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Tom Page Doing Battle with Jahangir Khan (photo: © SquashTalk archives).

SquashTalk has learned that the Episcopal Academy Hall Of Fame will be inducting the late Thomas E. Page, class of 1975, winner of the '77 U. S. National singles and (with fellow Episcopal school-mate Gil Mateer) the '78 and '79 U. S. National Doubles and a major singles and doubles star on the WPSA tour throughout the 1980's, later this autumn. The ceremony is scheduled for November 11th, and the 10-person class of 2005 will raise the total of inductees to 45 (five of them squash players) during the five-year period since the Hall Of Fame was founded in 2000.

Page, a Merion Cricket Club product who possessed marvelous natural talent and a charming personality that belied the inner demons (and diagnosed schizophrenia) he battled for much of his meteoric but ultimately tragic life, died in April 2001 at age 44 when he suffered a massive heart attack on a New York City sidewalk. He was memorialized at the Episcopal Academy chapel in an emotional ceremony held two months later that was arranged by his older brothers, Episcopal alumni Palmer, class of '68, and David, class of '71, and attended by nearly a thousand of his friends and supporters.

Page's career highlights included not only his trio of USSRA national titles (as well as the three-straight North American Open crowns he and Todd Binns captured from 1986-88), but also the four combined WPSA Doubles Team Of The Year designations he won with Mike Pierce (one) and Binns (three), the WPSA tour stop triumph he recorded in his native Philadelphia in '80 (featuring sequential wins over Aziz Khan, Mario Sanchez, Sharif Khan and Clive Caldwell), a top-10 WPSA singles ranking throughout the six-year period from 1980-86 and co-authorship of perhaps the most legendary match in WPSA history when he and world champion Jehangir Khan engaged each other in a two-hour air-sucking, rubber-burning North American Open quarterfinal classic (compared to which the subsequent matches were anti-climatic) as nearly a thousand spectators thronged Town Hall in midtown Manhattan watched spellbound as these two paragons of sportsmanship and athleticism before Khan finally prevailed in May 1985.

EPISCOPAL SQUASH GIANTS
Episcopal is well known for producing excellent squash period, and the early 1970's period when Page came along was an especially noteworthy era in this regard; the three Page brothers, the Bottger brothers, John and David, Gil Mateer, Bob Callahan, Joe Swain, and the Havens brothers, Peter and John, all became stars on top-five college programs, with David Page serving as captain of the '75 Princeton Ivy League champions, Palmer winning the '71 Intercollegiate Individual title (and defeating his Penn teammate Eliot Berry in the
final) and Tom reaching the '76 finals as a freshman, and defeating two-time defending champ Juan de Villafranca in the semis, before losing the final to Canadian national champion Phil Mohtadi.

Page,as noted, is the fifth squash player to be elected into the Hall Of Fame, which requires a 10-year waiting period before its alumni/ae become eligible. The prior four squash inductees are Diehl Mateer, class of '46, who won two North American Opens, three National singles and a record 11 National Doubles titles; Charlie Brinton,class of '37, who won the National singles four times and the National Doubles twice; James Zug, class of '58, who won the 1972 National Doubles with Larry Terrell and has frequently won national age-group singles tourneys during the past decade; and multiple National age-group singles champion Hastings Griffin, class of '39, currently the U. S. 80-and-over hardball national champion.

Tom Page (r), American prodigy doing battle with Mike Desaulniers, Canadian prodigy. (photo: © SquashTalk archives).