Bill Tilden was the best tennis player in the world. And he saw something in Junior Boehmer. 

Tilden won seven U.S. National Championships and three Wimbledons. He didn't take many protégés. Boehmer was one of them. 

From 1926 to 1929, Boehmer swept St. Louis and the Missouri Valley as boys' and junior champion, qualifying for Nationals each year. He kept his winning ways through college, taking conference titles at Saint Louis University and climbing to No. 1 in the St. Louis District and No. 2 in the Missouri Valley in men's singles. 

By 1930, he was competing at the U.S. Clay Court Championships and the U.S. National Championships, which we know now as the U.S. Open. He returned the following year, financed by a group of St. Louis businessmen that included Albert Bond Lambert, the aviation pioneer whose name is on our airport. Lambert's backers were the same men who funded Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic flight three years earlier. Boehmer later married Lambert's daughter. 

Tennis in the 1930s was for amateurs. No prize money. No contracts. No way to build a life around the game, so Junior Boehmer stepped away. 

(2002)