The Magnus Factor: The Bill Rose Story, Rise to One

By Mike Wittmayer

The Magnus Factor tells the story of Bill Rose and his rise to number one in the Pacific Northwest Lawn Tennis Association rankings in the 1950’s. Bill was instrumental in the growth of tennis in Oregon, served as head men’s tennis coach at the University of Portland, the first head pro at the West Hills Racquet Club and later as the head pro at the Racquet Club in Portland and at the Smoke Tree Ranch in Palm Springs, California. Bill has written three books devoted to the fundamentals of the game. The Magnus Factor includes many of Bill's “how to” tennis tips and colorful stories of Bill’s journey through the growth of the game. It was a journey that would begin with a chance encounter; a Magnus force at work, quietly nudging others down different and unexpected paths in life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781365056598

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The Magnus Factor: The Bill Rose Story, Rise to One

THE MAGNUS FACTOR

The Bill Rose Story, Rise to One

Mike Wittmayer

Copyright © 2016 by Mike Wittmayer

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any electronic form without permission.

The front, back and flap tennis court photos are courtesy of Pixabay.com. They are in the public domain.

Graphic design work and answers to all print questions, large and small, are thanks to my daughter, Kelly Wigginton.

Special thanks to my wife, Ann, for all of her encouragement, proofreading and editing ultimatums. Without her help, this book would not have been possible.

ISBN #: 978-1-365-05659-8

DEDICATION

For Alfredo, For Larry

These Go

Preface

It was the perfect storm in tennis; a chance confluence of events that would dramatically change the sport for all time. If it wasn’t the Golden Age of tennis, it was the next best thing.

Most would attribute those tennis boom days to the open era of competition and to television. Professionals and amateurs were coming together to compete for the first time, at least officially. And though we didn’t know it at the time, the cast of characters who burst on the scene during the late 1960s to mid 1970s would turn out to be some of the greatest players the game has ever seen.

They were charismatic and they were popping up everywhere on television. Switch to any channel and there they were, slugging it out in one epic battle or another. Millions were glued to their sets, captivated by what they were seeing. And if their favorite star wasn’t playing a match, he or she was plugging one product or another.

Suddenly, it seemed as if everyone was either carrying a racket or looking for a place to borrow or buy one. They were looking for a place to play; to do just what they had seen Jimmy Connors, Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe, Billie Jean King, Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova and a host of other players of the day do with those strokes.

And these new converts to tennis were looking for someone to first show them how to do it, and then how to do it better. Well, timing is everything. And for the kid from Wheaton, Illinois with a knack for hitting a tennis ball and having it go pretty much where he wanted it to, it was close to perfect. Interested in learning the game? Enter William Joseph Rose Jr. Bill was available.

The kid with the gift would play number one for Jefferson High School, Portland State University, the Army’s Pacific Command team, the University of Portland and rise to number one in the Pacific Northwest Lawn Tennis Association (PNLTA) rankings. Inducted into the University of Portland’s Hall of Fame in 1995, as part of a team that put together one of the longest win streaks in NCAA history, Bill would win countless singles and doubles titles over the years.

In the process, he would write a weekly series of how to tennis tips for The Oregonian that would run for three years and publish three books and a monthly magazine on the subject. Bill’s materials would serve as a guide to countless high school and college physical education teachers and coaches looking for suggestions on how to play the game and how to play it right.

He would play with legends of the game in Pancho Gonzales, Jack Kramer, Lew Hoad, Ken Rosewall, Whitney Reed, Maureen Little Mo Connolly, Dorothy Dodo Cheney and others. He would also run the courts with a host of sports’ Hall of Famers and Hollywood celebrities, including Y.A. Tittle, Elroy Crazy Legs Hirsch, Dinah Shore, George Montgomery, Diana Mousie Powell and Jim Kelly.

He would develop tennis programs for numerous communities and conduct countless clinics, group and private lessons. He would serve as the head pro for Portland’s West Hills Racquet Club and the Racquet Club before moving on to thirty-one years with one of the most exclusive clubs around, Smoke Tree Ranch in Palm Springs, California.

A chance encounter would lead him to the game. It was a moment in time that would change a life. That chance encounter would lead to another and that one, another; more lives changing along the way.

It’s called the Magnus Factor. It’s Bill’s story and those whose lives were changed along the way because of him.

A Rose Grows In Wheaton

He stood just about five feet nine inches tall. He was 150 pounds, though that might have been a stretch. His short cropped red hair seemed out of place somehow. There was no fiery, unpredictable temperament to be found in this fifteen year old’s demeanor. There was a calm there beneath that determined, calculating and relentless competitive exterior.

There was nothing to indicate that a chance encounter this day was about to change a life. Yet, it would. And over the years, that encounter would change many others.

He struck the ball cleanly with a crisp, solid forehand and wheeled to his left. Stretching full length, he was just able to reach the ball already headed his way with his backhand. With a flick of his wrist, he drove what surely would be a winner down the line, neatly striking the ball in a flat drive.

Flat drives like that don’t bounce high and were prone to skid along a concrete surface. It was a shot that left little margin of error for the ball to safely clear the net and stay within the boundaries of the court. It was a risky shot, but one that allowed him to generate the most power and still control where he wanted it to go. It was also a shot that would give his opponent the least amount of time to react; at least, that is what he had decided.

His timing needed to be perfect. It was.

The safer shot would have been a top spin drive. Hit with a low to high motion, the forward rotation of the ball would have ensured plenty of clearance as it sped along its way, then could be counted on to dive sharply to its target. He just didn’t know yet that was what it was called or that there even was such a shot.

His backhand wasn’t a winner. Against anyone else it would have been. The ball was already coming back with as much speed as he had struck it, challenging him to catch up to it, back to his right.

He pivoted, took a quick sprint to his right, his racket back as he ran and again caught up to the ball, rifling his forehand down the line. Taking two quick sidesteps to his left, he was nearly wrong footed as the ball flew back, almost directly back to where he had just struck it.

He should have anticipated that.

Recovering nicely, he caught the ball well in front of his left foot, drilling the ball crosscourt towards what would be his opponent’s forehand corner.

Standing not far from the court, the young woman with shoulder length, curly blonde hair watched with interest the flurry of shots, and the determined shuffling of feet of the redhead. A six time Portland City singles champion from 1947 to 1954, Portland City doubles champion in 1947, 1948 and 1949, Oregon State doubles champion four years running, from 1951 to 1954, Barbara Lum knew a thing or two about the game.

There was no way this young redhead would win this match. Of that she was certain, despite the determination etched on the boy’s face. A practiced eye could tell that in an instant. And it wasn’t just because the daunting opponent across from the redhead had years of experience on him.

You see, in all those years, and in all those thousands of balls struck here, that steady foe across from the redhead had never missed a shot, had never lost. Not once.

The boy who scrambled left, now right, then back again with those solid, crisp shots, was just about to be the latest in a long line of challengers who would meet their match here. It was an opponent who would outlast them all, one who would never back off, never tire.

But then, that’s the way walls are.

This particular wall would get a workout over the years. Backing to the Jefferson High School football stadium, the massive concrete structure ran along the westernmost length of one of the two high school tennis courts that were situated there, end to end.

A fence enclosed the area. It ran along the eastern edge of the courts, separated one court from the other and bordered each end. The lines that marked the singles and doubles playing area of the white concrete courts might have been yellow at one time. They were fading now.

Still, the interest in them was not. It was 1948. These courts got their fair share of use.

Now this particular fifteen year old didn’t really think he could beat that wall, of course. Though, you never would have known it if you had watched the way he attacked it that day, as Lum did from the side door of the women’s locker-room.

And if told that he couldn’t, that walls just can’t be beaten, I have no doubt he would have set his mind to figuring out a way it could be done. Those were the kind of challenges that moved him; that got the blood circulating; that would define him through the years.

The other thing that would move the teenager, who pounded that ball over and over off the imposing cement backside of the school stadium, was the news he would get days later at school. Ms. Barbara Lum, Jefferson High School’s physical education teacher and boys and girls tennis coach, had entered him in what was known as the Center Tournament.

She knew potential when she saw it. The kid she had watched scrambling back and forth at the wall was a diamond in the rough.

The Portland contest was a qualifying tournament. Age group winners were eligible for sectional tournaments, local and national rankings. If he had ever played in any organized tennis competition before, he might have been nervous. He hadn’t and he wasn’t.

For Bill Rose, that tournament would be just one of many firsts. Born in Geneva, Illinois and living in nearby Wheaton, he had moved at the age of fourteen with his family to Portland, Oregon in 1947.

Now that was a change. Wheaton, located in northeastern Illinois in DuPage County, was situated just about twenty-five miles west of Chicago and Lake Michigan. Some seven thousand residents called the farming and commuter community home.

At 375,000, nearly fifty times the size of Wheaton, Portland was just a little bit bigger. Still, there were many similarities. Kids growing up on the heels of the Great Depression and during World War II in Portland did pretty much what they were doing in Wheaton and elsewhere about the country at the time.

And at the top of that list was playing ball; baseball, football, basketball and catch. It didn’t matter where. It didn’t matter when. Sometimes it was in the street, sometimes in a neighbor’s yard. Sometimes it was down at the school, sometimes at the park.

Then, if you were of high school age or older and lucky enough to get a table, there was pool and ping pong down at the YMCA. Oh, there was tennis being played too. The kid with the cat-like reflexes and a natural eye for the ball—any ball, just hadn’t discovered it yet.

There was no shortage of organized youth sports leagues for kids in Wheaton, and Bill’s dad was active in promoting their growth. Bill would recall playing softball in the third grade and has fond memories of that no hitter he hurled for the Lowell Eagles against hated cross-town rival, the Whittier Wildcats. It really doesn’t matter who you are playing in school or at what level, all rivals are hated rivals.

It’s not certain if that no hitter had something to do with that budding rocket arm or third graders’ ability to get their bat on the ball in general. Most likely, it was a little of both.

Then there were those Sunday trips to the bowling alley. Bill’s dad would introduce him to the game early on. And three games for a dollar was a deal that was too good to pass up.

Still, it was those evening trips home that made a real impression. That was when, at 7:15 p.m. sharp, not a nanosecond later, Bill Sr. would turn the car’s faithful radio dial to I Love a Mystery.

The 1939-1944 radio drama featuring the fictional characters Jack Packard, Doc Long and Reggie York was based on three mercenary soldiers who meet fighting the Japanese in China. Reuniting later in San Francisco, they form the A-1 Detective Agency. Their stories of mystery, suspense and horror were guaranteed to keep audiences glued to their radios and kids sleeping with their nightlights on.

We use to come into the house through the basement when we got home, said Bill. After hearing those stories, I couldn’t get upstairs fast enough. I would take those steps four at a time.

Well, episodes like, The Thing That Cries in the Night, Fear Creeps Like a Cat and Bury Your Dead, Arizona, would leave even Chuck Norris sleeping with one eye open. The Snake with the Diamond Eyes, would send kids to the hallways and the open door to their parents’ bedrooms to spend the night.

And if those shows didn’t convince a kid to sleep with his guns locked and loaded, that haunting train whistle and spine tingling organ opening for those episodes would. For four seasons Proctor and Gamble and Fleischmann’s Yeast, the show’s sponsors, had one of the all-time radio hits on their hands.

There just weren’t enough hours in the day for all that play the kids were obligated to participate in, or for those old radio shows they just couldn’t get enough of either. There were chores to be done for one thing. And on the heels of the Great Depression, William Sr. and Wilma Rose were no different than other parents who were coping with those tough times.

This meant there were lessons to be passed on. It was never too soon for a young man to learn the redeeming virtue of hard work, the value of savings and a little old fashioned entrepreneurship.

Looking back, it would seem to Bill as if he had always worked, scrambling from one odd job to another. He would sell magazines in town, eggs from the chickens he was raising to neighbors and mow lawns.

And when it came to those magazines, selling whatever he carried was never a problem. The ladies at the courthouse, next to where his father worked, would make certain of that. And why pay sixty-five cents a dozen for eggs at the local grocery store, when Billy Rose would happily save you the trip, delivering just what you needed to your door for twenty-five cents apiece, and farm fresh at that?

He would deliver the Daily Journal in the evenings. It was a job he would land at the age of nine. He would hit Front Street, then it was on to Crescent Street to Kellogg Place and from there to East Willow Avenue. He could cover the route with his eyes closed. He would also appreciate those occasional surprise offers of help from his dad who would drive him on those snowy Wheaton evenings.

After three years on the job, that work ethic would be suitably recognized. News that a B-25 Mitchell bomber had accidently flown into the seventy-ninth floor of the Empire State building in heavy fog, was bumped to make room for an even more important story.

"Two more Journal carriers have been cited for perfect delivery service. They are Billie Rose of Michigan Avenue and Dave Gager of Santa Rosa Street. Both boys are aiming at careers as draftsmen when they grow up.

"Billy is twelve years old and a seventh grader. His favorite sports are baseball and football. He has carried the same Journal route for three years. Wally Brooker, Circulation Manager, says that ‘the people on the route know that when Billy is on the job they get their paper.’"

There were pictures of the two kids. Everyone got their paper that day, even those who hadn’t subscribed.

Then there was that once a week Wheaton Shopper delivery route he added to his list of chores and growing portfolio. Feeling a little under the weather one day, Bill needed just one thing; a little rest and recuperation, or so he had decided.

Now it was just a matter of figuring out what to do with those papers. Let’s see. He was paid for his deliveries by the company. There was no collecting from those on his route or anything like that.

This was not a twelve-year-old who needed help coming up with solutions to problems. He would simply dump those shoppers in a ravine near his house. Well, it did seem like a good idea at the time. And to think, some people actually pay up to eighty dollars an hour for the services of a solution consultant.

Surprised that only one of the fifty or so customers from the stops along his route complained, suddenly, it all became clear. A couple of hours of delivering those papers could be trimmed to minutes. Simply deliver one shopper to the only person who seemed to miss it. The rest of the papers could simply be recycled.

Recycling at that time in the mid-forties and to a kid of twelve apparently meant doing pretty much what he had done with the last batch of shoppers. Pitch them in the ravine.

Well, when Billy was on the job, people along his shopper route could always expect to get their paper, too, just like his Journal customers. They just had to hike down that ravine and look for it.

With only one delivery to make on his route, things went significantly faster. There was more time for baseball now, and that was a pretty good deal.

It was, too, for just about three months. It started out as just another fine spring day. That was when, making his way back up the hill after making his latest delivery of seventy shoppers to the gully, he would be surprised to find he was not alone.

Ordinarily, he was happy to see his mother and his boss. This day would prove the exception.

That shopper route would become even shorter as he was fired that day after nearly a year on the job. No gold watch or anything. Worse, as Bill would recall, he was grounded for life. A punishment he continues to serve from his current home in Palm Springs.

Mom was a little smarter than I thought, said Bill.

Well, as they say, not all ideas are good ideas. As the author John Steinbeck once said, Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple, learn how to handle them and pretty soon you have a dozen. Oliver Wendell Holmes would add, A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimension.

Bill would prove both Steinbeck and Holmes right.

Those war years would leave a lasting impression on anyone growing up in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Bill would be no exception. The aluminum, household fats, rubber, silk, nylon, metal, tin, paper and coat drives would be memorable and patriotic community-wide events. Young and old alike in Wheaton, in Portland and elsewhere around the country, would come together to salvage scarce materials for the war effort.

The U.S. Office for Emergency Management would put it in terms all Americans could relate to. The iron used in a single hair dryer could make six hand grenades. The rubber from one old tire could provide the boots needed for twenty parachute troopers; that or a dozen gas masks. An old coat could warm a refugee. One pound of fat contained enough glycerin to make a pound of explosives.

Those gigantic balls of aluminum foil, made from the lining of cigarette packs, candy and gum, like Bill’s mother would painstakingly save, would eventually be shredded by the military. They were dropped from aircraft as flakes to confuse enemy radar.

With seventy million tons of paper needed each year for the war effort, thirty thousand tons a month for packing shells alone, the need to collect scrap paper from homes, businesses and even ravines where some kids dumped their shoppers was critical. With the right driver and a little luck, kids volunteering to collect those bundles of paper left by the curb once a month on Saturdays were rewarded.

And that reward was an okay to ride on the top of the truck’s box as the driver made his way house to house through the streets of town. There was just one caution. Kids were reminded to lay flat while the truck passed under the railroad trestle leading to the lumberyard where the paper would be loaded on boxcars. No one needed to be told twice.

There would be no return trips to Wheaton for the Rose family after that 1947 move to Portland. Well, it was 2,097 miles away, for one thing. And no one in the family had left anything there. Well, unless you want to count that rooster of Bill’s, and he wouldn’t be around long.

Giving Brutus to their next door neighbor had seemed like a nice gesture. Putting him in a cage with the family’s own prize rooster Caesar would prove a mistake. Brutus would kill Caesar in the night. It seems as if everyone, including Caesar, should have seen this one coming.

And unlike Marcus Brutus, who took his own life following the defeat of his army by Gaius Octavian and Mark Antony at Philippi, Greece on October 23, 42 B.C., Brutus the Rooster wouldn’t get the chance to take things into his own spurs. He would join Caesar in the soup for his night of treachery. There were consequences for your actions back then; a lesson not lost on the other chickens and roosters in the neighborhood.

There would be no replacing Claire Brown’s Popcorn Shop in that move to Portland. Founded in 1921, the In between Store, as it was known, was just forty-nine inches wide and sixty feet long. It was situated in an alleyway between two buildings along Front Street in the heart of downtown Wheaton across from the Chicago & Northwestern Train Station.

Come to think of it, it was the alleyway. A roof extended over the two neighboring businesses to either side of the shop for cover, the outer brick walls of the two buildings serving as its inner walls. Those looking for a little penny candy lined up along the left wall; those after popcorn, squeezed along the right wall.

A dime would more than cover a three cent bag of popcorn, the five cent admission to the Paramount Theater. What’s more, it would still leave the moviegoer with two cents to fool around with.

Well, Portland had a theater the Roses could enjoy too; lots of them. The Thirtieth Avenue Theater was within short walking distance of their new home. And though there were no popcorn shops to be found in Portland, there was no shortage of the stuff at the theaters about town. It just cost a little bit more.

Then there were places like Yaws Top Notch Restaurant just off Sandy Blvd on N.E. Forty-Second and Hancock. It was the place to go for burgers, gravy fries and berry tarts. The Speck, on S.E. Powell, would open the following year.

Both offered something unique at the time; car hop service. That was always a bit more of a selling point for those with a car, of course, but still, it was something.

And while Blue Lake Park and the Columbia Slough would take the place of Wheaton’s Northside Park and its nearby lagoon, nothing would take the place of that little restaurant just outside of Wheaton. That was the place Bill’s dad would take him for breakfast from time to time. The chance to get a little oatmeal there was enough to make a kid deliver all of his shoppers.

That oatmeal came with real butter and cream, Bill would recall. During the war years, both were scarce. It was a real treat.

And though the Class B Portland Beavers and the Vaughn Street Park were just a hop, skip and a jump across town, it would take time to forget about having Chicago’s Comiskey Field in their backyard. The Chicago White Sox were William Rose Sr.’s favorite team.

Bill would only make it to see them play once in person, but it would be a memorable trip. The six foot three inch Orval Grove was on the mound for Chicago that Sunday afternoon, August 3, 1946.

It was a ninety degree day, so the wind, as mild as it was, felt welcome. That top of the eighth inning, first to second and back to first double play was the highlight of the afternoon; well, right behind that hotdog and coke. The crowd roared as the Washington Senators’ center fielder Stan Spence’s ground ball was taken on the short hop by the Sox’s first baseman Joe Kuhel, fired to short stop Luke Appling and rifled back to Joe again.

The out would help seal a 1-0 Chicago win over Washington. It was the toughest double play in baseball, William Sr. explained to his young budding major leaguer seated beside him.

After a brief stay in Wood Village while the house they had purchased in Portland was being finished, the Rose family would make the Ainsworth Neighborhood of northeast Portland their home. There, William Sr. would tackle those new duties as controller for the title and trust company, Commonwealth Inc.

Bill would go about the business of completing seventh and eighth grades at Kennedy Grade School and continue picking up odd jobs whenever and wherever he could find them. There was just a little less time for all that entrepreneurship now. He was working for his dad in the basement of the newly completed, fourteen-story Equitable Building in downtown Portland.

Now known as the Commonwealth Building, the Equitable was one of the first glass box commercial office building towers ever built.

Dad was paying me fifty-five cents an hour, said Bill.

The minimum wage at the time was forty cents an hour, so Bill was doing all right.

I would catch the bus to town right after school, said Bill. I proofread title and property documents, delivered inner office mail and just did whatever odd jobs I was given.

Well, that was all about to change, at least temporarily. There was that tennis tournament Miss Lum had entered him in, much to his surprise. It was at the Irvington Club, wherever and whatever that was.

The Match

The Irvington Tennis Club was established in 1898. There was just the one clay court in those early days. The club was first located at the end of the Irvington streetcar line on donated land. It was then moved in 1905 to its current location on Twenty-First Street between N.E. Brazee and Thompson.

The Oregon Journal would describe the six asphalt courts and clubhouse that would be built there as, the finest in the western world. That may have been a bit of a stretch. Still, it had to have looked like that way to Bill as he approached the clubhouse that Friday, June 4, 1948 day for his scheduled 3 p.m. match.

For sure, it was the place to be when it came to tennis development and tournaments of note in Oregon at the time. Only the Multnomah Athletic Club (MAC), which dates to 1891, had been around longer.

The thwonk, pop and dull thud of dozens of tennis balls, pounding of tennis shoes on the pavement and an occasional shout of frustration filled the air as he made his way to the tournament desk to check in that afternoon. The only thing missing was that primal shrieking and grunting that has become so commonplace on tennis courts today.

Some argue there is science behind all that screaming. That the stability needed for injury free and forceful movements of the trunk is improved by holding air in the lungs, then expelling it with the stroke of the ball.

Well, shrieking or no shrieking, no amount of histrionics would have kept Bill off those courts this day. He was ready to play.

Just about eight miles away, at that very moment, there was drama of a different sort taking place. Some two hundred men, including Army troops, engineers and numerous volunteers were working frantically to plug weak spots along a two mile section of the dike running between Blue Lake and the Reynolds Company.

It was just part of the work that was going on in a desperate attempt to save the threatened levees and dikes along the Columbia River. Some two thousand military personnel and five thousand civilian volunteers would be part of the flood-fighting effort before it was all said and done.

Along N.E. Marine Drive at the Portland Airport, serious seepage beneath the dike was looking particularly ominous. The sandbags that had been stacked there at ground level looked as if they would not hold. Water was already a foot deep in the northwest corner of the field and rising.

Officials leading the disaster relief were confident they were pulling ahead. Still, the battle to reinforce the twenty-seven miles of levees and the nearly forty-five miles of ditches, streams and slough along the badly swollen river looked like a losing one. A new flood crest of just over twenty-nine feet was being predicted for the coming Monday.

Vanport, with some forty thousand people and Oregon’s second largest city during the mid-1940s was home to over eighteen thousand at the time of the flood. Make that was; it had been suddenly and dramatically wiped out just days earlier.

The deluge had come at 4:17 p.m., on May 30, 1948. That was when a five hundred foot section of a railroad dike separating Vanport from Smith Lake, along the city’s northwest edge, suddenly collapsed.

The Columbia River would rush through the breach in a ten foot wall of water, covering the lands north of the Columbia Slough and inundating the city of Vanport as it did so. Within one hour, the city lay below ten feet of water in some places, twenty feet in others.

Not too surprisingly, this would all come just hours after the Housing Authority of Portland, which oversaw Vanport, issued the following bulletin: Remember, dikes are safe at present. You will be warned if necessary. You will have time to leave. Don’t get excited.

Two major rainstorms, May 19-23 and again May 26-29, combined with unseasonably warm weather were just part of the problem. A winter snowpack that was some seventy-five to one hundred and thirty-five percent of normal couldn’t have helped.

Together it had been a recipe for disaster. Water levels in the Willamette and Columbia rivers were nearly twenty-three feet above flood stage; or just about four Bill’s high.

That water had to go somewhere. And that was over the lowlands along the Columbia River Basin.

Remarkably, just fifteen people would lose their lives in the flood. The city would not be rebuilt. It is currently the site of West Delta Park, Heron Lakes Golf Course and the Portland International Raceway.

The Vanport Extension Center would relocate to downtown Portland. Dubbed, the college that would not die, the bastion of higher education was renamed. It was now known as Portland State University.

And, as in any good calamity, help was on its way. President Harry S. Truman, no less, was scheduled to fly over the Portland and lower Columbia River flood areas one week later for a firsthand look at the disaster. Why does that sound so familiar?

Addressing the crisis in a speech to the media and local residents at the Portland Civic Auditorium after his arrival, the President was, well, suitably presidential.

He would assure his audience that every resource was being marshaled, all agencies were working in complete harmony and a joint resolution of Congress was at that moment winging its way to him for his signature. With the stroke of a pen, available funds to aid in the cleanup and rebuilding process would be headed their way to Portland.

A number of Columbia River development projects would follow. And that, the President assured those gathered, would ensure, these disastrous floods will never happen again.

There was a lot of really nice applause.

Somehow, many years and many disasters later, those speeches all begin to sound a little familiar. I think the same one is used each time.

The flood going on just a short distance away from the Irvington Club might as well have been on another planet. There was tennis to be played.

And Bill was ready. He was wearing cream colored cords, black high-top tennis shoes with striped tube socks and a plain white T-shirt. A baseball cap was pulled securely over his head.

Thinking that shorts might not be a bad idea, since it was forecast to be a hot day, he had slipped on a pair of red swimming trunks. At least he was cool, calm and collected enough to put them on under his long pants.

He had what he would later describe as his $4.95 bargain basement racket with the really nice looking red stripe across its head. He was ready for battle.

Well, he would be. He was about to get his first look at a draw, whatever that was, and find out who his opponent would be.

Fortunately, he had remembered to bring along a new can of balls. The winner would advance with the unopened can. The loser would take home the two balls used in the match and one new ball. Balls were expensive at $1.35 a can. There was no sense in using all three.

He would admit later, after catching sight of the action on the courts and the players with their white designer tennis shorts, white collared shirts, white low cut tennis shoes and plain white socks, that his first thought was, What the hell am I doing here?

Improbably, his second thought was, I’m going to beat their asses. There actually was a third thought. And that was that there was no way he was taking those cords off and playing in those red swimming trunks.

It would reach ninety-two degrees that day in Portland. It was the second hottest day of the year. On the courts it would feel like one hundred and ninety-two. He would just have to make do.

Improbably, he would, too. And to think, some tennis aficionados claim Yvonne Petra of France was the last man to wear long pants in a tennis match. That was in 1946 when the Frenchman outlasted Geoff Brown of Australia in the finals of Wimbledon, 6-2, 6-4, 7-9, 5-7, 6-2. Well, they are wrong. It was Bill.

Now, you should know that young Bill Rose was not completely unprepared as he headed for the courts that day. He did have all those victories against his buddy, Jimmy Ward, under his belt. The two had become fast friends ever since Bill’s move to Portland and enrollment at Kennedy Grade School.

Jimmy was right there when he had that little showdown with the school’s self-appointed enforcer. Well, that’s what happens when you’re the new kid in school.

Bill was already missing his two permanent front teeth and wore a partial. Keeping from getting that knocked out wouldn’t have been enough to keep him away from a good fight, but it was a pretty good reason for avoiding one, whenever possible.

I can’t remember if I ran, won or got beat up, said Bill. "Jimmy was right there to back me up though, and I barely knew him then. He was a hockey player. That’s a good guy to have your back.

Jimmy’s dad was the head coach for Portland’s Pacific Coast Hockey League team, the Eagles, from 1944 to 1951,said Bill. They were the forerunners to the later Portland Buckaroos. There were always hockey guys hanging around Jimmy’s.

Bill and Jimmy would play tennis together every chance they could that summer leading into their freshman year at Jefferson High School. And that was daily, usually at nearby Ainsworth Park.

Bill would win and they would head for the ice cream shop a block away. Well, when they had the money, that is. Then, the next day, they would do it all over again, always with the same result.

Well, except for that disputed set. The one Jimmy would later claim he had won 6-4.

I can almost see Bill sitting quietly off by himself that Friday afternoon, not far from the Irvington club tournament desk. Headphones on, he is calmly watching the action and listening to a little, Start Me Up, by The Rolling Stones.

Moving his android’s play mode off loop, he is scrolling through his music library, trying to figure out why, Let’s Get It Started, by The Black Eyed Peas, is suddenly missing from his playlist. It was there last night. Had his little brother, Russell, been playing around with his cell phone again?

Well, that might have been the scene. The problem was that music was a good thirty plus years away from being written. Androids and headphones were also a long way off. It was 1948, after all.

Any musical inspiration Bill might take to this match would need to come from that floor model Philco radio back at the house. Then it would have been, I’m Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover, by Art Mooney and his orchestra, Buttons and Bows, by Dinah Shore, or It’s Magic, sung by Doris Day; the hits of the day.

Parents somewhere were lamenting what had become of the latest generation and the music they were listening to.

In truth, if Bill had known any better, he probably would have been nervous. That would come in his later matches. Just now he didn’t know any better. His biggest concern was running in those heavy cords.

It hadn’t really hit him yet; this new sensation he was feeling. He had been playing organized sports since at least the third grade. When it came to playing ball, any ball, it just seemed to come naturally. Still, in all those contests, there hadn’t been anything like this.

He was alone.

There had always been someone else right there with him; someone else on his side. A quarterback who had delivered the ball right on the money as he broke loose down the field; teammates blocking, clearing the way. Or, there had been a quarterback, an end or a halfback on the other side of the ball who had broken their hearts on one play or another.

As a pitcher in softball, and later in baseball, he had relished the responsibility that had come with that position and the part he had played in the contest’s outcome. Still, those games generally came down to what someone else on the field or at the plate had done, never mind the level of play of his own performance.

Even in basketball it had never been just about the five guys on the floor. It took a total team effort. Everything he had participated in up to this day, to this very moment waiting for his name to be called to take the court had required that.

If there were going to be any game changing plays or memorable moments that would save the day in the match he was about to play, they would have to come from him. And if things went haywire, well, that would be on him, also.

There would be no bad calls or blown calls from one official or another. There were no referees; no one calling lines. That was left to the players. Oh, players could call for line judges if necessary. It just happened very rarely.

If linesmen and an umpire were to be found, it would be in the tournament’s final matches. Then, more often than not, there was a single official seated on an elevated stand or positioned just outside the net post calling the score and resolving any line disputes.

Much like in golf, where participants call their own penalties, there was an unofficial code of etiquette and honor at work here. It was a code of honor that traced its origin to the twelfth century and the game’s beginnings in northern France.

That code has evolved over the years to cover warm-ups, ball management, keeping score, close calls, behavior and the game’s tempo. Those guidelines would first take on written form in 1982. That was when Colonel Nick Powell, former United States Tennis Association rules committee chairman, issued what was known simply as, The Code.

Powell’s code would spell out forty-three specific rules of behavior that, unofficially, at least, was expected to govern the amateur and professional game. Bill didn’t know any of them.

Well, he’d figure it out. He would watch a little of the action already out on the courts and follow the lead of whoever he was playing. As to the actual rules of the game, he already knew everything he needed to know; miss a shot, lose the point, hit the ball where your opponent couldn’t hit it back and win the point.

It would turn out to be a little more involved than that. There were plenty of official dos and don’ts that had accumulated over the years. The official rules and equipment used in the game had changed a bit since the game was first patented in England in 1873 by Major Walter Clopton.

That was when, for a mere twenty-six dollars, Clopton would sell everything you needed to play what he called sphairistike, meaning ball playing. That included poles, pegs, rackets, balls, net and the all important instruction manual.

And no, guys didn’t read those things then, either.

Terminology and the rules of the game were pretty much borrowed