More than a quarter of a century ago, a friend of Bernie Hock’s, Dave Russell, wrote a letter to the USTTA’s Topics to say that this "old buzzard" Hock, "a number-one-class character," just had to be remembered in the magazine. "You can’t let a champion, a fine man, and a person who has done more for table tennis than most anyone to just fade away."

But talk to another good friend of Bernie’s, Gene Bricker, and you get the idea that, while Bernie himself often wanted to keep a low profile, he was also very independent, very stubborn, and inwardly resilient. So that to self and certainly to select others, his longtime identity as table tennis batmaker – hand-made hard-rubber rackets for the stars – was secure. He was Hock, which meant he wanted precisely what he wanted. No surprise then that being so insistent – some would say cantankerous – to the end, he resisted surgery, despite several heart attacks. Forget hospitals, forget doctors and operations, he might be in pain, but he’d endure.

And considering how he’d had a cigarette habit even as a teenager, and some slips and harrowing hangings-on in his early occupation as a roofer, he did endure – for much longer than anyone expected. Fifteen years before New Albany’s John Riley called to tell me that on Aug. 18th Hock had finally succumbed, I’d received a Feb. 2, 1984 letter from Bernie in which he says:

"...my illnesses plague me day after day. It’s a trial for me to do anything. I can work in my shop about 1/2 hr. to an hr., then I have to rest. Sometimes I go 4 or 5 days without working in my shop.

"I go to the T.T. Club twice a week to hold things together. Once in a while I will play a game of doubles. Our Club is 52 years old.

"The Leyland Rubber Co. no longer makes pebbled rubber like they did 10 or 15 years ago. While I still have some left I’ve made up paddles [for you, Miles, Reisman, Neuberger]....There is no charge for them, but if anyone else wants one the price is $19. I don’t have a brochure. I still make sponge bats. Before you put anything about me in your magazine, let me see it. I don’t want sympathy, or praise that I can’t live up to."

I’m sure any number of people have letters from Bernie – Marty Reisman, I know has, and of course Don Varian has recently acquired much important archival material on taking over Bernie’s Co. Marty won his ‘49 British Open with a Hock racket (a 3-ply for control, later he’d switch to a faster 5-ply). "The Hock was the bat in use at Lawrence’s famous New York City Club," says Marty. Dick Miles, who won so many U.S. Open Championships with a 3-ply Hock bat ("He knew just how I wanted it – with the handles loose, no glue") remembers Bernie as being "very nice, very soft-spoken." And Jerry Hock, the youngest of the five brothers, recalls how in the beginning the boys made their own table, and how Bernie was very early into making rackets – stretching inner-tube rubber over the wood to produce a surprising playable effect.

Dozens and dozens of players, many around the Louisville/New Albany area where Bernie spent his table tennis lifetime and amassed a good many trophies, could add much to this or any obituary. But though Bernie can no longer see what I or others write, I think everyone will agree that he can be proud of the high standards he set for himself, and that, as a USATT Hall of Famer, his name will live so long as the Sport he helped give life to does.

History offers us a famous photo, taken in Kokomo, IN, in 1937 by Coach Schleff, of a group of 15 player/organizers who’ve united to form a more progressive Indiana T.T.A. There, with McClure, Bob Green, John Varga, Bill Hornyak, Indiana TTA President W. B. Hester, and others, is Bernie, then in his mid-20’s, with a fine shock of hair. (Looking at this photo again now, I’m reminded of how startled I was at his 1993 induction into the Indiana Hall of Fame to see him so totally bald). He’s standing there in 1937, upright in the service of his country, or TTA, arms at his sides, all attention – as if he knew he was, or wanted to be, a part of something important.

And yet to my great surprise, it would be another 10 years before any mention of Hock is made in Topics. Think he’d want some consolation? Well – having been a first round loser in the Mar. 28-30, 1947 Chicago National’s to 15th seed Max Hersh, then 3-time Michigan Closed Champ, he did advance to the semi’s of the Consolation before being stopped by the strong New England player George Ferris. Some merit in that. But there was no room for these results in Topics – one had to find such information elsewhere. Then, finally in the magazine, a squib of a result – Hock, the semifinalist in the Dec. 6-7, 1947 Falls City Open at Louisville.

Could this Spring of ‘47 Chicago trip have been his first venture out into the world of big-time table tennis? That year he’d be 35, right? Quite old back then for an aspiring player. Talk about a low profile: so he was his 15-year-old Club’s best, the New Albany City Champ – what else?

What else indeed.

In a Mar. 19, 1988 letter to Marty Reisman, Bernie makes it clear that, though he’d been making rackets for some time, it wasn’t until 1946 that he began his most intensive pursuit. No wonder he delighted in completing so exactingly and then proudly mounting all those jigsaw puzzles he amused himself with – here is how he, persistently, conscientiously, perfected the art of hand-crafting the about-to-be famous Hock bat of the stars:

"...I had some plywood made by General Plywoods in Louisville, KY. It was not satisfactory and warped. I then went to a factory in New Albany. They made me some 4 ply and 7 ply. And it was not exactly what I wanted. The 3rd factory, also in New Albany, made me some 3 ply. It also warped, and caused me much extra work sorting out the better blanks and answering complaints from the customers.

"While waiting in the office of the 3rd factory I asked to take home an old-issue magazine on Veneers and Plywood. After reading an article titled "800 Ways That Cause Warpage," I...[took careful note of] 5 or 6 of the most important ways, and asked the order taker if they could make the plywood according to my specifications.

"They were reluctant at first (having a low profile of the Sport), thinking that I would want the cheapest plywood for ping pong paddles....[But I’d gone] to school with the production superintendent and quality control manager. When I showed a letter from a Marine complaining about the warped paddle, the superintendent, who’d served as a Marine, said, ‘We’ll make that Marine a flat paddle.’

And they went to work on my specifications, redrying the three veneers, face, back and center core, to a specific moisture, a special glue, and [had it] heated together under certain pressure and heat. I also requested that the face and back veneers be from the same tree or log and from consecutive slices off the log. There were one or two more important specifications....[These] I have never mentioned to anyone, fearing that Japan would copy me...."

Although McClure, Mac Crossen, and the Holzrichter brothers were advertising their rubber rackets in Topics in the ‘47-48 season, Hock wouldn’t begin advertising his rackets there until Dec., 1952 (just that one issue) and then only afterwards beginning with the Jan., 1954 issue. Of course McClure and Hock weren’t really competitors and always got along fine, for Jimmy sold his rackets mostly to stores and Bernie sold his – and extraordinarily low-priced they were – mostly to individuals. McClure said they even shared sources – that is, Jimmy used to get his firewood from the same place Bernie got his plywood.

By the 1950’s Bernie had better established himself. He believed that, "Older players should not compete seriously with strong young players in any sport. It’s best to play in your age group." Which is what he did. On turning 35 and becoming eligible for the Senior’s (today’s requisite Over 40 birthdate wouldn’t come into effect until 1954), he began going to National’s after National’s, so that throughout the 1950’s there was scarcely a year he wasn’t in at least one semi’s in a Senior event.

At the 1950 U.S. Open he won the first of his two Open Senior Doubles Championships. His partner (perhaps through a connection with the English Leyland Rubber Co.?) was England’s Jack Carrington, a World Singles quarterfinalist and also a World Doubles finalist with 2-time World Singles Champion Johnny Leach. Bernie’s second major was in 1954, with his regular partner Gene Bricker. Later, when he became eligible, he won the 1966 U.S. Open Over 50 Singles and the 1965 and ‘66 U.S. Open Over 50 Doubles, again with Bricker. In addition, from ‘55 through ‘63 he won many Veteran Championships at the prestigious St. Joe Valley Open at South Bend.

Bernie might well have become a better player as he aged and competed against tougher competition. He certainly gained experience – as typified by his feeling that Seniors should use lightweight bats. As the years went by, it was said he was always compulsively ready to make 12 times the number of rackets he actually sold, and he sold hundreds, thousands annually, maybe 75,000 in his lifetime – for they were asked for by aficionados and would-be aficionados of all ages, even after sponge bats began more and more to be accepted. The cost of the plywood he bought – "in sheets large enough to cut 12 blanks" – was relatively high, but it made for a better bat, for he had "less than 1% loss to warpage." Also, his rackets always had straight handles rather than tapered ones because World Champion Victor Barna had said the tapered ones restricted "the flexibility of his strokes."

By the early ‘80’s, the workers who’d hand-made this plywood were retired, and the factory itself had closed. But Hock was still filling orders. By the mid-80’s, umpires were looking for the ITTF logo on tournament players’ rackets. This, Hock rackets didn’t have, but as then USTTA Rules Chairman Mal Anderson explained, since Hock had paid the USTTA approval fee, and since his racket met USTTA specifications, "and it isn’t possible to prove that the rubber on it is original or not," players may play with it in any U.S. tournament other than an internationally-attended one like the U.S. Open.

I’m sure in his declining years Bernie was thrilled with the resurgence of Hardbat play. Now, given the active USATT Hardbat Committee, its subscription Newsletter, its Championship tournaments, Hall of Famer Hock’s many friends needn’t worry. Neither he nor the Classic Game he did so much to foster will ever fade away.