From Clay Bonny
When Dad was two years old, he still refused to walk on his own. The doctor’s exam revealed that he had severe, late-stage osteomyelitis in his femur, a bacterial disease that kills the bone from the inside out. The doctors gave my Grandfather two choices - amputate the leg and save his life or operate, remove the diseased portion of the bone and hope for the best. If the removal failed, the infection could spread into his pelvis and Dad would have died a slow, painful death. If the removal was a success, his left leg would still have been several inches shorter than his right, he would require special shoes, and would probably never be able to walk without some kind of mechanical assistance. My Grandfather decided that a child with only one leg was no way to grow up, and so the operation was performed. In the 1920’s, Dad was one of those extremely rare cases where the treatment was a total success. (Perhaps you may have noticed the scar on the outside of his left leg running from his knee to his hip.)
Dad grew up in Salt Lake City and lived across the street from a municipal park that had a tennis court. I am not sure of the details how he started playing tennis, but I do remember the story of how, as a pre-teen, he would play against himself hitting off a wall until dark. As a young teen, he would shovel the snow off the tennis court so that he could play. By the time he graduated high school at 17, he was a three time Salt Lake City champion and a nationally ranked tennis player.
After graduation in 1943, Dad enlisted in the US Navy and attended the University of Colorado. In a single injury, he tore up both knees playing intramural football. The damage was severe, surgery ensued, and as was common practice then, he was immobilized for several months and in rehab for several more months before he regained significant motion. Although the Navy offered Dad a 40% disability due to these injuries, he refused (it was 1944). Due to this injury, Dad did not play tennis again for over 30 years.
When I came home for Christmas my freshman year at college, I gave him a racquetball racket as his present and literally forced him to play with me at Storm Meadows. Despite his pleadings and his 30 year belief that his knees could not take it, he acquiesced, and joined me on the court. Within minutes he realized that maybe he really could play again. I don’t remember for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was already signing up for tennis lessons and court times before we hit the showers.
From that time forward, tennis took precedence. Business, family and personal obligations were all scheduled around his tennis. Nothing thrilled him more than his regular weekly tennis matches competing with and against such local notables as Stu Robinson, Jim Asher, Harold Luhan and John Fetcher, just to mention a few.
Although Dad never competed again on a national level, he and his American Twist serve was a fixture at the local tournaments and he was always in a league. About 20-25 years ago when Dad was in his mid-70’s, I remember talking to him on the phone in the early fall and asking him how his tennis was going. “Don’t even talk to me about tennis” he replied, “I signed up for the winter league too late and I can’t play with the seniors. They are making me play with the 55 year olds!” All through the season, he just moaned, groaned and grumbled about how difficult it was to play someone literally 20 years younger than he was. In the summer of the next year, I took the opportunity to remind him to sign up early to make sure he played with men his own age. Again, Dad replied “Don’t even talk to me about tennis”. I pressed him and asked if he had missed the registration deadline again. “No” he said, “There is still plenty of time to sign-up. I just did so well last year, they told me that I now had to play with the 45 year olds.”
Tennis kept my Dad much younger than his years. It was a topic that always made for a spirited conversation. Even if you couldn’t see his face, you could feel his smile over the phone whenever we talked about the sport. Despite a knee replacement and rotator cuff surgery, Dad continued to take lessons and play competitively right up until he turned 80 when, for the very first time, he told me that maybe it was time for him to take up an old man’s sport – golf.