INTERVIEW WITH SHERI SODERBERG PITTMAN
Newly Elected USATT President …
USATT’s First Woman President
May 29, 1999
By Tim Boggan
Tim: So Sheri, since no woman in the 70-year-history of organized table tennis in the U.S. has ever been an Association President, does your ascension to the office seem like a dream, or the result of a natural progression?
Sheri: A natural progression. I’ve always viewed myself as a contributor to our sport. And, if you ask, I’ll tell you why that’s made my presidency seem more like a natural progression than an out-of-the-blue dream-come-true.
Tim: I’ll ask, you tell.
Sheri: I grew up going to Charlie Disney’s club in my hometown of Minneapolis where my brothers also played. Charlie and Don Larson, the co-owner of what was then known as Magoo’s, promoted – what we kids then could only instinctively understand – table tennis not just for fun, or solely for one’s own competitive pleasure, but also for the enjoyment of others.
Tim: How so?
Sheri: Well, they instilled in us societal values – we kids would answer the phone, help paint the place, promote club leagues for high school students, participate in exhibitions, and support other clubs in the area by going to out-of-town tournaments. And we always looked forward to reading Topics – the magazine you edited, because we could learn about table tennis all over the world. In those days, when the magazine arrived, it was an event.
Tim: I remember when you were a teenager you joined us, or at least talked with us, on the picket line at the ‘76 Philadelphia U.S. Open when a group of us refused to play and were protesting the paltry $1,500 prize money. Were you old enough then to see that as a societal action?
Sheri: I was 14 then, and I knew your actions were very controversial, so I’m pretty sure I didn’t actually join the picket line. But I remember I wanted to listen to both sides of the argument. And I still always do want to hear both sides of any USATT argument or controversy, regardless of the position I might at the moment hold. After all, as a lawyer, I’ve been trained to consider different points of view.
Tim: Disney seemed to me to be more on the promoters’ side than the players’ – which of course was understandable, since he himself always tried so hard to promote the Sport. Could you really identify with the players’ frustrations? Forgive me, but, uh, were you ever a player? I’ve no image of you even holding a racket.
Sheri: When I was young, it was kind of an anomaly for girls to play sports. A lot of the guys at the club, including some of my brothers, used to insist that no one ever watched the girls or women play because the boys and men were always so much better. I liked the game, though, so I wanted to play and get involved. From the 7th through the 12th grade I was the Minnesota Girl’s Champion each year for my grade. I also won matches against some players who went on to become well known -- Brandon Olson, who became a U.S. World Team member, and Mitch Seidenfeld, who holds a World Championship title. At the national level, I enjoyed playing junior mixed doubles with Johnny Stillions, who I miss very much to this day.
Tim: I can see how the tragic loss of him still makes you sad.
Sheri: He was a great friend and he would be really proud to know that I went on to become president of our beloved sport.
Tim: I’m sure he would be proud. I’d like to hear how you came to have the background that would help you lead the Board of Directors of an Olympic Sport. You had an excellent education, I assume, supportive parents, and in time an encouraging husband?
Sheri: Yes, that’s true. I went to Catholic schools from grade school all the way through Georgetown University Law Center. Even the college I attended was Jesuit, Santa Clara University, which is south of San Francisco. Incidentally, I have a lot of wonderful memories of playing table tennis at Sam Lima’s Club. I was a Liberal Arts student, an English major – and, as my father put it, I was learning something about life while preparing to go on to another level – graduate school – to make a career for myself.
Tim: An English major! To think I might have had you in class! Why did you become an English major, and what do you remember reading?
Sheri: I liked reading and writing. I was interested in the formation of a person and books often reveal these details. One of my favorite classes in college was a course on Thomas Merton.
Tim: Ah, a modern-day St. Augustine – the worldly young man who in his mid-20’s joined a Trappist monastery. You, yourself, have a monkish side? If so, it’s certainly not one given to vows of silence.
Sheri: Oh, you know me so well. And, actually, Merton did not experience the usual monk’s life either. Of course, since his days were to be spent in contemplation, he viewed his writing as a distraction that intruded upon his relationship with God. But Merton’s urge to write was so strong that the artist in him began to surface. When Merton confessed his urge to write, he was confused by his Superior’s directive. Instead of being scolded, he was given what he considered to be an even worse punishment – he was told to continue to write. And so we have his books, including his autobiography, The Seven Story Mountain, and I have my connecting memories.
Tim: Name one, pray tell.
Sheri: I took a "Modern Dance" course in college and wrote a paper relating Merton, Contemplative Zen, and Martha Graham. I was often proud of the papers I wrote and the work I did in college.
Tim: Another memory comes quickly to mind?
Sheri: Well, this wasn’t a paper, but it was something I said in class one day. It was a revelation even to the professor. It was in a course called "The Nature of Literature," in which, among other things, we read Shakespeare’s Othello. I cited the language in the play that showed how Othello and his jealous betrayer, Iago, who eventually tricked Othello into strangling his wife Desdemona, had actually made a figurative marital vow themselves. And I remember my professor taking the pen out of his pocket and writing in his book a note on what I had said. That was a big academic thrill.
Tim: Heavy stuff – you were learning about life. So you graduated, and...?
Sheri: After graduating in ‘83, I went to Washington, D.C., where almost all of my siblings were then living. In the winter of ‘84, Walter "Fritz" Mondale, who’d been Vice-President under Jimmy Carter, was running against Ronald Reagan for the Presidency, and my dad was on his Advisory Board. So, since Mondale’s strategy was to try to blitz the early states, he sent busloads of supporters up to New Hampshire –
Tim: And you, I gather, were one of those supporters?
Sheri: Yes, I was getting a taste of politics, of people working together to try to accomplish definable ends. And then into my life, on that Feb. 26, 1984 bus I was on, stepped Charlie, and when I first saw him, I said to myself, "That man is going to be an important person in my life." He too, it turned out, was working in Washington for Congressman John Spratt from South Carolina.
Tim: Of course you began seeing quite a bit of one another?
Sheri: Yes, only there was one big problem – Charlie had already committed himself to going into the Peace Corps in Africa, to Gabon, for two years beginning that June.
Tim: So the lovers parted?
Sheri: Charlie did have second thoughts shortly after we met. "Maybe I won’t go," he once said to me. But I urged him to. I said, "Look, I can’t compete with a dream. This is a dream of yours. Don’t give it up. If you don’t go, you might regret it. And then you’d look at me every day and say to yourself, ‘Was she worth the dream I gave up?’ and it would be very hard for our relationship to survive that." So, off he went, with my encouragement.
Tim: When did you see him again?
Sheri: I wanted to meet Charlie some months later, at Christmas time, in Greece. But he said, "Come to Gabon." So I did. Shortly after I arrived, he led me to a couch, with both of his hands outreached to my two hands. He was so serious. And he asked me, "Would you please join me here? Say you will."
Tim: And did you?
Sheri: Yes, but I didn’t want to just "go" to Gabon. I wanted to have work to do when I got there, so I felt better when we cleared the way for me to become an in-country enrollee in the Peace Corps.
Tim: So you went, being an independent woman, to equatorial Africa to live, and then what happened? Did you get married in Africa?
Sheri: No, the Peace Corps Director there told us to get married there. His problem was that so many unmarried men and women wanted to pair off, be posted together, that he couldn’t accommodate them all, and if we, Charlie and Sheri, weren’t going to marry, he’d be accused of "favoring" us over others. But it was quite a big deal to me because the one thing my parents had made clear about a wedding is that they wanted to plan it. So, even though we were ready to do it sooner, we came back during the summer break in 1986 and were married on July 27.
Tim: So after Gabon and Georgetown, you now had the time and the desire to get more involved in table tennis. How did that come about?
Sheri: At the 1990 Tournament of Champions in Baltimore – the one that combined the U.S. Open with the World Veteran’s and a junior tournament – I enjoyed being part of your Reportorial staff. It was fun that summer, interviewing top European players like Belgium’s Jean-Michel Saive and France’s Jean-Philippe Gatien. I also had a very interesting conversation with Sean O’Neill at that tournament that we later recaptured on tape. These interviews prompted me to begin looking for opportunities to do profiles of other world-class players.
Tim: I remember a number of those – I particularly liked the one you did on Hong Kong’s Lo Chuen Tsung. Have you any other personal favorite?
Sheri: Lo’s an incredible person with a gripping life story. I also liked interviewing Croatia’s Zoran Primorac. I had seen a tape of the world championships and noticed what appeared to be him openly crying after Yugoslavia lost in the final of the team competition. When he talked with me, he showed this very emotional side and spoke freely. I liked that open vulnerability and his willingness to talk about it. And, as I interviewed one player after another and wrote articles that captured their essence without sharing details about their lives that they asked me not to write about, I gained credibility with many of them. If you were to ask me what was the most memorable moment of any of these interviews, though, it occurred when I was interviewing France’s not-yet World Champion Jean-Philippe Gatien. He kept emphasizing how important "regularity" was...until, finally too amused to continue, I explained to him the meaning anyone from the U.S. would immediately give to that word.
Tim: In getting these players, and of course some of our own, to talk seriously to you, you learned about many of the problems facing them, and, perhaps conversely, those facing the leaders of their Associations?
Sheri: Yes, Saive, for instance, was the President of the CTTP, the Players Association, and when he and others urged me to write about this or that, I became interested in investigating issues that affected Associations everywhere. Soon people were saying to me, "You ought to be a USATT Board member."
Tim: And so you became one, started paying your dues in 1993 as Vice President.
Sheri: I did, and I suffered too – even cried on one occasion because I didn’t feel the Board had much of a heart.
Tim: But then you came back on the Board in ‘98, and now, after being elected USATT President, you’ve made history.
Sheri: Yes, and after I’m president, I’d like the history of my administration to show that I didn’t abuse my presidential power and that I worked successfully with both an astute executive director and a strong Board of Directors. If I can do that balancing act for the good of USA Table Tennis, I’ll have nothing to cry about.