He was buried the following Wednesday at Woodland Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia. This memoir began with a telephone call from Arthur to me in June 1992. His call came as a surprise, because we had not been in touch with one another since our first meeting, at a children’s book fair the previous November in Princeton. Arthur called to ask whether or not I would be interested in writing a book with him. In this book, he hoped to express his views on certain issues of importance to him, such as race, education, politics, and sports, as well as to give an account of his experience as a patient with heart disease and AIDS. I immediately agreed to do so. Such was the spirit of cooperation between us, and my sense of urgency, that we worked without a formal agreement from July until November, when we signed our contract with Knopf. Although this book was nearly complete before Arthur’s death, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe has worked heroically since then to try to ensure not only its timely publication but also its accuracy and general soundness.
