Edward P. Harding, 1936-2022, Three-Time U. S. Squash National
Age-Group Champion by Rob Dinerman
photo courtesy Harding family
Dateline April 11,
2022 – DSR is sad to learn of the death on April 4th of Ed
Harding, 86, who played No. 1 on the New York team that won the USSRA
Five-Man Team Championship in 1975 and later captured the U.S.
55+ title in 1991 and 1993 and the 60+ title in 1997, all in hardball
singles. Harding was nationally ranked as high as 14th in 1973 and was
chosen as the recipient of the Eddie Standing Trophy “for outstanding
sportsmanship and excellence of play,” one of the highest honors that
the New York Metropolitan Squash Association (MSRA) bestows on its
members, in 1972. He also won numerous New York -area age-group
tournaments, frequently advanced to the last few rounds of the national
age-group events and for years played on teams at the Racquet &
Tennis Club that won the MSRA A League championship.
Born in Long Island on January 6, 1936, Harding was a standout
three-sport athlete (football, hockey and baseball) at St. Paul’s
School, where he received the Gordon Medal emblematic of his
designation as that New Hampshire prep school’s best all-around senior
athlete when he graduated in 1954 before then going to Harvard and
later attending the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business
School. Although he learned how to play squash from his father as a
youngster growing up at the Piping Rock Club in Locust Valley, he
didn’t play the game competitively until the early 1960’s, during which
time he won the California State Championship in 1965. One year later,
he and his wife, Margaret “Peggy” Bright --- whom Harding married in
April 1961, calling their wedding day “the greatest day of my life” ---
moved east , where he pursued a career in the textile industry and dove
into the intense New York squash environment, making a significant mark
in both MSRA league play and the packed USSRA tournament schedule.
At the 1975 Five-Man Team Nationals, held in New York, Harding
and his teammates (consisting of Nos. 2 through 5 players Rick Sterne,
Kevan Pickens, Roger Alcaly and Keith Rosenbaum) scored a pair of
hard-fought semifinal and final-round wins over the University of
Pennsylvania and Ontario, in which latter dual meet Harding’s four-game
win over Gerry Shugar gave the New Yorkers some important early
momentum in their eventual 4-1 victory. He also won club championships
in singles in 1973 and 1975 and in doubles (with Charlie Jones) in 1968
at Racquet & Tennis, and in doubles (with Larry Heath) in 1981 at
the Field Club of Greenwich, on whose Games Committee Harding served
for many years.
Known as a fierce but scrupulously fair competitor, he
played a number of racquet sports besides squash and was a marathon
runner, an ice skater (he loved to skate on the Mianus River Reservoir,
which was near his Greenwich, CT home), and an avid fisherman. Although
in later years Harding underwent joint-replacement procedures on both
his right hip and left knee, he continued competing in age-group and
pro-am doubles tournaments well into the first decade of the 2000’s. He
is survived by Peggy Harding, his wife of 61 years, their three
children, Mimi Harding Owen, Marie Harding and Ned Harding, and their
respective spouses and extended families.
