JIM WILSON - A TABLE TENNIS TRIBUTE
Jim Wilson, who has died aged 78, was one of us. Many will know Jim from his decades playing in the West. Fewer, from our early Vets tournaments at Ward Road, Dundee. And fewer still from his days in the Lanarkshire league. Back in the sixties, that league thrived alongside the West, thanks to people like Harry Baxter and Gordon Moir, Jimmy Fisher and Willie Keys.
They produced quality players like Scottish juniors numbers 1 and 2, Davy Barr and Alec Struthers, and Lanarkshire closed champion, Jim Wilson. It was at his club, Cleekhimin, that I first met Jim at a Lanarkshire league match, some 55 years ago. I was immediately struck how he held the bat with his thumb out and never changed his grip, but most of all by his speed of reflexes and movement and his great spin touch. 50 years later little had changed.
Jim was a bit of a Dapper Dan, who knew his way aroung the dance floor. He was so impressive up the Trocadero, that Ellen went from sweetheart to wife in short order. As a man, he was all you could wish for, quiet, unassuming, modest, and almost never confrontational. So much so, that he never argued with his best friend of 60 years, Drew McCavitt, the wee man with the giant TT heart. And as we all know, almost every empty house in Lanarkshire echoes from arguments started by Drew.
I played alongside both for 30 years at our Wishaw club and it was a secret joy to watch them playing each other. The same banter, the same corny jokes repeated every week and met with the same unalloyed joy each time. The epitome of true friendship and fellowship. Jim was a good loser, but as a lifelong Motherwell supporter, he got plenty of practice. Sons, Fraser and Barry, followed in Dad’s footsteps and are good players themselves.
Unlike Barry, both Jim and Drew were old school reserved, and as we queued to offer our commiserations to the family, Drew advised me, when you get to Barry stick your arm right out for a handshake, otherwise he will hug you. Didn’t work, Barry gave him the biggest bear hug you have ever seen, and rightly so.
Jim’s final years were marred by illness that he bore stoically and without concession. His last TT act, only weeks before he died, was to turn up at Glasgow South with the boys’ team, Joe Wilson, for a cup final. Sinclair Houston recalls being asked by a slight, frail man for a chair, before suddenly realising it was Jim. He was there for his boys, as he always was, from cradle to grave, theirs’ to his. It was fitting that there were only two wreaths at his funeral. Both said, simply, DAD.
Peter Shaw
