Moore, Oscar F.

Oscar Fitzland Moore IV (he refused to be called Oscar, hence the nickname Oz) was born in Jamaica Plains, MA and graduated from St. Mark’s School, Southborough, MA, in 1923, and Yale in 1927. After graduating he worked as a stockbroker on Wall Street where he previously had been a runner starting at age 14, but decided to change careers during the depression and joined Johns Manville Corp. in their New York City offices.

In 1933 he married Mary (Maizie) Adair Childress (a member of the Childress paddle dynasty in Scarsdale, NY and Hall of Fame inductee in 1970). Soon after their two sons were born they moved from Staten Island, where Moore’s family had relocated to when his father became Rector of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, to Westchester County and joined the County Tennis Club in Hartsdale, N.Y.

Largely because of Maizie’s tennis prowess the family was urged to join the Fox Meadow Tennis Club, the Childress family’s home club, where they encountered Blanchard and Cogswell and their new game of paddle tennis that was rapidly growing in popularity.

Moore served as President of Fox Meadow from 1943-1944 and won the Men’s Tennis Doubles in 1948 with Dick Hebard and the Mixed Tennis Doubles with Maizie in 1942 and 1953. While he did not win any Platform Tennis titles at Fox Meadow he was a champion of the social aspect of the game and put mixed events on the map.

According to his sons their father’s fondest memories of the game were securing many gross of rubber paddle tennis balls just before the severe rubber shortage during WW II, and being elected President of the APTA in 1946.

He retired from Johns Manville in 1971 as VP and general division comptroller and, with his second wife, Betsy, moved from Rye, N.Y. to Pt. Manalapan, FL, then to Madison, CT and finally spent his last couple of decades at Essex Meadows, Essex, CT. He died in 1998.

Source: Eric Moore, February 2016, Hartford Courant, Obituary, 3/3/1998