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JANE GLENN HAAS The Orange County Register
About a quarter of a century ago, Muhammad Ali was standing with one of his daughters (he has nine children) by a driveway at Los Angeles International Airport.
We were walking by when my son, Andrew, spotted the famous boxer. My other son, Tom, immediately ran over to him and Ali did a right-left-right handshake and gave Tom an autograph.
He was gracious and friendly to the boys, characteristics I recalled while talking to his oldest daughter, Maryum “May May” Ali.
“May May,” a social worker with delinquent children and soon-to-be screenwriter, lives in Los Angeles. She was at the Balboa Bay Club in Newport Beach, Calif., to talk to the Parkinson Wellness Symposium.
She talked about how the disease has impacted her father, diagnosed 30 years ago, and about her sister, Raysheda’s, children’s book, “I’ll Hold Your Hand So You Won’t Fall: A Child’s Guide to Parkinson’s disease” (Merit Publishing, 2005).
“He’s a very positive person,” she told me. “He’s positive and peaceful. He’s not angry he has Parkinson’s. He says he’s optimistic and he’s not in any pain.”
Q: Your father has had Parkinson’s for 30 years. He’s now 66. How is he coping?
A: He’s in the stage where his balance and speech are impacted. But the disease progresses so slowly. He still looks good and still does pretty well, although sometimes he uses a walker.
A: I’ve adopted my father’s thinking. I don’t walk around with negatives.
You know “The Secret” and all those books about how to live life? My father practiced all those positives. He never read the books, but he said “I won’t achieve a goal if I don’t proclaim it first.”
Q: He put a face on Parkinson’s disease. He changed public thinking about the illness.

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