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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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Bobby Fields
Courtesy of Tim Boggan The mid-January 1954 Los Angeles Championships, I believe, marked the first time the names, Mike Ralston, Leonard Cooperman, and Bobby Fields appeared in print together. Both Bobby and his well-known father, Stan Fields (formerly Feitelson), the long-time famous Tournament and Exhibition Player and former Club Manager of the Washington, D.C. Ice…
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Amy Feng
Courtesy of Tim Boggan Four-time U.S. Women’s Champion Amy Feng’s first coach was her father, Peishing, whom she’d accompanied to a local table tennis club and found that playing the game was fun—certainly better than studying. By 1981, 12-year-old Amy had been accepted as a professional member of the Tianjin, China Women’s Team. Later, in…
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Aili Elliott
Aili was a member of the resident training program in Colorado Spring and came to the sport through her parents. Li, played classic pips-out penholder and held the table better than any player in US history except for maybe Patty Martinez Wasserman. Her secret was father Ai Liguo would place a non-forgiving 6-foot green metal…
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Mike Dempsey
Courtesy of Tim Boggan 1956-1968: When Mike Dempsey, born in Sept., 1956, is about six months old, his doctor gives him a normal virus shot, but something abnormal happens and Mike loses the use of his legs. “With me,” he says, “being in a wheelchair wasn’t a matter of adapting. You might have a period…
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Kasia Dawidowicz
Courtesy of Tim Boggan It was Oct., 1972, and (Photo #1) the appearance of a father-daughter combination at the Southwestern Open in Bartlesville, Oklahoma caused quite a stir. The father, Bohdan “Bob” Dawidowicz, the hat trick winner at this Open and a house painter by profession, had come to the States from Poland where reportedly…
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Mae Clouther
Courtesy of Tim Boggan Reportedly, Mae Clouther “declined an offer from the Ziegfeld Follies to marry a Boston accountant.” One can believe it. And believe, too, that after said husband had “laughed at her” for thinking she might be able to play ping-pong, she began taking the game seriously enough to venture forth from her…
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Bernice Charney Chotras
Courtesy of Tim Boggan A newcomer to the USTTA tournament world makes her first appearance at the April, 1941 U.S. Open, played at New York City’s Manhattan Center—she’s Bernice Charney, who, on paying her dues, will be the 1946 U.S. Open Champion, and who, a remarkable 17 years later, as Mrs. Bernice Chotras, will again…
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Yinghua Cheng
Courtesy of Tim Boggan Cheng Yinghua (or just Chen, as his familiars–that is, everybody–at his Gaithersberg Club comfortably call him), is of course, at age 42, our three-time National Champion. Many of us first came to know him–well, know of him–when in 1985, as one of the Top 40 players in the world, he won…
US Table Tennis Hall of Fame
Recognizing athletes and contributors in the sport of Table Tennis in the United States