Muhammad Ali TIME's June 20 issue prompted a deluge of mostly appreciative comments--including even poetry--and many letters from readers who had been indelibly marked by chance encounters with its subject. Alfred Sonny Piccoli of Bloomfield, N.J., recalled the day when, at age 17, he said hello to Muhammad Ali on a Newark, N.J., street. The champ imparted advice that Piccoli passed on to the kids he supervised as a longtime juvenile probation officer: "Don't ever back down from a fight that you know is for something worth fighting for, even if you may not win it."
Robert Lipsyte's tribute to Ali as activist and athlete was "a masterpiece," wrote Ron Strine of Webster, N.Y., that Mike Wilson of Lomita, Calif., said "in a few pages captured the complexity of the…
