Club and Senior of the Month

The New Albany Club and Eugene Bricker: Two Inseparably Ageless Icons

By Tim Boggan, USATT Historian

"Hock Hall" (2nd floor of tallest section)

Thanks to diligent research by John Riley, long a felt force at the Southern Indiana Table Tennis Club, and an article by Les Reynolds for the local Tribune, readers can orient themselves to the remarkable history of the Ekin Ave. building which, for 67 years, has housed New Albany table tennis players—including the late, legendary bat-maker Bernie Hock and his longtime friend Eugene Bricker, now himself at 90 (“Happy birthday, Gene” sang 35 of his fellow Wednesday night club members) a living legend for his playing accomplishments and his decades of tireless dedication to the advance of the SITTC.

Reportedly, during the Civil War, the building was a hospital, afterwards a factory, then in the 1920’s its basement, as well as its ground and top floors, became an all-purpose recreation area. In the basement: horseshoes, archery, a rifle range, a basketball and tumbling room, a post World War II teen center. First floor: a social area with a record player. Likely this area was also used for “a senior citizens club in the late ‘50s, occasional wedding receptions, a wood shop—even dog shows and obedience classes” (into which mischief-makers would enjoy throwing cats).  Second floor: crafts room, storytelling area, rooms for square dancing and, beginning in 1935 according to Hock and Bricker who were there, table tennis—though play was initially for a short time in the basement (on only one table), then on the first floor, and finally in 1949, according to half-century habitué Herman Hoffman, on the second.  

Bricker in Action at age 90.

Riley, who says he learned just this year that “there is a hidden tunnel behind one of the walls that takes you all the way under the building and ends out in the parking lot” (a tunnel wherein slaves were hid), tells us about the last move upward to the Club’s thereafter permanent location on the top floor:

“…[Players] cleaned up one side of the second floor and installed lighting. They had a local sheet metal shop make funnel-looking hoods; when you screwed the light bulbs in, the light bulbs held the hoods up. Those hoods were still there when I got there in the mid 70’s. Fluorescent lighting came in the mid 80’s, also air conditioning. The wooden floor on top of the wooden framework is made of  2 ½”-wide boards like in the older homes in the area. The floor has no type of protective finish on it but is smooth from many years of play….You don’t feel the floor move but there is some cushion there.”

Hoffman recalls (and his experience is much like ‘50’s contemporary Connie Warren’s) that he was 12 years old when his dad read an article in the New Albany Tribune that said Bernie Hock was available to coach “ping-pong” to kids 10 years and older. So since the Ekin Ave. Rec Center was within walking distance, his dad took him there and bought him a racket (“$2.50,” says Herman, “was big bucks in 1946”). There he was coached not only by Hock but by Bricker, and Jack and Toby Pangborn, Benny Price, Joe Peers, Benny Helm and Grayson Hanks.

Hoffman has clear memories of his teenage years at this Ekin Ave. Club:

“By early winter 1948-49, we began working on the present ‘upstairs room.’ …I was allowed to help with the clean-up, paint up, and the hanging of our state-of-the-art lights. Were we ever proud of them. The shades were made (by us), from a special pattern, conical. The sheet metal was green outside and white inside. I remember that there was a different pitch to the cone for the light at the table center, and the lights just off the corners of the table. Even our occasional guests remarked on the ease of seeing the ball from anywhere!

We had free (gratis) and almost unlimited use of the room, as that was considered to be a service of the City. We voted to charge individual players one dollar per each session (school kids a quarter), and before too long we began to replace the old, homemade tables with new Detroiters. Two of our original tables were made of inch-and-a-half plywood with the grain of the wood running crosswise, and a twelve-inch filler strip under the net!

…Ball technology was unbelievably bad. If you bought a half-dozen balls, four of them would be egg-shaped from lying in the carton, and had to be hit for a game or two before they returned to their proper shape. Breakage of balls was a constant problem, and because of the roundness problem, there was, and probably still is, a rule that there must be a warm-up period whenever a new ball was put into play.”  

By 1951, Sunday afternoon visitors to the Club had included such Hall of Fame greats as Jimmy McClure, Sol Schiff and Dick Miles, as well as the renowned South Bend, Indiana Coach John Varga, and San Antonio’s 1952 U.S. Open Esquire Champion Louie Scharlach who, as Hoffman recalls, was “always experimenting with paddles,” once going so far as to have one “with fifty holes drilled in it in an effort to reduce air resistance and increase paddle speed.” It was Hock’s precision-made rackets that drew many a visitor. In the basement of his New Albany home, with wood obtained from the Hoosier Panel Co., using sharpeners, shavers, routers, and rounders, a special secret in the glue mixture, and a precision scale to adjust the weight of each racket, he painstakingly fashioned maybe 2,000 rackets a year. It was a hobby that consumed him—for in 1953 he could say of his profession, “I’m a roofer with the worst roof on the block.”

Hock, who in his old age estimated that he’d seen 2,000 players come and go at this Southern Indiana Club, was responsible for getting Gene Bricker to become more serious about his game. He’d had him change from his early penholder play to a shakehands grip that eventually allowed him to develop an up-to-the table “Brick(er)-wall” defense, coupled with an attacking backhand. One day when Bernie needed another player for his League, Gene, then 35, obliged…and a U.S. Open and Closed Over 80 Singles Champion was the ultimate result—Gene’s identification with the Game after all these years reinforced by the gold necklace and attached racket pendant he wore: a birthday gift from his wife. “I really didn’t think I’d ever win a National Singles Championship,” he later confided. “I thought it was a big deal at my age.”

Gene Bricker and Bernard Hock, 1954 U.S. Open Senior Doubles Champions

Though Gene always preferred Singles to Doubles, it was his 1954 U.S. Open Senior Doubles Championship and his 1965 and 1966 U.S. Open Esquire Doubles Championships, all with Hock, that, in addition to his 1992 titles, helped him win a place in the Indiana Hall of Fame and brought him accolades from such accomplished players as USATT Hall of Famer Richard Hicks and Indiana/Kentucky State Champion John Allen. Said John, “We all admire Eugene so much because he’s such a battler.”

Over the years, especially after his retirement from the Purchasing Department at Colgate-Palmolive in 1977, Gene had some physical problems—a detached retina, for example, some inflammatory arthritis—but, as he says, the Game keeps him “young, both physically and spiritually.” When he was 83, he told Tribune reporter Ken Hardin that “If I can hold up until I’m 90, I guess I’ll still be playing.” Now, at 90, he says, “I hope to still be playing when I’m 100.” His motivation? “It’s just fun,” he says—“fun to see if you can beat somebody.”