At its best, athletics brings us to a higher place. It allows us to compete, not against each other, but against ourselves, challenging us to go beyond our limits and to live to our full human potential. Tennis partners Reese Patterson and Stan Ford exemplify this striving. Through tennis, their friendship, and their fortitude, both men overcame life-threatening illnesses to win the USTA National Men’s Senior Grass Court Championship and a number-one ranking in 1991. Patterson, a retired physician from Knoxville, rallied from a four-year battle with stomach cancer. Ford, of Gatlinburg, prevailed in a life-threatening ordeal with Wegener’s Syndrome before succumbing to ALCS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) in 1998. In the late 1980s, Patterson was so depressed by his condition that Ford finally laid it on the line. “Die here in your bedroom or on the tennis court.” The choice was easy. The two had been doubles partners for twenty-two years and had won national championships in 1985 and 1986. Amazingly, after their 1991 climb to the top, they even won events up until 1996, the year Ford was diagnosed with ALCS. Patterson is clear on the role tennis had in both their lives: “Tennis gave us something to look forward to. It took us to the land of the living.” Today, Patterson travels across the country working with other stomach cancer patients. He mails out hundreds of his cancer manuals on how and what to eat. “There’s always hope,” Reese Patterson tells us. He should know. He’s living proof.
