Theft Of Gift A Low Blow To Lou Maxey
Ahmed may be sitting in some college dorm room right now, a beer can perched on his sleek hard head. Or perhaps the cool cat has been transplanted to another yard, the victim of a sophomoric prank.
Who but imbeciles would dare back a truck up to a Spokane home in broad daylight and snatch a 3-foot, 200-pound concrete statue of a black panther from the front porch?
Lou Maxey doesn’t really care who took the slick feline last Wednesday or where it ended up.
She just wants it back. No questions asked.
Ahmed, you see, is more than a $200 ornament. Much more.
The shiny art object was a birthday gift from Lou to her famous husband, Carl, the summer before he died. He used to jovially greet the panther and pat its head whenever he walked through the door. At Christmas, he adorned the statue with a Santa Claus hat.
A legendary boxer, attorney and civil rights activist, Maxey took his own life last July 17 at his home with a gunshot to the head. He was 73.
“I wasn’t going to do this,” says Lou, wiping tears as she talked about Ahmed’s disappearance. “I’m a strong chick. I can stand about anything, but this,” she adds, pausing, “it really hurt me.”
Losing the statue, whom Maxey affectionately dubbed Ahmed, is a symbolic blow. It has rubbed raw the grief that has been with Lou since finding her husband’s body in a bedroom.
Maxey’s presence permeates this home that is deceptively spacious and decorated in cool, jazzy dark tones. In the late 1950s, when Maxey bought the place, neighbors struck up a petition in a failed attempt to keep the black man out. “This is Carl’s home,” says Lou. “He loved it.”
A sizable, black-and-white photograph hanging on a dining room wall shows a lean, well-muscled Maxey in his collegiate boxing days, back when he went 33-0 to win the light-heavyweight national championship.
In the living room, a painting of a much older Maxey hangs near artwork of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
Yellowed newspaper clippings rest on a table. Photos of Lou and Carl on various happy occasions line a knickknack shelf.
A larger-than-life figure when he was alive, Carl remains imposing in death.
The Jan. 4 New York Times Magazine devoted to “people who made a difference” included Maxey among heavyweights like Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan.
Maxey’s story, as recounted by Times writer Timothy Egan, was something worthy of a Charles Dickens novel. Given up for adoption by his single mother, Maxey was moved to the juvenile detention center when a Spokane orphanage “had no room for a black boy.”
He became the first black person from Spokane to pass the Washington state bar exam. Maxey endured prejudice and focused the aggression he learned in the ring to fight for poor clients and social causes.
Why he ended his life is still a puzzle. Maxey didn’t leave a note. Whatever inner depression he wrestled with was kept well hidden.
Lou, 53, prefers to focus on happier times. She tells a story that, even today, is bound to raise a few eyebrows. It is about how she fell instantly in love with the handsome lawyer when they met for first time.
That was 1963. Lou was a spunky 18-year-old Washington State University student active in the civil rights movement. She invited Maxey, a married man in his late-30s, to WSU as a speaker.
Their relationship lasted. “We had a wonderful love affair,” she says unashamedly.
They married in 1974, after Maxey had been divorced for a couple of years. She remembers that Tom Foley’s parents were the first people to show up for the wedding party.
“People respected and loved him so much that they figured if he was doing this, it must be OK,” says Lou.
Carl Maxey had that kind of effect on people.
“People would come to him with a problem and they would find their lives changed,” she adds. “His goal was to always make the very best out of someone.”
Anyone with information on Ahmed’s whereabouts can call 459-5432 and leave a message. There will be a reward.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo