![At 15, Lenny Simpson became the youngest male to play — and win — in a U.S. Open. He wound up having to play his mentor, Arthur Ashe, who, he said, "beat [him] like a drum." He founded One Love Tennis and Education Fund in 2013 as a way of honoring his mentors and "paying it forward."](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/88245c9/2147483647/strip/true/resize/840x^/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F81%2F23%2F2886b8e34880947a012c7852f789%2Flenny-simpson.jpeg)
On February 8, 2024, the world lost a tennis champion, a mentor to legions of children, a man who named his nonprofit after the principle that shaped his life.
Lenny Simpson launched One Love Tennis and Education Fund in 2013 to reach at-risk children in Wilmington. The word “love,” of course, has multiple meanings. In tennis, it’s used in place of “nil” or “zero” for scoring. But as you’ll hear in this episode, the late Lenny Simpson believed deeply in the power of love to change lives.
We spoke with him in October of 2019. He was eager to tell his story, in part because it illustrated the very reason he started One Love.
World tennis champion Althea Gibson gave Lenny Simpson his first tennis racket. Lenny Simpson has a lot to say about her, but in case you don’t know, let’s start with the way Venus and Serena Williams’ own coach described Gibson: one of the greatest tennis players who ever lived. She broke the international tennis color barrier, and she has a monument outside Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York.
The boy Althea Gibson called “Champ” went on to become a tennis champion in his own right: in 1964, at just 15 years old, he became the youngest male player to play in the U.S. Open. He also drew the attention of Arthur Ashe, who became another mentor and who he played (who "beat me like a drum", said Simpson) at that same U.S. Open.
Here is that 2019 conversation.
