Sonji Clay, first wife of Muhammad Ali, dead at 59.
Posted: 15 Oct 2005, 10:18
I found this.
Sonji Clay, first wife of Muhammad Ali, dead at 59
Associated Press
CHICAGO - Sonji Clay-Glover, the first wife of boxing great Muhammad Ali, has died. She was 59.
Clay-Glover's body was found early Tuesday morning in her Hyde Park home on Chicago's South Side, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office. The office on Wednesday said her death was reported to them as being of natural causes so no autopsy would be performed.
A nephew told the Chicago Sun-Times that she may have suffered a heart attack.
Clay was introduced to Ali by his manager, Herbert Muhammad, when the heavyweight champion still was known as Cassius Marcellus Clay.
They married just 41 days later, on Aug. 14, 1964. But the couple divorced by January 1966 amid conflict over Ali's increasing devotion to the Nation of Islam.
"She was an independent-minded woman and she wanted to be herself," H.D. "Doc" White, Clay's friend and record producer, told the Sun-Times. "She was kind, but she just wasn't a very submissive woman. She was a very, very spirited woman."
Longtime friend and former neighbor Shirley Fisher said Clay went through a lot during the breakup of her marriage.
"I know she suffered a lot from that whole incident. ... But I really know that he loved her a lot and they loved each other," Fisher said.
After the divorce, Clay returned to Chicago from Miami, where the couple had been living.
The aspiring singer recorded a couple of singles for Aries Record Productions, including "I Can't Wait (Until I See My Baby's Face)," and the ballad "Here I Am and Here I'll Stay."
Clay never achieved the musical fame she had hoped for but, "Her music had a kind of sweet loneliness, sometimes a little sultry," White said.
Clay married attorney Reynaldo Glover, with whom she had a son, Reynaldo Jr. They later divorced. She also had a son, Herman Griffin, from a previous relationship.