By Julie Stern

If Darlene Jackson were writing this column it would have been done back in November when I was asked to do a piece celebrating the fact that Darlene and Don Jackson were the joint recipients of the NTA Distinguished Service award for Tennis in Newtown.

But of course, that would entail blowing her own horn, which is not Darlene’s thing. All she does is whatever other people ask of her, fulfilling her obligations at the level which she deems appropriate, which happens to be higher than most people generally live up to.

Somewhere I had an official list of Darlene and Dons’ tennis oriented achievements and contributions, but my cat ate it – which is typical – and so I am going to have to wing it with a digression on a pair of dear friends, and on what constitutes Distinguished Service both to the game and to the town.

Married for over forty years, Darlene and Don first met as grad students at Columbia Journalism School. Native Californians (he from the north, she from the south) they were both veteran tennis players. Don, who was given his first racket and taught by his father when he was nine years old, went on to become the Northern California Junior Champion by the time he was fourteen. Darlene learned from her mother, playing on the public courts in those pre-Title IX days when there were no teams for girls.

After the Army, when Don’s journalism career took off – Heisman Fellowship at Harvard, lead stories for Life Magazine on international issues that took him all over the world – Darlene stayed home and raised Dale and Amy. They moved to Newtown in 1969 when the kids were ready for school, arriving just in time for first Stroock Tournament. Don went to the finals in that one, losing a close match to Fritz Freeman.

That was the year Darlene called me up about subscribing to The New York Times – she was looking for a nucleus of ten in order to get the paper delivered. I was so delighted to find a newspaper reader that I stretched the call into a friendly conversation, and so it was that Darlene and I became doubles partners, playing together for the rest of the century, and hopefully continuing well into the next one.

We played in all the tournaments – never big winners, but often making it to the finials, kidding each other about our game plan which was to always win at least one point in every game, and one game in every set, and never, never to be heard using that expression so familiar to women’s doubles – “Sorry!”

Don and Darlene won the mixed doubles a few times, and Don was a frequent winner on the men’s side. He ran the tournament at least once, and was often found up in the high chair judging matches. He and Darlene also were winners together back when we had inter-town play against Brookfield.

Time moved on. The kids grew. Life Magazine folded and Don settled into freelance writing – serious works on politics and history that can be found in libraries everywhere. His book Judges, a highly readable analysis of the entire US judiciary system, taught me everything I know about that subject. From there he moved on to regular assignments for Smithsonian Magazine, covering an incredibly wide range of subjects from trekking the South American rainforest in search of medicinal plants (he trekked) to Chinese immigration in California to the impact of Wal-Mart mega-stores on the American heartland, to the uses of hynosis, the secrets of twins, and the history of the hot dog (these were just some of my favorites), and of course recently there was that flap about Rhode Island – one thing about Don is his caustic sense of humor which requires some intelligence to realize when he is kidding.

Meanwhile Darlene went to work for Campfire, moving from being a local group leader for her daughter to becoming the regional director of both the organization and its summer day camp on Lake Kenosia – a job which was a mixture of fund raiser, publicist, trouble shooter, social worker, personnel director, soother of hurt feelings, and community activist.

When she retired from that job it simply meant that she would have more time for volunteering: Training literacy volunteers; being a “Friendly Visitor” contact to isolated seniors; working for “A World of Difference” and other programs designed to promote tolerance and unity among the Danbury area’s multiple ethnic groups; driving for Meals on Wheels; doing publicity for the Congregational Church; working for the Cornerstone Thrift Shop; (these are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head).

Of course that doesn’t include her contributions to the NTA, most notable of which is the faithfulness with which she has attended the monthly Monday night meetings and written the weekly column for more years than I care to think about. Chasing down tournament coordinators for the latest scores, interviewing promising young juniors, thinking up new ideas for features, taking pictures when The Bee photographer wasn’t able to get there – you name it, Darlene has done it – many times!

But to me, what makes this award appropriate is that Don and Darlene stand for everything that is great about recreational tennis. Unconcerned with status or trophies or fancy outfits or prestigious clubs, they have played for more than fifty years for sheer joy of the game, holding together a network of friendships begun on the courts and deepened into lifelong alliances.

The 1999 tennis season saw a renaissance of sorts on the Newtown courts, with dozens of new NTA members turning out for clinics and ladders and parties and drop-in weeknight evenings. Hopefully many of them will follow in the footsteps of Don and Darlene Jackson, and become lifetime practitioners.