Andrew Young is still funny, still laughing and still telling stories.
But admittedly, the former Atlanta mayor and United Nations ambassador is doing them all a bit slower.
In an exclusive interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the 86-year-old civil rights leader, who was hospitalized May 6 with a high fever and infection, said he is on the mend.
“I am doing very well,” Young said. “I have another 10 days of antibiotic treatment. I needed three months to recover from the last 60 years.”
Young, who was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 1977 until 1979 and the mayor of Atlanta from 1982 until 1990, flew to Nashville on May 5 to deliver the keynote for the Fisk University baccalaureate service the following Sunday.
But early May 6, he sent the university a text that he would be unable to speak and was quickly taken to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Young spent three days at Vanderbilt before being transferred to Emory.
Young’s family immediately said, and he confirmed Monday, that his upcoming events and appearances have been canceled and they are not booking any new ones for a while.
Which can get him a bit antsy for a man who has been deeply involved in either civil rights, Atlanta politics or world affairs for most of his life.
“It is not energy so much as sharing the wisdom and experience. Almost everything going on in the world now, I been through,” Young said. “But I am in the process of asking myself what the Lord wants me to do next. Like the scripture says, ‘I don’t feel no ways tired.”
