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People walk up to the Arthur Ashe Endowment booth at the U.S. Open, and they start talking.

Leslie Allen
listens. She was Ashe’s friend in the tight little world of black
tennis, and later part of a small clique on the pro tour. She hates
that Arthur is gone, and she also fears he has been forgotten, or
turned into a cliché – the man who died in 1993 of AIDS from a blood
transfusion.

Arthur was not a
victim. He was the wise leader who organised the annual outing to Chez
Haynes on Montmartre during the French Open, for fried chicken and
honey “and a facsimile of collard greens,” as Allen puts it.

He was the friend
who heard she was going to the University of Southern California and
reminded her that he had gone to UCLA and knew the area.

He was also the
Wimbledon and Open champion who pointed out to her one year at the
French Open that she had lasted longer in that tournament than he had.

“That was when I
knew I was a professional,” said Allen, who played on centre court at
the U.S. Open, beating Ruta Gerulaitis in straight sets in 1979 as
Althea Gibson came out to watch her play.

Now Allen runs the
booth at the Open, on the main pathway between Ashe and Armstrong
Stadiums, selling handsome T-shirts and auctioning tennis souvenirs for
the Ashe Endowment, which sponsors AIDS research via Weill Cornell
Medical College.

A sign on the booth
says the Endowment has raised $1,136,706 to date – actually a little
bit more because I bought a lovely black shirt for my wife, with
Arthur’s likeness on the front. He has become the face on the T-shirt
when he should be at the Open, schmoozing with everybody. He’d be only
66. Allen is concerned that people are forgetting him.

“One young man
stopped at the booth, an African-American,” she said. “He didn’t know
Arthur Ashe was a real person.” Other people stop by and talk about
loved ones who died of AIDS, and Allen listens. One volunteer who is
HIV-positive returns to the booth every year and announces, “I am still
here.” One day, Camera Ashe, daughter of Arthur and Jeanne
Moutoussamy-Ashe, was volunteering at the booth and had turned her
badge backward, perhaps seeking anonymity. A man who works on the tour
stopped by to chat, telling her what a fine man Arthur Ashe was, not a
carouser. He had no idea he was talking to Ashe’s daughter.

Most people who
stop by do not know that Allen was the first black woman to win a
singles title in the Open era – Detroit in 1979. She grew up in
Cleveland and was introduced to the sport by her mother, Sarah, who had
“hundreds of trophies” from amateur tournaments. Allen hated tennis as
a child, she said, but her 5-foot-10 stature and the family enthusiasm
carried her to the tour. She reached the third round of the Open in
1979 and was ranked as high as 21st in the world.

Allen has held
several jobs in tennis, has her own foundation; runs an enrichment
programme in Charleston, S.C.; and sometimes escorts young people
around the tennis centre to show them the variety of jobs out there.
They stick out their hands, introduce themselves, ask questions. Arthur
would love it.

Allen’s status
around the tour allows her to chat up current players and collect their
autographs on tennis gear, to auction them at the booth or on the Web
site endowment.arthurashe.org. And when her daughter, Rachel Selmore,
needed a bone-marrow transplant as an infant, friends like Martina
Navratilova, Gigi Fernandez and Heinz Gunthardt (the first three names
off the top of Allen’s head) came by to be tested. Rachel is 15 now,
already 5-6, her growth notched annually on a vertical pillar of the
booth.

The Ashe booth is a
little community in the mad bazaar of the midway – the expensive food
stalls, the chichi tennis goods. Visitors have their photograph taken
with the logo of Arthur Ashe Stadium in the background. They don’t need
the Ashe booth as a photo backdrop anymore.

AIDS is not the
shocker it was 25 years ago. When Arthur died, there were two drugs to
combat AIDS; now there are a dozen or more, Allen said. Her friend’s
memory helps fight AIDS. But she would prefer he was around, organising
a run for soul food.

© 2010 New York Times