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Patty Martinez-Wasserman
Patty Martinez began winning tournaments when she was a little girl in San Diego wearing long, ankle-length dresses and patty-caking the ball back with gum-chewing, not to say exasperatingly casual, regularity. Continuing to play with an anachronistic hard-rubber bat, she grew up to win three U.S. Open Women’s Singles Championships, not only because of that…
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Richard Hicks
It’s not yet 1960 and Richard Hicks is playing out of Lyndon, Kentucky. Since that’s somewhere between Anchorage and St. Matthews, what are the odds that four decades later he’ll be in the USATT Hall of Fame and that its founder, Steve Isaacson, will be up at the podium introducing him for Induction? And introducing…
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Donna Chaimson Sakai
In the late 1950’s, Bob Chaimson was not only President of the Washington, D.C. Table Tennis Association, he was also USTTA Membership Chair–with his chief and only Committee members being his wife Leona and daughters Barbara (born 7/07/42) and Donna (born 1/12/47). As Bob doubtless began to visualize, he was about to have much more…
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Sean O’Neill
Courtesy of Tim Boggan Sean O’Neill came to the Sport when he was seven—began going to a local club with his dad Pat who as a teenager played in Ohio tournaments. The O’Neill family had hosted the newly arrived Thailand Champions, Charlie Wuvanich and Chuchai Chan, and in the summer of 1975, after the Thais…
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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…
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Tawny Banh
(Photo #1) Well, this evening I can’t say the World’s watching Tawny Banh, shown here, fourth from left, with her 1997 USA World teammates, but she’s certainly caught the eye of all those who’ve come here to honor her tonight. Tawny, the youngest of six children, emigrated with her family to the U.S. from Vietnam…
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Sharon Acton
At the Pacific Coast Open, held at Si Wasserman’s L.A. T.T. Center on North Highland in the summer of ‘55, one began to see, with her runner-up finish in the Women’s to Mary McIlwain, how Si’s 15-year-old pupil, Sharon Acton, had progressed in the short time he’d been coaching her. Indeed, to some, it may…
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Ruth Aarons
In the spring of 1933 there suddenly appeared on the table tennis scene a woman destined for greatness. Her name was Ruth Hughes Aarons, and she would be the only U.S. player, male or female, ever to win a World Singles Championship. Just a few weeks before her 15th birthday, she’d had her first “bewildered”…
US Table Tennis Hall of Fame
Recognizing athletes and contributors in the sport of Table Tennis in the United States