Senior Corner

March/April 2007
By Olga & Stan Kahan,

Co-Chairs, USATT Senior Committee

949-830-6699 (ph) • 949-240-7167 (fax)

natashafeingold@gmail.com

That time is rolling around again when a young man’s fancy turns to Spring and the mature person’s fancy turns to be ready to spring into the $16,000 Meiklejohn North American Seniors Table Tennis Tournament in Southern California.  The Meiklejohn tournament holds 33 different events including the only event for those over 90.  Oscar Beckerman, a former silver medalist from 2002, just turned 95 this year, and awaits all comers, as long as they are over 100.  He still plays every morning, it is “his job” he tells us, and he plays every day but Sunday.  Evidently, he needs to recharge his batteries.

That reminds us of two incidents at the recent U.S. National Championships.  Bill Neely from Tennessee, aged 73, was engaged with a ten-year-old girl in the Under 1800 event.  The young lady’s head barely reached the top of the table.  After spotting her 63 years, Bill “easily won,” 13-11 in the final game of a five-game match.  “Whew,” said Bill, “ I hope I don’t have to play her next year when she becomes eleven.”  On hearing this news, Ivan Slade from California, just turned 90, scoffed.  Once ranked seventeenth in the world in the 1930s, he said: “I’ll play any 10 year old in the world.  Ten year olds don’t understand the game.”  We want to see such a match, but the question is, “Who picks the ten year old?”  Ivan may have a word to say about that.

Costa Mesa, California resident Ragnar Fahlstrom, who is approaching his 70^th this year, has made table tennis a lifetime “occupation.”  Like this little ten-year-old girl from the last U.S. Nationals, Las Vegas, Ragnar, a member of the California Table Tennis Hall of Fame, started playing table tennis in grammar school in Sweden.  During the lengthy cold Scandinavian winters, he became engrossed in his after-school activities and started playing table tennis in his native land at the young age of 12.  He learned to play by attending various clubs and youth leagues.  In his young adult years, Fahlstrom trained as an engineer, spent a year in Sweden’s air force and worked for his father’s company, which manufactured grinding stones.

In 1963, Ragnar was invited to a wedding in Los Angeles.  At that time, he was one of the fifteen best table tennis players in Sweden.  However, Fate changed his course of action after that wedding when he visited his aunt, in San Diego, where he remained.  Ragnar became a SDTTA member, four years after the club had been formed, which at that time was the largest in the USA, with 500 members.

Winning the 1964 and 1967 Pacific Coast Open Men’s Singles was a highlight to remember for the handsome Swede.  Ragnar is proud to have reached the final in over 100 tournaments around the world.  He has competed in several World Veterans Table Tennis Championships, including ones in Yugoslavia, USA, Ireland, Australia, Norway, Switzerland, etc.

In October 2006 he won three gold medals at the Huntsman World Senior Games, as well as Men’s Doubles in the 65-69 age group at the Nevada State Games with his partner from Sweden, Ralf Eklof.

Fahlstrom emphasizes that table tennis is “absolutely” beneficial for seniors and particularly for his personal health.  He wants to play “as long as he can.”  Like the 95-year-old Oscar Beckerman, Ragnar sees table tennis as part of his life – his “job.”

We wish them both and other seniors good health, great stamina, and enthusiastic pleasure in the years to come!