some work for the Gamma-Liaison agency in New York. He was told they'd take whatever photos he could get — Ali was possibly the most recognizable face in the world back in 1977 — so he had grabbed cameras, said goodbye to Debbie, his wife of two years, got into his royal blue Volkswagen and made the 2 1/2 hour trip to Deer Lake.
When he got there, he was led into a dressing room where Ali — lounging of a couch in a white robe and barefoot before the day's training session — said he could shoot whatever he wanted.
"I was taken aback," Gaffney said. "His openness was stunning."
A week into the session Gaffney said he made a request: "I said, 'Champ, I want to get pictures of you running.' He goes, 'OK, we run real early, so meet us at the mosque — he had a mosque at his camp — at 5 in the morning. From there we drove down to Deer Lake, where it was flatter."
On the way back came the Ali challenge and the lungs-about-to-burst decision Gaffney said he had to make midway through his up-the-mountain run:
"I finally said, 'This is ridiculous. You can't stop now. Muhammad Ali is lighting the way for you.'
"So I kept going. I almost (threw up), but I got to the top. And that's when Ali jumps out of the car and goes 'You're the only man alive who has run up my mountain!'
"I realized later they pull that on everybody. But ... I still believe I'm the only guy to actually run up it. I think Ali liked that and a week later when I told him I was leaving in the morning, he said 'No! No! I want you to work for me.' "
Gaffney told him he had a job, but Ali said that since his longtime chronicler, Howard Bingham, was running for Congress in California, he needed a personal photographer for a year.
"I said I had to think about it and halfway home I pulled over and called my wife," Gaffney said. "She said. 'What does that mean?' and I told her I'd have to cover fights, travel all over the world with Ali, make pictures and get them to wire services. It would be a job. She told me we'd have to talk about it.
"The rest of the way home I'm thinking 'I really want to do this' and when I walked in the door Debbie said, 'Mike, if you don't do this you'll regret it the rest of your life. This is an opportunity of a lifetime.' ... And she was right."
And today people are able to see just how right his late wife was.
From mid-July until the end of September, Gaffney's photos are part of a gala show honoring Ali at Forman's Smokehouse Gallery in London. That the retrospective runs alongside the Olympic Games there is appropriate.
Ali has been tied to the Olympics for more than a half century. He won a gold medal as a light-heavyweight at the 1960 Games in Rome and then moved everyone's heart as he steadied a hand trembled by Parkinson's disease and lit the Olympic Cauldron at the 1996 Games in Atlanta.
Wearing a white suit, dark sunglasses and leaning on wife Lonnie to steady himself, Ali was one of a handful of dignitaries who helped escort the Olympic flag into the stadium during Friday night's Opening Ceremony.
And if you thought that image was moving, you should see the ones in Gaffney's new book — "The Champ: My Year with Muhammad Ali" — that has just been released this past weekend on ebook and in print version on Amazon.
'I loved UD'
Gaffney came to UD from Mendham, N.J. in 1967, lived in Stuart Hall for a year, then moved with roommate Jack McKnight, now a Wright State teacher, to Kiefaber Street in the Student Ghetto.
"During my sophomore year, my brother Charlie was in Bangkok on R&R from Vietnam and he bought me a Yashica Mat 124 twin lens reflex — a box camera with two lenses — that used 120 film," Gaffney said.
He took some pictures of a young Spanish girl in a Dayton alley, a friend showed him how to develop the film and, as the image magically appeared in the dark room, he was smitten: "I fell in love with photography right there."
He ended up going to Washington, D.C. and took photos of demonstrations which he showed in a slide show set to music — a documentary entitled "We Came in Peace" — at Kennedy Union.
"I loved UD," he said. "It was a wonderful time to be in college. There was so much going on culturally. There was the whole music revolution. Woodstock was in the air. It was a powerful period of change."
Six years after his 1971 graduation, he joined Ali.
"Every day after his workouts Ali would sit and talk to the people and sign autographs and pose for pictures," he said. "He embraced everybody. And right off I saw just how much bigger he was than boxing. And because I had a privileged position, I had a responsibility to take truthful, honest pictures to tell his whole story."
During his year with Ali, he covered three fights: There was the bruising decision over Shavers, who rocked him so badly in the second round that afterward Ali admitted: "Earnie hit me so hard it shook my kinfolk back in Africa."
Next came the stunning loss to the young Leon Spinks in Las Vegas and then, seven months later, his historic defeat of Spinks in the New Orleans Superdome to regain the heavyweight crown for an unprecedented third time.
It was midway through that year that Gaffney first contemplated doing a book and took his photos to Random House. He said the woman editor marveled at his work, but said books on Ali didn't sell back then because he was in the newspapers every day.
Gaffney started to laugh: "The editor who rejected me was Toni Morrison. Those were her salad days before she won the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, the Norman Mailer Award and hundreds more.
"I figure at least I get kicked in the head by someone who was really, really good."
An exhibit, then a book
In 2009 Gaffney finally put together an exhibit of his Ali photos to raise money for the Morristown Neighborhood House, the community center where he had learned to box as a kid. ESPN got wind of it and sent a film crew and soon after the collection was taken to London.
While he was there, he did a radio show and was asked: "So do you have a book to promote?"
Gaffney laughed as he recalled his response: "I said, 'Yes, I'm working on it." When he left, a friend waiting in the sound room said, "So when did you start your book?" and he answered, "Well, right now."
Along with the 8,000 images he had made in that special year, he also had used a tape recorder to capture daily encounters in Ali's own words. Not only did he get the give and take at Deer Lake or down at the Fifth Street Gym in Miami Beach, but there were many away-from-the ring moments, everything from Ali with his family to the time he told his driver to stop the car in Detroit and then charged unannounced into a nightclub and jumped on stage to kibitz with the crowd.
Gaffney has mixed those words with his photos in his new book. Among the captivating images he's included one especially tender one of Ali cradling his 2 ½ week old daughter Laila in his hands.
In People magazine last year she recounted how she now has hung that photo over the crib of her own baby daughter, Sydney. As Gaffney explained: "She said it's like a light shining down on her daughter from her dad."
Reports from London this month say the photos are being similarly received and in the future Gaffney hopes to do an exhibit at UD, too.
"There are a lot of things I love about Ali," he said. "He used his position of fame as a way to give a voice to people who needed to be heard. He believed in peace and tolerance and acceptance.
"There are a lot of young people today who don't know much about him. I hope my book helps them understand some of his legacy. His message should be heard now."
Thanks to Mike Gaffney, Muhammad Ali still will be able to light the way for others.
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