Editor, Gazette-Journal:

My favorite tennis player was Arthur Ashe. He was born Arthur Robert Ashe, in Richmond on July 10, 1943 to Arthur Sr. and Mattie Cunningham Ashe. Tennis player Arthur Ashe garnered many awards in his lifetime. At age 4, he began playing tennis at a place called Brookfield, a Black-only park here in Virginia, where his father had worked as a caretaker.

During his relatively short lifetime, Ashe also became an outspoken activist who spoke out against racial discrimination, segregation and apartheid. In 1977, he married Jeanne Moutoussamy, a photographer and graphic artist, the daughter of an architect named John Moutoussamy. A few years later, she and Mr. Ashe adopted a daughter who they named Camera. In 1980, Ashe officially retired from tennis, mainly due to a heart attack he suffered a year earlier.

In 1985, he was unanimously elected to the International Tennis Hall of Fame; and he incredibly wrote eight books between 1967 and 1995, covering topics ...