A few years after Felix joined the Club in 1941, Charlie O’Hearn said in his president’s message that he honestly didn’t know what Fox Meadow would do without Felix. “He is wonderful with the kids, he is wonderful with the grownups, he is wonderful with a hammer and saw, and more than once he has fixed our coal burner single-handed. And the tennis and paddle courts speak for themselves. He is an institution around this Club.”

“Fox Meadow is a kind of institution,” said Brook Kindred, “and in the old days the institution was Felix McCrea, who was probably the most renowned court builder in the metropolitan area.”

Felix served full-time until 1960 when he started to work on a part-time basis overseeing the courts. He died in 1972 and a bronze plaque was placed outside the clubhouse to honor “a thorough gentleman and dedicated custodian of the Fox Meadow Tennis Club for forty years.”

Source: Adapted from Diana Reische, Fox Meadow Tennis Club – The First Hundred Years, 1983

The Club built additional courts on land it leased from the Crane heirs in 1938 for $150 a year. The site was a 40′ x 250′ strip of land running along the Club’s southern boundary. Although the Cranes had begun to sell parts of the estate, efforts to buy the property outright stalled.

(Note: In 1943, Hazel Barton McClintock bought a twenty-five acre parcel from the Crane heirs, and she agreed to sell the Club nearly all the land on which it already had paddle courts, approximately three-fourths of an acre, for $4,200. One paddle court still lapped over onto McClintock’s property, but she permitted the Club to leave it in place.)

Source: Diana Reische, Fox Meadow Tennis Club – The First Hundred Years, 1983

The United States was not yet at war, but for months waves of German bombers had pounded England almost daily, causing terror and destruction in towns and cities. Among those hardest hit was the world’s tennis Mecca, Wimbledon, whose citizens issued a plea for help from America’s tennis players.

The Fox Meadow Tournament Committee responded promptly:
“In response to an appeal on behalf of the heavily bombed citizens of Wimbledon, England, we are having a Wimbledon Paddle Tennis Tournament . . . a scrambled mixed doubles event with Tea and Crumpets afterward. The entry fee is $1.00.”

The 1941 benefit was typically Fox Meadow: well bred, in the precise spirit of the times, intergenerational, and centered on platform tennis. The Wimbledon tournament drew ninety-five players, many of them young people home from prep schools or colleges for Easter. Oz Moore handled the complicated seeding and drawing necessary for a successful Scramble, and many of his pairings matched a vacationing junior high or prep school student with a top-ranked national player.

National women’s champion Madge Beck drew thirteen-year old Billy Riegel, and they made it to the semifinals. The final round, however, went to Maizie Moore and William Spindler, who defeated Mrs. John Fowler and Charlie O’Hearn, 6 4, 4-6, 9-7. Said Club President Keith Eaton of the event, “The Wimbledon Benefit showed us that paddle tennis is not only a fast and exciting sport for play by experts, but it is a grand family game, and it also proved to the satisfaction of everybody that the Fox Meadow Club will not lack championship material for future national tournaments.”

Source: Diana Reische, Fox Meadow Tennis Club – The First Hundred Years, 1983

By 1940, more than a dozen people were on the waiting list for membership. World War II, however, put most Club activities on hold. Because gas rationing made tournaments all but impossible, most were suspended for the duration of the war. By the dozens, members and their offspring left for the war. Dues for those on active duty were cut to $25.

Source: Diana Reische, Fox Meadow Tennis Club – The First Hundred Years, 1983

A Keith Eaton (1891-1975) was a graduate of Bowdoin College and retired from Shell in 1949 as assistant manager for national sales.

He had served in WWI as a flight instructor and as a colonel in the Army Corps of Engineers in WWII where he was in charge of the manufacture of the “Pluto” pipe lines that ran from England to France to supply the Allied armies with oil.