Friday, July 8th 1977

It was a spectacular night, at 11:30 I was dead asleep when I woke to a loud crack of thunder and a blinding bolt of lightning that struck a tree out near the highway. It was deafening but the smell was fresh and indescribable. So much for sleep, Mark and I we rode the storm out the rest of the night, sheets of rain came down and we sat out on the porch of Fowle and watched the spectacle, soon other counselors joined us and we talked and watched in wonder. Tom S was there, Roger, John Day, Xavier, Andy Greenspan, Kenny Feinberg. I can’t remember rain like that. At about 1:30 it let up and we were able to go back to sleep. It was so hot and sticky inside but we were exhausted then in a few minutes morning broke.

The sun rose clear but it was too wet to roll the courts, the hard courts were unplayable too, we ended up in the gym for the first two hours. Thank god for Mr. B’s stories, he talked nearly an hour about the pro tour, about Billie. I heard stories I hadn’t heard before. He told us about the early days, when she was in High School and how she used to come to Upper Saddle River every summer. He said that she came to train and play in the big USTLA tournaments. He said she was up early in the mornings and had breakfast with the Brennan clan, that she was one of the kids. Then she was out on the road, just like a boxer, jogging to the courts. Mr. B would then have her hit with two guys at the net, sometimes Frank Jr. in the later college years, Larry King. FXB says it was modeled after Harry Hopman’s successful training routine that he used on his Australian Davis Cup team. The guys would stand at the net and hit ball after ball to the corners while BJK scrambled to get balls back, this lasted for a couple of hours. He said she ran ladders on the courts, jump roped, sprint intervals, and said no worked harder than Billie. It was an amazing insight.

FXB said that in those days there was no money in tennis, that all BJK had was a clothing and racquet contract. When Coleen Brennan was here during the Adult session she was wearing a Fred Perry shirt embroidered with the initials BJK. I asked Coleen about the shirt and she says they still have a stack of BJK clothing around the house, a reminder of the days when there was no money in tennis, Mr. B called it bullshit shamatuerism with contempt.

I remember the first time I heard about BJK, it was in grade school when she won Wimbledon doubles, I read the story in the Weekly Reader Newspaper back in first grade. Women sports heros were rare that it was a novelty . I remember later, must have been 5th or 6th grade when she won the singles title and I caught that match on TV and read about it in the Idaho State Journal. I was fascinated by her. She had drive and determination and you knew that she was going to win, kind of the woman’s equivalent to Laver. She was the only woman athlete that when we played tennis handball against the wall at Whittier Elementary, we would pretend we were her. I wish I would have started tennis back then. I wanted to but it was impossible because we didn’t even have pavement anywhere near our farm house, so it was baseball and football until junior high.

We finally made it outside at 11:00, the courts were freshly rolled and it was humid and hot but anything is better than being in the gym. We worked on serves and overheads and the kids were into it. In the afternoon it was match play and all the counselors were worn out after the late night, the gym and the humidity. As soon as Dickinson called ‘balls in’ and we walked the perimeter and got the balls up, we ran back to the dorms to take a nap. I slept almost till dinner time.

We had a dance tonight and the kids had a great time. I danced almost all night with Bevin, she is so kind because she didn’t say a thing about my dancing. I am the worst, the very worst dancer of all time. We played matchmaker and got the little boys and girls out there dancing. It was so funny, some of the boys just were not into it, but they loved the ice cream that Mr. B dropped by at 10:00. Bevin is a great dancer and can dance to anything and look good doing it. She is graceful and beautiful and when it was time to go we talked art and who we liked and disliked, I walked her back to the dorm and I helped round up all the girls, and helped get them to bed, afterwards Bevin gave me a nice hug at the door and all is right with the world.