Hunter Lott Jr., Nov 25th 1914 - Oct 29th 2005
by Rob Dinerman
December 16, 2005-Hunter Lott at his prime: USSRA 1949 National Champion.
When Hunter Lott Jr. suffered a fatal attack on the morning of October
29, 2005, less than a month short of what would have been his 91st
birthday, the squash world lost one of its most prominent historical
figures and true icons.
Lott in 1948-49 became one of only nine players in the century-plus
history of the USSRA (Neil Sullivan in '34, Charlie Brinton in '46,
Stanley Pearson Jr in '48, Diehl Mateer in '54 and '56, Sam Howe in
'67, Victor Niederhoffer in '73 and '74, Peter Briggs in '76 and
Preston Quick in '03 and '04 are the others) to capture both the U. S.
National Singles and Doubles championships in the same season, and the
eight National Doubles crowns he captured (five straight with Bill
Slack from 1938-42 and three more with Mateer in '49, '50 and '53), all
while playing the right wall, stood as a right-wall record until Morris
Clothier recorded his ninth just this past spring.
A native and lifelong Philadelphian, Lott attended Lower Merion High
School and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1936, the
same year he competed in the National Singles Tennis Championships
(which later became known as the U. S. Open) at Forest Hills before
beginning a 48-year marketing career at the Philadelphia Electric
Company (PECO) in which he ascended to the position of Executive
Assistant to the CEO before retiring in 1984. He served with major
distinction in World War II, attaining the rank of Captain in the U.
S. Quartermaster Corps, in which capacity Lott participated in every
European invasion landing throughout the war, from North Africa (where
he had a chance meeting with Larry Pool, the early-1930's Harvard
squash star) to Sicily and on into Italy, where he was among the
liberating troops on D-Day in 1944.
Hunter Lott in a recent photo: Tireless supporter of Penn squash and tennis.
Returning to the U. S. in September 1945 (when he would finally for the
first time see his son, Hunter III, who was by then nearly three years
old), Lott resumed his business and squash careers, falling just short
in the National Singles final twice in the late-1940's before breaking
through in '49 in his home town. There he and fellow Merion Cricket
Club torch-bearer Donnie Strachan (who had won the Nationals 10 years
earlier and who, like Lott, was by this time well into his 30's) upset
the higher-seeded and much-younger Pearson and Brinton respectively in
the semis.
The key game of their final was the third, when at a game apiece on
simultaneous game-point at 14-all Strachan barely ticked the top of the
tin on what would have been a backhand reverse-corner winner. Buoyed by
this turn in his favor and by this time confident as well in the great
improvement his backhand (formerly a weakness) had undergone in the
months leading up to the Nationals, Lott garnered an early lead in the
fourth game and held off a late Strachan rally to claim the
championship, an achievement which Lott came to view as one of the
three most important events in his life, along with his marriage to
Virginia Sharp (a union that produced two offspring, Hunter III and his
sister Ann) and his service in the war.
Realizing that winning the National Singles had required a training and
conditioning effort that he likely would be unable to replicate, the
by-then 34-year-old Lott decided to retire from singles competition (as
did Strachan), at least on the national scene, and concentrate on
doubles, in which, as noted, he had already won five national titles
with Slack prior to World War II. In his Merion club-mate Mateer, Lott
found an ideal protégé with the youth, strength,
athleticism and shot-making skills to complement the experience and
forehand power Lott provided. Their half-decade partnership proved
enormously mutually beneficial, serving as a launch-pad as well for the
three national singles and record 11 national doubles championships
Mateer himself would earn during his own stellar career. Both men were,
literally, first-ballot USSRA Hall Of Famers as members of the original
class of inductees into the Hall, elected in
1999 shortly after that organization was founded and officially inducted in the spring of 2000.
Mateer and Lott did oppose each other in a memorable Merion club
doubles championship in the early 1960's, in which Lott, by then in his
late 40's, and James Whitmoyer won a five-game final against Mateer and
John Hentz, who less than a month earlier had garnered the third of the
four National Doubles titles they won during the five-year period from
1958-62!
It was to be the last hurrah for Lott, who ruptured an Achilles tendon
shortly thereafter that ended his squash playing, though he continued
to play tennis twice a week (earning a national seniors tennis ranking
for a number of
years) until he suffered a small stroke three years ago. Throughout the
last four decades of his life, however, Lott continued an association
with squash in general and with Penn squash in particular that
expressed itself in a host of forms, encompassing everything from the
fund-raising effort he led for the Ringe Squash Courts in 1960 (part of
a FIFTY-YEAR racquet-sports fundraising involvement at Penn that also
included the Palestra tennis courts, which were in fact named in his
honor in 1974), to the establishment in 1970 of the annual Hunter Lott
Junior Tournament for players aged 10 to 18, which has become the
largest junior championship in America, to the mentoring he provided to
hundreds of squash and tennis athletes at Penn (even moving into an
office at Penn's Weightman Hall), many of whom have said how much he
inspired their careers and lives, to the several lunches a year he
would arrange to have with Penn racquet-sport coaches, a number of
whom, Demer Holleran and Ned Edwards among them, have in recent weeks
affectionately recalled how Lott would often use these occasions to
gently advance his agenda for the Penn squads they were heading.
Lott's reputation for being resolute, loyal and steadfast, traits that
he attributed largely to his three years of praiseworthy military
service, resulted in a remarkable degree of multi-front longevity:
married for 63 years, he worked for PECO for nearly half a century,
served as a member of Philadelphia Crime Prevention for 69 years,
represented Penn racquet sports for 72 years and was a member at Merion
for seven decades, including a three-year term as president of the
club. He also was elected president of the USSRA and the Jesters. His
squash game, both doubles and singles, was similarly solid and
unshakable, and his many contributions to and accomplishments in the
sport have fully established his standing as one of the most
influential and legendary figures in the history of the game.