Tennis and Civic Striving in the Nation’s Capital

By Published on August 11, 2015

Washington, D.C.,’s Rock Creek Park Tennis Center — site of the week-long Citi Open tournament that wrapped up Sunday — is more formally known as the William H.G. Fitzgerald Center after its major benefactor, a living monument to success and generosity.

Fitzgerald, who died nine years ago at 96, was a Bostonian who made a great deal of money in Washington and gave most of it away for education, and civic improvements, at home and in Africa. A graduate of the Naval Academy, he served in World War II and, past 80, as ambassador to Ireland.

An avid and, by all accounts, accomplished tennis player, Fitzgerald got involved with an organization, the Washington Tennis Patrons, launched in the 1950s by men of his time and generation—veterans of the World War and Korea who found themselves in the nation’s capital not to serve time in the swamps of power but to make money and enjoy the swampy climate. Eisenhower supporters for the most part, who served when asked but quickly returned to the private sector, they founded a charity out of their own pockets and their own tennis courts to give a chance to dead-end kids.

Read more of the moving tribute here…

Read the article “Tennis and Civic Striving in the Nation’s Capital” on weeklystandard.com.

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