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Muhammad Ali given huge Irish hero's welcome | Former World Heavyweight Champion Muhammad
Ali was given an Irish hero's welcome on Tuesday at Turnpike Road from where his great-grandfather Abe Grady set out for the New World almost 150 years ago. The
former three times world heavyweight boxing champion was welcomed like a returning
prodigal son when he arrived in Ennis, Co Clare, and was made its first Freeman.
Clearly moved by the fervour of the welcome, he refused to be ushered into a waiting
vehicle by his security guards as the crowds chanted: "Ali! Ali! Ali!" After unveiling
a monument near the spot where his ancestral home - a two-room thatched cottage
- once stood, he walked with his wife, Yolanda, to meet his fans, the majority
of whom were not even born when his brilliant career was dimmed by the onset of
Parkinson's disease, reports The Times. Today Turnpike Road is lined with primly
neat council houses, none prouder than the home of the late Eileen O'Grady, whose
daughter, Mary, kissed and hugged her famous distant cousin. Eileen died nine
months ago, preferring to keep her association with one of the greatest sportsmen
of all time a secret. Genealogists traced the roots of Ali, formerly Cassius Clay
Jr, to Abe Grady through land registry documents, which record that Grady left
Ireland in the 1860s from Cappa Harbour in Kilruch, Co Clare. He settled in Kentucky,
where he married a freed African-American slave. Their son also married an African-American
and one of the daughters of that union was Odessa Lee Grady, who married Cassius
Clay Sr.
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