Muhammad Ali: memorial service begins in Louisville for boxing legend – live – The Guardian

Friday morning, hundreds of mourners and admirers gathered at an Ali memorial outside the Muhammad Ali Center in downtown Louisville. They added wreaths and banners and signs to a pile of others that had accumulated over the past week.

Louisville resident Vanessa Moore and her daughter, 26-year-old Marcela, stood shoulder to shoulder and stared at the photos and drawings of the city’s hero.

‘We just can’t tear ourselves away,’ Vanessa said. ‘Such a great man is gone.’

For years, Marcela said, the family attended local football and basketball games and whenever the great boxer made an appearance a chant would arise from the crowd: ‘Ah-li! Ah-li!’

Vanessa teaches fifth grade, and said many of her students wrote papers and made projects about Ali in February, for Black History Month.

‘Now I just wonder how they feel,’ she said. ‘My heart goes out to them.’