Sunday, November 18, 2001
Mr. B serves up lessons of life
By John Erardi
The Cincinnati Enquirer
At the intersection of Forest, Washington and Rockdale avenues in Avondale, one traffic light west of the honking horns of Reading Road, we go in search of the legend named “Mr. B.”
At the Firstar Boys & Girls Club, formerly known as Fleischmann's, we find the legend — in the people he's helped produce.
They are Mr. B's men, and they leaven Cincinnati like the late Max Fleischmann's yeast.
Mr. B is one of those rocks upon which the Firstar Boys & Girls Club was built; he is one of those rocks to which his former pupils return for respite and wisdom. Mr. B is heavy, but only in a metaphysical way — he's the games-room director at the club; his specialty is Ping-Pong.
When we first walk into the club, we see Mr. B sitting at a table at the far wall opposite the entryway. He has some papers before him — some type of sign-up sheets — and two pieces of fruit, an orange and a banana. Also, a simple black case in the shape of a paddle, with a raised pocket in it holding three Ping-Pong balls.
He's a compact man — pleasant face, engaging smile, thinning hair. But when he gets on his feet — the balls of his feet — and starts playing Ping-Pong, the 82-year-
old Mr. B is like a dancer who still has his steps. He's all over the place. It would be unfair to say Mr. B is more limber than a man half his age — unfair, that is, to Mr B. He's much more limber than the average fellow of 41.
And when Mr. B decides to put his opponent away, he leans into it hard, with his weight shifting powerfully forward a la Tiger Woods, and his right shoulder releasing all in one motion a la Dan Marino — and it is over. You don't return Mr. B's cross-court forehand. Mr. B can't tell you exactly why that is, but he thinks it has something to do with the fruits and vegetables he eats, including mixed greens (collard, kale and spinach) three times a week.
“Throw a little fatback in there ... onion, tomatoes ... cook up some corn bread and maybe a piece of fish,” Mr. B says.
Mr. B spent many years on the balls of these size-8 feet — he was a cook in the U.S. Navy, a mail-handler at the U.S. Post Office and a minor assembler at the Ford Motor Plant in Sharonville — but he is at his best at one of the two Elite Roller/Stiga Ping-Pong tables in the main room of the Boys & Girls Club.
He says he doesn't know how many Ping-Pong games he plays daily in his four to five hours at the club. Bernard Roberts, the unit director here, estimates it's “40 to 50” a day. It is always against younger competition, of course. Nobody Mr. B's age can play Ping-Pong like Mr. B.
Nobody.
He coaches and plays Ping-Pong (as well as billiards, air hockey and other table sports) with the 11- to 15-year-olds of the club who — except for 15-year-old phenom Tramale Foster — have no chance against Mr. B.
“David Justice (the New York Yankees slugger from Covington Latin) could really play the game — a left-hander,” Mr. B says. “I had a little problem with him. He could really hit that ball back over. I finally caught on how he maneuvered it, and I could discourage it by deadening it with that short-hop hit that barely clears the net. I'd beat him, and he'd beat me. He was terrific, the best youngster I've ever seen.”
Foster, a freshman at Western Hills High School, says Mr. B has taught him everything he knows.
“High serve, spin serve, spike, return spike,” Foster says. “Fast serve, slow serve, medium serve. Mr. B's a great coach. And he's like a grandfather to me. My grandfather died at 63.”
Sometimes, Mr. B plays the 20- and 30-somethings, who stop by in the late afternoon on the way to second-shift jobs — or early in the evening on the way home from work. These men do have a chance against Mr. B; they were taught by him and had time to apply his lessons. About Pong, about life.
There is something just right about these men being here — the duct-work cleaner in his crisp blue jumpsuit, the investment counselor in his khakis and white shirt, the university custodian in his white smock and blue shirt. All playing Pong with their mentor.
“I've been coming here since I was 8 years old,” says Joseph Martin, 26, of Avondale. “I like to stop over and hit a few with Mr. B before work. Keep him sharp. He kept me sharp. He taught me a lot of lessons. "Respect your elders.' "Don't cheat, fuss or fight.' "If the calls don't go your way, work your way through it.' Mr. B's a good man. When I was a kid, he'd run me from out of this club every day. He runs a tight ship. New club, same Mr. B.”
“I started coming here when I was 6,” says Rodney Summers, 27, of Avondale. “Mr. B taught me respect. He taught me sportsmanship. He taught me how to lose. "Don't take an attitude. Don't lose your temper. Keep your head up.'”
“Respect for the game, respect for people,” says Henry Rhodes, 56, of College Hill, who used to work here. “And his way of putting English on the ball. That's what I copied from him.”
Mr. B is Elmer Simeon Brand, who came into the world Feb. 10, 1919 — 20 minutes after his twin sister, Selma — as the fifth of seven children of Lucille and Samuel Brand at 520 Richmond St. He weighed 8 pounds. Since then, his top weight is 183 — “that was during the time I wasn't playing much Ping-Pong,” he says — and he now carries 173 pounds on his 5-foot-8 frame.
“I first started playing Ping-Pong in 1935,” he says. “There was a playground in Walnut Hills off Syracuse Street at the Washington Terrace complex. I started out with a sandpaper paddle. Taught myself. That's how I got this pin-hold grip (holding the paddle like a pencil, rather than conventionally like a tennis racket).”
The head of “Negro” sports and recreation for the CRC at that time was Cincinnatian DeHart Hubbard. Elmer Brand was 5 years old when Hubbard became the first black American to win an Olympic gold medal in an individual sport (long jump, Paris, 1924).
At all-black Douglass School in Walnut Hills, Mr. B walked the same halls as DeHart, played basketball in the same third-floor gym. Mr. B would come to know the Hubbard legend — especially his dignity and gentlemanly manner — and grew to emulate it. He can't remember having met DeHart, but it is as though he had.
“Never will forget him,” says Mr. B, who played a lot of sports.
Mr. B played a lot of sports.
“I was a pretty good figure skater — at Paradise Hall on Court and Central,” he says. “Ran track at Douglass School. I pitched horseshoes, and I played second base when I was in the Navy. Was the officers' cook — they especially liked my potato salad, candied yams and baked apples — aboard a transport ship that took Marines from Hawaii to Guam in the west Pacific in '44 until the end of the war in '45. ... I served in the reserve till '82.”
He also served on two aircraft carriers and a fleet tug.
“I was the best table-tennis player on those carriers,” Mr. B says. “I had the experience. My secret is, I can hit the ball on the real short hop. When a guy serves, he thinks his next shot is going to be a spike. But I throw their timing off by hitting it back quick. Pop! It's back before they know it. They wind up setting it up for me, and I spike it back at them. They can't understand why they got beat. It's all timing. If I played their hand, they'd beat me. Instead, it's, "Game time!'”
Mr. B's father drowned when Mr. B was only 10. Samuel Brand was a hod carrier, hauling bricks and mortar (in a wooden trough) on his shoulders — sometimes while climbing ladders. After a payday-Friday in 1929, he was robbed and thrown in the Little Miami River. He couldn't swim. Samuel's wife, Lucille, raised Elmer, his brother and five sisters.
“That's how I learned to cook, (watching) my mother on weekends and my brother, James — four years older than me — during the week,” Mr. B says. “James was the man of the house. He was my father figure. He became a hod carrier, too. Before that, though, he and I would make the meals for the family. James made great cakes. My mother would be out working, and when she'd come home, dinner would be on the table. "Sit down and enjoy.' It's the least we could do.”
Mr. B. thinks the absence of his own father has a lot to do with why (after he and his wife, Augusta, had raised their own three daughters and two sons) he began working as a volunteer at Fleischmann's Boys Club in 1967 and full-time in 1983 after he had retired. All the while, he kept playing Ping-Pong — at home, at the boy's club and at Xavier University. “They have some tremendous guys over there — and I've beat the best of 'em,” he says.
Bernard Roberts, 46, who now runs the Boys & Girls Club in Avondale, began hanging out at the Brands' home in Walnut Hills when he was 9 years old — his friend was Mr. B's son, Eric — and remembers Mr. B coming home from work at the Ford plant, and then, after eating dinner, heading out the front door with his paddle in his back pocket.
“Better to wear out than to rust out,” Mr. B says.
Just how good are you, Mr. B?
“I'm sharp,” he says. “I'm fast, too. They try to ease the ball over — and I'm right there. I can move real good.”
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Mr. B serves up lessons of life
