National Table Tennis Champion Dies at 90

Lou Pagliaro, who has won so much in a fraction of an inch over 5 feet, or four national championships of table tennis in 1940 and 50 with surprisingly nimble footwork and then immediately right, died last Wednesday in Staten Island. E 'was 90
Lou Pagliaro exhibition tennis serve

The death was confirmed by his daughter Lois Wolf.

Back in the coming days packed tennis club rooms on the second floor on Broadway in Manhattan, sports Pagliaro "Dynamite labeled Louie," Bullet "Lou" and "Giant Killer".

One thing I hated being called a player of ping pong. "He looks effeminate," he told the New Yorker magazine in January 1942 after winning his second individual championship under the auspices of the National Association of Table Tennis. "Ping-pong, ping-pong - My God, what game is?

Rather rooms tournament with a firm, chops spring guide Pagliaro, balloons back hook and hits the arm straight track. It has been described as the most difficult to straight table tennis.

In short, slightly arched, legs, Pagliaro, which weighed less than 120 pounds in his prime, won the national championship for three consecutive years: 1940 (win over former world champion ship Sun) in 1941 and 1942. Then, after a decade of competition, he won because his life is back in training Pagliaro and took the title again in 1952, beating the defending champion, Dick Miles. Was inserted into the Hall of table tennis in France of Fame in 1979.

In Manhattan, 5 was born in May 1919, Luigi Pagliaro was one of five children of John and Dominique Pagliaro, immigrants from Italy. His father was a baker.

Josephine Modica Pagliaro, his wife of 49 years, died in 1988. Besides his daughter, Lois, is accompanied by two other daughters, Paulette Russo and Janis Kay, a son, John, the surviving sister, Josephine Carlisle, seven grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

Ping-pong Pagliaro has been out of trouble in the rough streets of the Lower East Side. At 8 he went to see the children of New York Street to East 10th Street and grabbed a shovel. Soon it was against the children have learned to play the game. In 1933 he won the Junior League of Metro City.

E 'went off the road and away from dead-end kids who end up in jail, "said his daughter Lois.

In 1930, Pagliaro has worked his way through the rows in the game of table tennis nation. During the Second World War, was at the USE, will present their skills for the troops. But there was no way to earn a living in sports to do. Until his retirement in 1984, Pagliaro has worked in a steel factory in Brooklyn.

Should be "I am a pilot," he said in 1942, after winning his third title. "I coordinate a spider monkey."

He also had a remarkable agility. At one point during the match of World Cup 1941 in which he defeated Edward Pinner, Pagliaro is on the back of the table about 40 meters.

"He continues to play defense in this case, having caught cold at the beginning of a speed reader Pinner Pinner Pagliaro invested pension until he was prevented from returning to another," the new New Yorker, he said. "So Pagliaro won the point on the return of a ball just three inches from the ground when he was hit.

"The ball went under the arc lights, and entered the network, then sold Pinner on the side of the table."