Leonard A. Bernheimer, 1941-2024, US Squash Hall of Famer And Former US Squash President
by Rob Dinerman
photo US Squash
Dateline March 29, 2024
--- DSR is sad to report the passing of US Squash Hall of Famer and
former (from 1984-86) US Squash President Leonard A. Bernheimer,
universally known as Lenny, this past Tuesday. He was 82 years old and
had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in January. He is survived by
Marilyn “Lyn” Bernheimer, his wife of more than 60 years, his children
Jonathan (the 1990 Intercollegiate Individuals squash champion) and
Beth, siblings Walter, Robert and Susie and seven grandchildren.
Although Bernheimer’s 60-plus years as a devoted (and highly
successful) squash player began in the early 1960’s at Williams
College, where he discovered the game and swiftly rose to the top of
the varsity, it wasn’t until the early 1970’s --- after returning to
his native Massachusetts following his graduation from Stanford
Business School --- that he started making a substantial impact on the
regional and national amateur tournament circuit. He earned a number of
top-10 national rankings, won the Middlesex Bowl (an important
Massachusetts SRA tournament) several times, played No. 1 on Boston’s
teams in the Lockett Cup (an annual tri-city competition with teams
from New York and Philadelphia) and captured the Massachusetts State
Open Championship in 1987. Within a few weeks of that latter
accomplishment, he and Sandy Tierney nearly won the Open Division of
the US National Doubles. They out-lasted Jay Umans and Paul Assaiante
in a five-game semifinal while Scott Ryan and Rich Sheppard were doing
the same to Tom Poor and Jamie Barrett in a tension-filled Sunday
morning in which five of those 10 games were decided by two points or
less. In the final, Bernheimer and Tierney, bidding to become the
first-ever all-Boston team winners of this championship, eked out an
18-16 fourth game and sharp-shot their way to an 11-9 lead in the fifth
before Ryan and Sheppard were able to win the final six points.
Although Bernheimer came up just short in that final, he won several
dozen national age-group titles in singles and doubles over the course
of a 43-year period that began when he won the US 35-and-over hardball
singles in 1981 and extended all the way through the US National
Century Doubles 80-and-over crown that he and Kush Kumar won in January
2024, just 65 days before Bernheimer’s death. His 1981 35’s final was
over Poor (reversing the outcome of the 1980 35’s final), with whom
Bernheimer had a rivalry in singles and a simultaneous partnership in
doubles --- as well as in their co-running of the Boston Open, one of
the most prestigious stops on first the WPSA pro singles tour and later
the SDA pro doubles tour --- that lasted more than three decades and
encompassed 12 of the 17 U. S. National age-group doubles championships
that Bernheimer won during the 32-year period from 1991-2023. Fittingly
in light of how closely associated the pair became with each other,
both were inducted into the US Squash Hall of Fame at the same ceremony
in 2012, 19 years after Bernheimer received the President’s Cup, the
highest individual US Squash citizenship award, in 1993.
In addition to his achievements as a right-wall doubles player and in
hardball singles, Bernheimer won multiple national age-group titles in
softball, in which discipline he represented the US in both the 1977
Maccabiah Games in Israel (where he and teammates Dave Linden and Glen
Whitman won a silver medal) and, several months later, in the biennial
World Team Championships in Ottawa. He also was highly active in squash
administratively on a number of varied fronts, including as President
of four important entities --- namely US Squash (known at the time as
the United States Squash Racquets Association), the Jesters, the
Massachusetts Squash Racquets Association and the University Club of
Boston --- and as the first Chairman of the Board of SquashBusters
throughout the 11-year period from 1995-2006. He served in all these
capacities while having a long and distinguished career as owner and
president of United Lithograph, an innovative commercial printing
company in Somerville, MA. Lenny Bernheimer has been a beloved figure
throughout the squash world for more than half a century, universally
respected and admired as a leader, friend and mentor, and he will be
sorely missed.
