By Michael Marley

Venerable, one-time mass circulation Reader's Digest carried a regular feature entitled "My Most Unforgettable Character" in which an author would then introduce and explain an offbeat or colorful person he had personally encountered.

On the occasion of my idol/my friend Muhammad Ali's 69th birthday, this former president of the grandly named "International Cassius Clay Fan Club" can tell you that you could've filled a year's editions of Reader's Digest with stories on the wild and whacky people who were in the personal orbit of "The Greatest."

Many of the most well known figures in the Ali entourage, which a clever New York Post headline writer named Pat "Hondo" Hannigan once labeled "Ali's Free Ring Circus" above a column of mine circa 1979, are dead.

Drew "Bundini" Brown, the "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee...your hands can't hit what your eyes can't see, died in a one room hovel in Los Angeles, only 59 years old. The former Merchant Marine seaman, who left home as a teenager, finished his life battling a cocaine addiction and trying to sell off the Ali trinkets he had managed to hold onto.

Lana Shabazz, the "mother wit" who ran the Ali Deer Lake (Pa.) training camp kitchen like a culinary dictatorship but also had a sweet side, is gone. Last I heard, she was cooking for a private school on the East Side.

Pat Patterson, the solid ex-Chicago cop who guarded Muhammad even when he went to take a leak (not a Wikileak, either), is departed. And so has his protege who became bodyguard to Sugar Ray Leonard and then to Hollywood stars, James Anderson. (His son, Jamal, played for the Atlanta Falcons.)

So who's still around?

Well, "The Facilitator" Gene Kilroy, for one.

Everywhere Ali went, you could say "Kilroy was here."

The lone white face in Ali's circle, other than trainer Angelo Dundee ("Angelo ain't white...he's Eyetalian" the champ once said), Kilroy was the link who brought Kennedys and other big names from the sports, entertainment and political worlds around to meet and greet Ali.

It was because of Kilroy that the young Marley got to take a photo with musical giant Kris Kristofferson. Kilroy lives in Las Vegas and, I think, is a gladhander-casino host-greeter at the Golden Nugget.

As long as Kilroy is walking and talking, one of Ali's Apostles will keep the legend alive.

Kilroy has become the Keeper of the Ali Flame and he holds it high and steady.

(To be continued)