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John Varga
Courtesy of Tim Boggan At an historic 1937 meeting in Kokomo, a number of players and officials forever important to Indiana table tennis gathered together to reorganize the State Association and to elect South Bend’s W. B. Hester (the W. stood for Weldon) as their President. A selected Who’s Who at this meeting would include,…
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Tybie Thall Sommer
Courtesy of Tim Boggan Leah Thall’s younger, tennis-playing sister, 17-year-old Thelma “Tybie” Thall, made her first recorded t.t. tournament appearance at Cincinnati’s Feb. 8, 1942 Jewish Center Midwest Closed. She was a straight-A student and “the first girl in the history of [Columbus, Ohio’s] East High to win a varsity letter in the sport [of…
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Mildred Shahian
Courtesy of Tim Boggan Mildred Shahian, whose life was devoted to table tennis–both as a World and National Champion, and as the Manager for 40 years of Chicago’s well-known Net and Paddle Club–died of cardiac arrest, April Fools Day, 1992. Her close friend of 30 years, Jim Lazarus, agonized over her, comforted her, in her…
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George Schein
Courtesy of Tim Boggan Indispensible to any attempt to recreate the early History of U.S. Table Tennis are the published books and private scrapbooks of those active in 1930’s table tennis–specifically, the popularizations of Neil Schaad, Bill Stewart, and Coleman Clark, and the lovingly kept (if not always so chronologically ordered) clippings of Marcus Schussheim…
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William R. Price
Courtesy of Tim Boggan The Aug. 31, 1934 Cleveland Great Lakes Open–played before maybe 1,000 spectators on 40-50 tables set up outdoors at the windy Euclid Beach Amusement Park–was clearly unique. It was also significant in that it provided us with the first mention in Topics of three great St. Louis players–Robert “Bud” Blattner, Garrett…
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William C. Holzrichter
Courtesy of Tim Boggan Billy Holzrichter, born New Year’s Day, 1922, began playing at the Larabee Y in Chicago in 1934. Two years later, in the Illinois Open, he had a sensational win over Ralph Muchow (MUCK-ow), U.S. #9 for the ’36-37 season. This prompted Yoshio Fushimi, Coleman Clark’s exhibition partner and one of the…
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William A. Gunn
Courtesy of Tim Boggan Bill Gunn, President of the Gunn Brothers Oil Co., a home heating firm in Mamaroneck, N.Y., didn’t start playing the game until the early-to-mid-1930’s, when he was 33 years old. In 1935, when the Larchmont Westchester, N.Y. Club changed its affiliation (it had been one of the last holdouts) from the…
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Peggy McLean Folke
Courtesy of Tim Boggan Margaret “Peggy” McLean Folke first comes to our notice as a 13-year-old from Hollis, Long Island, N.Y. participating in the 1940 Eastern’s held in Reading, Pennsylvania. When she next catches our eye, it’s a year later, Wednesday, Feb. 12, and she’s playing in the one-day New York Open. Obviously she’s been…
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Laszlo Bellak
Way before the inimitable Laszlo “Laci” Bellak came from Hungary to play in the 1937 U.S. Open, he had an unmatchable reputation as an on-court entertainer–a world class player with an impishly unique and maddeningly effective style. The first U.S. player to see Laci in action and to marvel at his virtuoso serio-comic performance was…
US Table Tennis Hall of Fame
Recognizing athletes and contributors in the sport of Table Tennis in the United States