Wheelchair Tennis Tips Hat to Slemons

The honoree was modest.

“I play tennis,” Jim Slemons said, “but I don’t know if you’d call me a tennis player .”

The distinction would have been clear to most of the 75 guests sipping cocktails and dodging raindrops at the Balboa Bay Club Tuesday night.

Gathered around a cash bar on the club patio were Slemons’ friends and business associates and several representatives of the San Clemente-based National Foundation of Wheelchair Tennis.

The purpose of Tuesday’s $50-per-person dinner party--which raised $5,000 for NFWT--was to thank Slemons for his largess.

Before the meal and the inevitable proclamations and plaques, foundation exec Vicki Turner called the Newport Beach car dealer’s generosity “unique.”

“Of course, we have corporate sponsors who give more, but for an individual, (Slemons) is our biggest donor,” Turner said.

For example, she said, Slemons is underwriting a fund-raiser at the end of the month that will bring up to $50,000 into foundation coffers. It will also bring Wimbledon champ Stefan Edberg to the Newport Beach Tennis Club for a late afternoon demonstration and match with local pros, followed by a formal dinner.

“It’s the kind of (event) that really raises our profile with the able-bodied media,” Turner said.

Founded in 1980 by Orange County native Brad Parks, NFWT hosts about 70 tournaments each year for wheelchair-bound children and adults, and also offers more than a dozen weeklong sports camps around the country for disabled children ages 7 to 18.

Parks--now in his early 30s and disabled since he was injured in a skiing accident when he was 18--lives in San Clemente with his wife and children. He could not attend the dinner because of a scheduling conflict--he was still in England, having traveled there to see the Wimbledon matches as a VIP guest of the International Tennis Foundation.

To Bill Fairbanks, chairman of the board of NFWT, Parks’ increasingly high-profile status in the tennis world and the integration of wheelchair tennis into the “regular” pro circuit are long-awaited dreams come true.

Fairbanks noted that a recent Florida pro tournament included a wheelchair division. “That’s the first time our players were part of a regular event,” he said. “It shows you that the awareness is really growing.”

Among guests for cocktails and dinner of spinach salad and chicken breast Florentine were Cheryl and Bill Werth of Mission Viejo, and their 11-year-old son Branden, who will compete in the Junior National wheelchair tennis tournament next month.

The party was co-hosted by Balboa Bay Club members Lon Wells and Ben Harris.