A Visit with USATT Hall of Famer's Lou Pagliaro

By Tim Boggan, USATT Historian 

If you should happen to see four-time U.S. Open Champion and 1947 World semifinalist Lou Pagliaro (born May 5, 1919) striding the Staten Island Mall, he’ll wave to you in response to a greeting, but don’t expect him to stop – not even for his three daughters, his son, his seven grandchildren, or his three great-grandchildren. He’s as serious about his exercise these days as he was about scampering around the court 50-60 years ago winning National Championships. Yes, he still bowls. But now, come Sunday morning practice and Monday morning League play, he uses a lighter, 13-pound ball, a concession to the fact that he’ll soon be 83. Occasionally, he says, he does O.K. at the alleys. “My dad’s extremely modest,” said his second oldest daughter, Lois. “O.K. means a 200+ game.”

It was Lois who’d arranged my Feb. 18th three-hour visit with Louie at her home, where she and I sort of exchanged gifts. I’d brought copies of tapes of Paggy gloriously in action and she’d invited me to stay for dinner, where the three of us were joined – over an abundance of ziti, eggplant, crab salad, Italian bread, zinfandel – by Paulette, the first-born child of Lou and his wife Josephine who died of colon cancer in 1988.  

A big scrapbook was brought out, and not only Louie but the two daughters were reminiscing. “They’re certain things you remember as a kid,” said Paulette. “I remember Dad used to take us to watch the big Macy’s Day Parade from the window of that fabled N.Y. Club, Lawrence’s. It was a yearly ritual and we had reserved front-row seats.”

“Lawrence’s – that’s where I got my backhand defense,” said Lou. “By playing Cartland. How angry Doug used to get when he was unlucky and losing – he’d clutch in fury at his shirt, his pants, as if he wanted to rip them off. And yet he was always in control. He’d be forever driving to my backhand, and I really have him to thank for improving my game. And Bellak helped me too – at least to beat Bellak. When I managed that Club at 91st and Broadway, I’d play him 25 cents a game, game after game for two or three weeks, and never beat him. Finally his friend Sandor Glancz warned him, ‘You’d better watch out – Louie’s learning how to play you.’ And I was. I’d lost to him at the ’38 and ’39 National’s, but in 1940 I beat him in five games and went on to win my first Championship. It was maybe my greatest win. At least it was at the time.”

Next to a Mutt and Jeff posed photo of Glancz accenting his height over five-foot, one-inch Louie was another – a reminder that at about this time Paggy had briefly managed the Washington D.C. Columbia Courts. There he was in a glossy with teenager Carolyn Wilson. “It was her parents’ idea she take table tennis lessons from me,” said Lou, “but she told me she didn’t really want to play. Only that was in the beginning – she soon came to be D.C.’s best woman player. Peggy McLean I coached too – started her off blocking, which I think is the right first step to a game. She was U.S. Champion of course, and won the English Open, and I think she was good enough to have won the World’s. But for her time Ruth Aarons was even better. I remember giving a week of exhibitions with her in the Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Centre – once I overslept, and Ruth had to send someone to come knocking on my door. It was very embarrassing.”

“Who was that woman player from Washington, or was it Philadelphia,” Lois asked Louie – “my mom,” she interjected to me, “was always having open-house, cooking for loads of people” – “that woman who came to our house with the parakeet?” This, with some reconstruction, we all decided, was Henrietta Wright. And the bird so dear to her was always remembered because it drank beer. “I gave exhibitions with her,” said Louie. “At the time I didn’t drive, and one time in the winter she hit the brakes as we were going down a snowy, icy incline and she lost control and our car turned over twice. People came running out of houses to help us, but luckily we weren’t hurt. After that I didn’t want to ride with her anymore and began going on exhibitions with Ham Canning, who used to run the Philadelphia Club.”

Which reminded me: “You gave USO shows overseas with Mary McIlwain, right? – Mary Reilly she was then.” “Yeah,” said Lou. “We were in the Persian Gulf, and I remember in Iran I played the Shah, and I’ll never forget when we were in the Ascension Islands, this guy had a pet jaguar, on a leash of course, who must have sensed I was afraid of it, for when it supposedly friendly-like came nudging me, and I said, ‘Hey, it’s biting me,’ others laughed – they thought I was joking, until I showed them it’d drawn blood.”

“After you won those three U.S. Opens – in ’40, ’41, and ’42 – ” I said, “I know you were in Defense work, at a shipyard factory or someplace, and couldn’t come to St. Louis in ’43 to defend your title, or at least that was the story going round. I also know you picked up exhibitions wherever you could – with Miles, with Holzrichter, for example. But did you ever really make any money at table tennis, marketing yourself as a perennial Champion?” “No,” said Louie. “Montgomery Ward had some sets out – rackets, net, balls – with my name on them. But I never got a dime.”

“So how’d you make a living after your exhibition days?” I asked. “At my last, 1956 National’s,” said Louie, “I lost to Barry Michelman – I couldn’t handle the new sponge racket. But afterwards, Barry’s father, Milton, offered me a job at his Iron Works and I was with him for 23 years. That gave me security, and I got used to living my life routinely. Now, if I’m not with family, I go to my local Senior Center around 8 a.m. for breakfast, play poker or pinochle with the guys, have lunch, then come home, and watch movies or sports on TV. You won’t believe what food costs at that Center. This morning they were serving French toast and sausages – 50 cents for the whole breakfast, $1 for lunch.” 

“My dad may not have made much money at table tennis, but he won beautiful trophies,” said Lois, and showed me a photo of herself and Paulette standing by them. The trophies were almost as big as the girls and reminded me of how, when his daughters were little and wanted to play table tennis, Louie would tell them, “When your head reaches the table.” Then, a little later, it was, “When your shoulders reach the table.” Meanwhile, he was practicing his exhibition serves from off the stage wings as it were – from the kitchen, through the living room, into the hallway.

“No, we never did play,” said Lois. “But I remember we three girls would argue over who’d dust the trophies.” “I still have a piece of that biggest trophy – that one there,” said Paulette, pointing to the photo.

  “Of the two World Championships you played in,” I asked Lou – “in ‘38 you were still a teenager making your first impressionable trip abroad and you and Bernie Grimes got to the 8ths of the Doubles, and in ’47 you were of course in the Men’s semi’s – which did you find most memorable?” “ The ’47 World’s,” said Louie, “because I got the farthest. In fact, after I beat Barna – I had great respect for him, but he couldn’t read my chop – I played Sido in the semi’s. “Not quite yet,” I interrupted. “Before that, you also beat 7-time French Champion Guy Amouretti and 3-time World semifinalist Alex Ehrlich.” “I remember Ehrlich,” said Louie. “Anyway, Sido had me two games to one, but I was up 20-16 in the 4th when I thought my ball hit the edge. But the umpire ruled against me, and no one – not our Captain, I don’t know if he was even there, nor any of our players – said a word. And I lost that game, and the match. If I’d have taken Sido, I think, with my consistent defense, I’d have beaten Vana and been World Champion.”

“Well,” I said, “at least you had the consolation of returning after 10 years to win another U.S. Championship.” “Yeah,” said Louie, “but that left a sour taste too – and you know why.” Lou was referring to the fact that the Cleveland organizer had promised a car to the Men’s winner. But he didn’t like Miles, whom he thought a big favorite (for, from 1945 through 1951, Dick had won every U.S. Open save the one he didn’t play in), so when the USTTA lifted Miles’s suspension a month before the ’52 Open, the organizer decided to withdraw the prize. “I was a good sport about that,” said Lou – “but it wasn’t right. Besides, what made him think I couldn’t beat Dick?”

That line – said 50 years later, showing a Champion’s pride in performance – is a good one to remember Louie by.

And, after coffee and cookies, as I prepared to leave daughter Lois’s mid-afternoon into early evening hospitality, she had an even better ending for my visit. “I want you to know,” she said, “that everyone always loved my father. And that from a very early age he set his children down and said, ‘No matter what happens – for there is always a winner and a loser – you must continue to be a good competitor.’ We’ve all carried this thought with us throughout our lives. And now our children and their children do too.”