Letter to the Editor: Nelle Davis on Paddle Courts

Mar. 11, 2015: Editor's note: Below is a letter to Mayor Mary Marvin that the author requested MyhometownBronxville print.

Dear Mayor Marvin,

I have read some of the comments about the village paddle courts and feel I would like to express my thoughts. Solutions lie in getting the game back into the school, the chamber of commerce, the adult education program, the Realtors' minds, and the shopkeepers' store windows to raise the level of awareness of the game in Bronxville and the lower Westchester community. We need beginners, seniors, families, and kids out on the courts fighting for court time.

Five years ago we left a life in Manhattan where we had lived for over 30 years and moved to Bronxville (P.O.) to try something new. While buying our home we found the paddle courts. My parents had played paddle, but neither my husband nor I had. Luckily, come March, in the adult ed catalogue was a class on Intro to Paddle Tennis taught by Sugar Generaux. We enrolled at once.

We have made some very deep and wonderful friendships because of paddle. I had the pleasure of being asked to be a part of the paddle committee. I helped run tournaments; we had what was and is a community--an intense and passionate community at that.

It is a community of people from all different backgrounds, places, experiences who have come together for the love of a single game. The questions are not "What do you do?" but "Did you see that lob?" "Isn't so-and-so a great player?" "Want to put a game together next Saturday?" "Yes" is the resounding answer. It doesn't matter if we come from Bronxville, Yonkers, Larchmont, we have a home, and it is the village courts. A respite from the sometimes grueling, stressful monotony of life. Community is a scarce commodity these days, especially outside the confines of an electronic box, it is a gift, a panacea, and it has a value beyond the fiscal budget.

I recently went fundraising for donations for the Jansen paddle tournament. I raised a good bit of money and donations for the silent auction. I got them because all the shopkeepers know that members of the paddle community are their customers. They buy pizza, they stop and get their chair fixed, after play they grab a beer, go get a bite to eat. They do this regularly; this expands the reach of our paddle community. "It's a good thing," as Martha Stewart says.

Without this community we would have gone back to NYC. We don't go to a church, we don't have children in the school. We wouldn't know anyone yet. We aren't the only ones who feel this way. Let's expand this community instead of closing it down. It will pay off in the long run.

Yours,

Nelle Davis
Bronxville

Editor's note: MyhometownBronxville does not fact-check statements in letters to the editor, and the opinions do not necessarily reflect the thinking of its staff. Its objective in publishing letters to the editor is to give air to diverse thoughts and opinions of residents in the community.