George Harrison (left) and Bill Pardoe

Pardoe, William E.

Pardoe, an Ogden UT native and graduate of Brigham Young High, was a fine tennis player and was ranked on Long Island where he lived at the time of his marriage before moving to Westchester and being introduced to platform tennis. It did not take him long to become good enough to begin his reign as a player of championship caliber, in both form and in the record books and he was always been in contention regardless of what tournament he was playing in.

Bill won the Men’s Nationals in 1956 and again in 1960 and was runner-up in 1958. He won the Mixed Nationals in 1965 and was runner-up in 1959 and 1966. In the Senior Men’s he was a finalist in almost half the years the tournament had been held prior to the time of his induction. He was runner-up in 1961 and 1962 in the Senior Men’s 45+ and won the Senior Men’s 50+ three straight times in 1966, 1967 and 1968 with George Lowman.

His play was quick, steady and consistently strong. He brought the American twist service to platform tennis and put it to extremely good use and one of the all time best serves in the game. It was rare that an opponent could attack his serve and make a winner of the return. He had a deceptive change of pace with all of his shots, and opponents could never let down when playing against him. He was friendly, modest and, like his partner George Harrison a sportsman on the court.

George Harrison (left) and Bill Pardoe

Harrison, George R.

Harrison didn’t play as much lawn tennis as platform tennis, but that didn’t seem to have put him at any disadvantage on the paddle court. He acquitted himself well in any tournament he entered and was always a potential finalist. He won the Men’s Nationals in 1956 and 1960, was runner-up in 1951 and 1958, and a semi-finalist numerous times. He won the Men’s 45+ in 1963 and was runner-up in the Men’s 50+ in 1968.

George was extremely agile and his play was typified by amazingly fast reactions at net, which made him an excellent volleyer. Besides agility, he also possessed a tremendously strong forehand. Partners and opponents alike agree that few people hit a harder forehand, which gave him a consistent and dangerous return of service.

Harrison was active in the APTA as Rules and Equipment chairman and during his tenure, and through his efforts, the yellow-orange ball that replaced the original white ball was introduced and became the ball standard until the modern yellow ball was introduced in 1972 He and his partner, William Pardoe, played together over a long period of time, and they typify that great sense of teamwork, which is a prerequisite in all championship teams

Induction Ceremony Remarks at Fox Meadow Tennis Club: Harrison

Oscar F. Moore

Moore, Oscar F.

Oscar Fitzland Moore IV (he refused to be called Oscar, hence the nickname Oz) was born in Jamaica Plains, MA and graduated from St. Mark’s School, Southborough, MA, in 1923, and Yale in 1927. After graduating he worked as a stockbroker on Wall Street where he previously had been a runner starting at age 14, but decided to change careers during the depression and joined Johns Manville Corp. in their New York City offices.

In 1933 he married Mary (Maizie) Adair Childress (a member of the Childress paddle dynasty in Scarsdale, NY and Hall of Fame inductee in 1970). Soon after their two sons were born they moved from Staten Island, where Moore’s family had relocated to when his father became Rector of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, to Westchester County and joined the County Tennis Club in Hartsdale, N.Y.

Largely because of Maizie’s tennis prowess the family was urged to join the Fox Meadow Tennis Club, the Childress family’s home club, where they encountered Blanchard and Cogswell and their new game of paddle tennis that was rapidly growing in popularity.

Moore served as President of Fox Meadow from 1943-1944 and won the Men’s Tennis Doubles in 1948 with Dick Hebard and the Mixed Tennis Doubles with Maizie in 1942 and 1953. While he did not win any Platform Tennis titles at Fox Meadow he was a champion of the social aspect of the game and put mixed events on the map.

According to his sons their father’s fondest memories of the game were securing many gross of rubber paddle tennis balls just before the severe rubber shortage during WW II, and being elected President of the APTA in 1946.

He retired from Johns Manville in 1971 as VP and general division comptroller and, with his second wife, Betsy, moved from Rye, N.Y. to Pt. Manalapan, FL, then to Madison, CT and finally spent his last couple of decades at Essex Meadows, Essex, CT. He died in 1998.

Source: Eric Moore, February 2016, Hartford Courant, Obituary, 3/3/1998

Cliff Sutter

Sutter, Clifford S.

A native of New Orleans, Clifford Sutter was a superb tennis player, winning the NCAA singles championships for Tulane University in 1930 and 1932. He was undefeated in United States Davis Cup play (1931-33; 3-0 in singles), and was ranked No. 5 in the world in 1932.

After retiring from international tennis in 1934, he continued to play racquet sports at the Greenwich (Conn.) Field Club and always “maintained his loathing of losing,” as one club member put it. He worked in publishing and advertising in New York, rising to vice president at Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborne in the 1960’s. Sutter also started winning Platform Tennis Nationals titles, and accumulated four Men’s, (1941, 1945, 1946 and 1950), two Mixed (1941 and 1960), and one Senior Men’s (1959) over a nineteen year span. His last title was won in 1960 when he and his wife, Suzanne, defeated John Beck and Susan Beck Walsh 3-6, 6-4, 6-3 in South Orange, NJ. Suzanne was plainly thrilled. Said she happily: “I just can’t wait to tell the five children.” The Sutters had previously been finalists in 1942.

Sutter also was an accomplished squash player and was runner-up in the 1951 national squash racquets doubles championships.

Sources: New York Times, 5/10/2000 and Sports Illustrated 3/21/1960

Footnote: In his tennis matches with the titans of the 30’s, who included the likes of Big Bill Tilden, Ellsworth Vines, Fred Perry, and John Van Ryn, Sutter relied on precision over power, finesse over speed, a placid demeanor over flamboyance. And, although he was more often the semifinalist than the champion at the end of the day—his 4-6, 8-10, 12-10, 10-8, 6-1 loss to Vines at Forest Hills in 1932 remains the longest semifinal match, in number of games, in the history of the United States championships—Sutter earned the unmitigated respect of his peers.

Tilden described Sutter’s game as “steady, sure and accurate,” in The Times in 1931, and Helen Hull Jacobs, the United States women’s champion in 1934, praised the “highly developed grace and rhythm of his strokes and footwork.”

But Sutter’s legacy to tennis may be the stand he made off the court in the 1960’s. In 1962, concerned about tennis’s declining popularity, he led a “bloodless coup” for leadership of the Eastern Tennis Association and, as president, initiated an ambitious program of construction, clinics and instruction in public schools and parks in the region.

Stephenson, John A.

He was a leader in organizing the annual Westchester-New Jersey inter-team matches held in Englewood, NJ, and participated actively in exhibition matches to help promote the game. No one in the early history of the game was more popular and contributed more time, energy, enthusiasm and especially good fun to our great game.

Water H. Close

Close Jr., Walter H.

Close developed the $30.00 package supplied by the APTA to court builders, consisting of official blueprints plus a ten page Standard Specification Brochure, and designed and refined the APTA Tournament Invitation procedures used during that time. The Jambles Tournaments were never more successful than when Walter ran them and, as the Chairman of the 1957 Men’s Nationals, he was a model of efficiency and ingenuity. He was a student of “snow removal,” and developed the successful empirical formula of seven high school boys plus five local players plus shovels equals clean courts. He was also among the first to bring the digital age to platform tennis in the form of a loud-speaker system to announce court assignments.

A native of New York City, Close attended Dumpton House school in England, the Hill School in PA, and Princeton University where he graduated in 1937. He spent one year doing postgraduate work at New York University and then started working with Pan American Airways where he spent three years before being commissioned as an Ensign in the aviation branch of the Navy in 1941. He retired from the Navy after the end of hostilities in WWII as Lt. Commander and took a year off living on the family farm in Somerset VA before starting work as a Sales Rep. with Rochester Ropes, Inc. in Culpepper VA. From there he moved to the Worth Steel Company in Claymont DE and then to the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) where he managed their White Plains, NY office. Following a 12 year stint at Alcoa he became the Export Manager for Sherman Industries in 1963 and remained with the company until his retirement in 1975. Close and and his wife, Betty, settled in Scarsdale in 1947 where they were long-time and very active members of Fox Meadow Tennis Club.

Close died at home in 1991 of a stroke.

Source: ??, Princeton University Ten Year Book entry submittal (1947) and personal communication from daughter Cynthia Close Larkin

Walker, Marie

She was also a National Mixed finalist in 1947 with partner Keith Eaton. Marie was a lively, energetic competitor who handled the game with complete authority.

Fred Walker, 1952

Walker, B. Frederick

Walker attended the Hill School in Pottstown, PA, where he was on the varsity soccer and tennis teams, and then Princeton University where he also played soccer and was on two championship tennis teams. After graduating in 1941, with a major in geology, he worked for Pratt & Whitney in East Hartford, CT, before enlisting as a platoon sergeant with the 10th Mountain Division of the U.S. Army, serving in Italy. After the war, he had a highly successful career with the Massachusetts Life Insurance Company, and was a life member of the Million Dollar Round Table. He was an avid skier and rock-climber, and a member of the Appalachian Mountain Club. He was the Class Secretary from 1953 until the time of his death.

Charlotte Lee (1914-1990), an outstanding champion despite only starting to play the game in her early forties.

Lee, Charlotte McNeill

Lee first won recognition in national tennis circles, with her most successful year being 1937, when she reached the semifinal round of the National Singles Indoor Tournament at the Seventh Regiment Armory in New York City, as well as the Mixed Doubles semifinals with Don McNeill (no relation). She later won the USLTA Senior Singles in 1961, and the Women’s Doubles in 1963 and 1965, with Kay Hubbell, and competed in the Irish lawn Tennis Championships in 1969.

She first picked up a paddle at age 42 in 1957, when she started playing for her husband’s sake. He needed a partner when he took up the game for health reasons, and she discovered paddle was “made to order” for her. Four years later she won the first of 16 National titles—eight Women’s, five Mixed and three Senior Women’s 50+—and be a runner up eight times. She also won an almost uncountable number of club and state championships in both mixed and women’s play. During her active playing career, Charlotte won the respect and the admiration of her partners and opponents alike. Ask those paddlers who know her to describe Charlotte in a sentence and, most often, they will speak of her vivacious personality, her loyalty to friends, her uncompromising value of sportsmanship, her graciousness and modesty, and then they will mention her great playing ability.

Lee won the Nationals with a variety of partners and, when asked how she found each of these competent competitors, the answer was that Charlotte always sought out by her partner-to-be. She said since she was always the oldest woman competing, and therefore might not have as many years of competition as the others, she rarely stayed with a partner for more than one National victory and then, possibly, once defending the title.

Whenever she competed, Lee did so representing the Short Hills Club, where she remained a member, even after moving to New Hampshire. Proud to claim Charlotte as their own and grateful to her for all she had done for them, the Club has a “Charlotte Lee Invitational” in November.

Like so many champions, Lee was able, upon stepping onto the court, to put all personal feelings aside and concentrate fully on playing her best. Concentration and intensity characterized her game and she once said she becomes oblivious to anything but the game when she played, although her intensity did not affect her self-imposed rules of etiquette and sportsmanship on the court. She has made it a practice to compliment opponents on well-hit shots, and more than one fellow paddle player remarked on Charlotte deliberately hitting the ball away from an opponent who might have slipped down rather than taking advantage of the situation to win an easy point as almost any serious competitor would do. Lee’s sportsmanship was so widely recognized that the APTA published a platform tennis etiquette booklet featuring comments on the subject by Charlotte Lee.

One of Charlotte’s unwavering principles was to always play paddle for fun. Although she has had offers to teach for substantial monetary reward, she always refused, even when she was seeking employment after her husband’s death. “I consider myself a true amateur and could not work for money at the thing I loved most. It would take away from my enjoyment of the game, so I would rather just keep it as a hobby.” Of course, Lee’s refusal to teach for money did not prevent her from teaching for free, although she only considered it “helping” and she was always willing to do it.

Highly respected for her grace and sportsmanship, Lee was always willing to lend a hand and help players of all abilities. Up and down the East Coast, she was seen at openings of new court facilities to give clinics, exhibitions and lessons. She’d always bring three other ladies with her, and remain long after the exhibition was over to hit balls with anyone who wished. She never received a penny for all her efforts, seeking merely to further advance the game she loved. And she wanted others to have the same love and fun with the sport of platform.

Special memories included her starting each match with the admonition: “If there are any problems on either side of the net, we’ll play a let.” Funny, there never seemed to be any problems in her matches! Then there was the time a fine tennis player and up-and coming paddler strutted out onto the court and began to lick her chops when she saw the tall, rather elderly player opposing her. Less than a half hour later, she was licking the wounds of a double bagel loss. An impeccable dresser, Charlotte also made a habit of rotating her 12 pairs of sneakers on a daily basis.

At the Short Hills Club, the ladies’ singles tournament was played each June. The winner was then allowed to play Charlotte for the club championship. Guess who always won?

Charlotte was born in Baltimore, MD, and attended Bound Brook High School in Bound Brook NJ, graduating in 1933. While there she achieved the distinction of being the second girl in the school’s history to be elected President of the Student Body, and was awarded a medal for being the best all-around girl athlete. She later attended Ballard Secretarial School and worked at American Cyanamid where her husband, Dr. Slaughter Warren Lee, a lineal descendant of General Light Horse Harry Lee, worked as an organic chemist in the Research Laboratories.

Sources: Adapted from Kathy Reilly article in Platform Tennis News, Winter 1991; Behind The Screens, November 1985; Nancy Mangan and Oden Cox, Platform Tennis News.

Koegel, Barbara Bixler

Barbara took up tennis as a young girl, playing at the West Side Tennis Club, and at nineteen defeated the French girl’s champion at the USLTA championship in 1940. She excelled at tennis and squash at Smith and finally was introduced to platform tennis when she and her husband joined Fox Meadow Tennis Club in 1955. In ten years, until she gave up competitive play in 1965 for health related reasons, she won twenty club titles in tennis and paddle, and won the APTA National Women’s Doubles in 1956, with Sally Auxford, and the National Mixed Doubles title, with Zan Carver),in 1964.

Fessenden Blanchard in his book Platform Paddle Tennis called Barbara Koegel, “another first-class player, who has come to the top in recent years. She is a sister-in-law of the highly rated Frank Guernsey. In the semi-finals of the national mixed doubles at the Wee Burn Club in February 1959, she played as fine a game as I have ever seen any woman play. Though she and her partner, Herman Schaefer, lost to George Lowman and Sally Auxford in a very close, exciting match, Barbara’s steadiness and poise in returning difficult shots off the wires, her low volleying, her backhands and her all-around play were outstanding. And she continued her fine play in reaching the finals of the 43-team national women’s doubles championship in 1959, with my daughter, Mrs. Frederick B. (Ruthie) Walker, as her partner. As Kitty Fuller put it, she is ‘what the men call a real clutch player’. And, as one of her partners put it, ‘she’s a spectator’s joy and a partner’s dream’.”

Perhaps more significantly, Barbara loved tennis and paddle tennis, and she enjoyed playing with hackers as much as she did with the best players. As the APTA award said: “the reasons for her award tonight go beyond the record book. At her home club of Fox Meadow, Barbara Koegel has devoted her time and talent in developing the mediocre player, thereby improving the general caliber of many women participants. No sport could ask for a more unselfish dedication.” Fox Meadow established the Barbara Koegel Award in 1969 shortly after her death. The Annual Ladies’ Day Award is given “for achievement and sportsmanship and in memory of a champion who gave her time and talents to developing paddle tennis among the women of the Club.”

This characteristic was evidenced in other ways. In the late 50’s and early 60’s she served as captain and coach of the Westchester Junior Wightman Cup team. The Wightman cup was donated by the Queen Mother of tennis, Mrs. Hazel Wightman, who was herself a winner of forty-one national championships. The annual competition was, and still is, between English and American teams. Play would alternate between Wimbledon and Forest Hills. To encourage interest in the younger girls (up to 18), teams were formed from Westchester/Connecticut, Long Island and New Jersey. Barbara, who knew Mrs. Wightman well from Forest Hills days, agreed to captain the Westchester/Connecticut group of about two dozen girls, including several from Fox Meadow. She devoted a great deal of time to the practices and the matches and got great satisfaction from the experience.

Barbara Bixler was born October 11, 1921, in Jersey City, New Jersey. She and her younger sister, Joan, were the only children of Donald and Dora Bixler. At an early age, Barbara and her family moved to Forest Hills, New York, where they joined the West Side Tennis Club, which was then the foremost tennis club in the area and the site of the men’s and women’s National tournaments. She took up tennis as a young girl, at her father’s urging, under the tutelage of the club pro, George Agutter. He held the job at West Side for 46 years, was described by Al Laney as “the country’s No. 1 tennis- professional” and was much loved and respected. He developed in his pupils a sweeping style of backhand that was very graceful and very effective, and such a trademark that his pupils could often be identified in later years.

Barbara’s tennis developed very rapidly and she became the club’s women’s singles champion while still in high school. The family moved to Garden City, Long Island, in the late 1930s, but kept the West Side membership. In 1940, Barbara played in the Nationals, then on grass, and in the first round defeated the French girl’s champion. According to the newspaper account: “A sunny blonde, enjoying her first attempt in the big tournament, made the home club people very happy – to say nothing of her mother and father who watched joyously as she made a sensational battle out of a losing fight and scored a coveted victory (0-6, 6-1, 6-1).”

Barbara went on to Smith College, where she graduated in 1943. She was captain of the tennis and squash teams, and won the college championships in both sports. After marrying William F. Koegel in 1946, she and her husband lived in Charlottesville, VA, where he attended University of Virginia Law School. There, she continued to play tennis while she also began to raise a family. She won the Albemarle County (Charlottesville) ladies’ singles championship and played squash, non-competitively.

In 1949, she moved to Hartsdale, and, in 1952, to Walworth Avenue in Scarsdale. She played at County Tennis Cub until 1955, and was the ladies’ tennis champion. In that year she and her husband joined Fox Meadow Tennis Club ,and her attachment to paddle tennis began.

Barbara died on October 16, 1968, after a four-year bout with colon cancer, at the age of 47.

Source: Letter to John A. Miller, Jr., President of Fox Meadow Tennis Club,from William F. Koegel, dated April 11, 1994.