FRED DANNER

USATT Hall of Fame Inductee (1993)

by USATT Historian Tim Boggan - ^© 1999

Fred once said modestly that he was "possibly the most effective USATT Executive Committeeman [that is, Director on the USATT Board of Directors] in the history of U.S. table tennis." Umm, perhaps. At any event, I certainly do agree that he deserved to be inducted into our USATT Hall of Fame as an Official, for he was not only a thinker but a doer.

A table tennis workaholic, he made countless local, state, regional, national, and international contributions.

In 1961 he founded the Huntington, Long Island Table Tennis Club--which is still operating today. And in that year, too, he became president of the LITTA.

Thereafter he founded more L.I. clubs, and encouraged workers of all kinds--those often behind the scenes like Fred himself who help to make tournaments successful and often get little or no thanks for all their time and effort.

Danner was one of the Operations Managers for the 1972 U.S. Open. It had (and Fred himself always had such figures at his fingertips) 725 players in 46 events, played over 40 tables, for a total of 2,275 matches.

He was also Operations Manager for the '72 "Ping-Pong Diplomacy" People's Republic of China Tour-Stop Match at Long Island's Nassau Coliseum.

In 1973 Fred became the Advisory Editor of Table Tennis Topics. More importantly, that year he set up the National Junior Table Tennis Foundation, which, by offering grants, helped to promote Junior players and activities.

Fred was also very involved in setting up School Championships,. and wrote a 144-page National School Table Tennis Guide.

As if to emphasize that, yes, he'd had plenty of first-hand knowledge about Junior play, he and his son Carl won the Parent-Child Championship at the 1975 Houston U.S. Open.

Danner also published another book (uh, one that wouldn't, as they say, set the house on fire)--on How to Run a Fireman's Table Tennis League.

Fred got the USATT recognized by the IRS as a tax-exempt organization--this after two months of continuous effort involving, as he said, "approvals of 23 levels of bureaucrats in the IRS and U.S. Treasury Department." Who else but Fred would have the patience, the determination, to do that?

In 1979 Danner became the Leader of the U.S. Table Tennis Team to the Pan-Am Games, in San Juan, Puerto Rico--this was the first time Table Tennis was included in the Games. And in that leadership capacity he coordinated efforts with Olympic and Pan-Am officials to change the status of Table Tennis from a demonstration sport to a full-program status sport for the Pan-Am Games. Far-seeing Fred knew that, if he could get that kind of status for the lesser Pan-Am Games, there might be hope one day that Table Tennis would be in the Olympic Games.

As far back as 1974 when Fred was running for USATT Vice-President, his Campaign Statement stated the need for Table Tennis to become part of the Olympics. So in 1977 he made a formal submittal to the U.S. Olympic Committee that the USATT become a Group C member. This proposal was granted and in 1978 Fred became the first U.S. Olympic Delegate for Table Tennis.

Enroute to the '79 World's, where he was a USATT Delegate to the ITTF Biennial World Congress, a critical meeting was set up at Fred's request with a "High Chinese Olympic Official"--Mr. Sung Chung, Head of the All China Sports Federation--to explore the possibility of getting Table Tennis into the Olympic Games. Fred of course was not the only influential person urging that our sport be admitted into the Olympics--most notably ITTF President H. Roy Evans had long been working behind the scenes. But, as Fred pointed out, this meeting with Sung Chung cleared up several misunderstandings about the U.S. position and so removed the political blocks that had prevented this step in the past. Here, too, said Fred, China revealed for the first time its position on the "Two China" question that would allow it to compete in the Olympics with Taiwan.

Following this, other meetings were held to implement the new China policy--which would lead finally to the introduction of Table Tennis in the 1988 Olympic Games at Seoul.

Also, through personal contacts with Tony Brooks, then Secretary General of the ITTF, Fred had removed the false concept that the U.S. was opposed to adding Table Tennis to the Olympic Games.

Fred thus became the first USOC "Athlete Delegate" at the House of Delegates Meeting, so that the USATT could be elected to Group A status.

By this time, too, he was finally being elected and re-elected to the USATT Executive Committee.

In 1982, in significant part as a result of Danner's earlier efforts to upgrade Table Tennis to "Olympic" instead of "Pan-Am" status, six years ahead of the actual Games in Seoul the USATT became eligible to receive a full share of the windfall funds distributed from the 1984 Olympic Games--a full share that amounted to...$1,215,000! Way to go, Fred!

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