If this "meeting" between Wee Willie & Muhammad Ali really took place, I wish the former heavyweight champ would have pummeled Pitt into oblivion.
If I recall correctly--it was a very long time ago--the Bostonian Drunkard today is considerably more flaccid, more flabby, more greasy, than Muhammad Ali was in person. Of course, one's a drunkard and the other was a boxer, but still.....
I also wanted to say that since this was probably before your time, it wasn't anything unusual for passengers on international flights to see a "celebrity" of one sort or another also on board. This was before the Reagan-Bush-Gingrich-Bush prosperity that made international flights more affordable to ordinary people; when flying internationally was still a "special" event.
I'm sure others here who flew pre-prosperity days have similar anecdotes, about being on a flight with this celebrity or that celebrity.
Other than the formal courtesies involved with my inquiring of his family, some chitchat about the weather, and my remark that he was smaller in real life than he looked in the newsmagazines, I don't recall much else. His family was fine, he'd seen all sorts of weather flying from Manila to London and was expecting to see more, blah-blah-blah.
I was just a sullen saturnine teenager irritated at having to go back to school; and besides, I'd always been taught to leave people alone, as usually they appreciate their privacy.
One of those random by-chance meetings.....I still consider my random by-chance encounter with Omaha Steve mountains more interesting than this was. Nothing against Muhammad Ali; as mentioned, boxing isn't, and wasn't, my thing, and I couldn't hardly say anything interesting about it.
