A journalism professor, a long, long time ago, told his students that good journalists, to be well rounded, should know a little about a lot of things in life.

That single concept also describes my first-hand knowledge of many famous athletes.

I'm fortunate to have met and talked with some famous sports figures over the last couple of decades.

Once such incident was in fall 1998 in Southwest Michigan.

I'm working at a small newspaper in St. Joseph, Mich., that published around noon each day. What that meant as a newsroom employee is that you had to be at work between 4 and 5 a.m. The good news is that most days we were done by noon or so. That schedule made playing golf a great activity ... until the weather changes.

That's a story for another day.

So it was a beautiful Wednesday in the middle of October and the photo editor and I are planning to be on the No. 1 tee about 20 minutes after deadline.

That concept changed when the photo editor got an assignment to quickly take a photo at a charity lunch just down the road. I went along for the ride since it was on the way to the golf course.

Turns out the lunch was an annual event to benefit the Berrien County Boys and Girls Club and the yearly star of the show was the most famous resident of Berrien Springs, Muhammad Ali.

That farm you hear about Ali living on in rural Michigan is about as "rural" as you can get.

So jump ahead to the end of the event, the photo editor has his shot, and we're about to leave when some official says that Ali wants to talk with the photo editor.

We walk back stage and Ali is there. Ali talks with the photo editor and asks that he send him a photo of the event. Ali looks directly at me, waves me over and asks the photo editor if I'm his assistant. We laugh a little bit, I shake Ali's hand, talk for about three minutes and get a photo taken with Ali's arm around my back.

We leave the event and I'm walking on air. We go to McDonald's to grab a quick lunch before we head to the course and we realize we're in the drive-through line behind Ali and his wife.

The white Lincoln that Ali was riding in stops at the window and a single cup is handed through the window. We take our turn at the window and ask the McDonald's employee what Ali ordered.

"Small vanilla shake," she said. Nice treat for the former champ.

We finally get to the course and I grab my golf bag out of the trunk. As I slide the bag over my shoulder I feel a slight tug and hear kind of a flip. I turn my back to the photo editor and ask if anything is on my back.

He pulls a taped piece of paper off my back, laughing as he reads it.

"Ask me about being a photo assistant," it read and was signed by Ali.

I remember that as Ali turns 70 today. He is a complicated man with a complex past, but he is a man who can brighten just about anyone's day, as he did mine that day.