History of Tennis Court
Polly Nodden, Lifetime Member, narrates 1968 purchase of the tennis courts at Fortunes Rocks
If my memory serves me correctly, 1968 was the year my sister, Becky Banfield Jordan, sister-in-law, Patricia Murphy Banfield, and I wrote and illustrated a cookbook entitled What’s Cooking on the Rocks? We created the cookbook because we urgently wanted to find a way to salvage the two tennis courts that stood on the side of Fortunes Rocks Road adjacent to Etherington Pond, nowadays often referred to as Peter Pond. We played tennis on the better court every day the court was dry, and we played badminton on the other court when the clay was just too wet to step on.
My grandfather, Sandford Garland Etherington, had willed his summer home (the Knoll) on Elizabeth Road to one of his sons, Sandford Garland Etherington, Jr. Sandy and his wife, Rhea Robotham Etherington, were about to put the property up for sale. The property included the tennis courts as well as the clubhouse, which had been rebuilt across Fortunes Rocks Roads - away from the beach -- after it had been pummeled by the ocean and thrust through galvanized fencing into one of the tennis courts during a very terrifying and memorable hurricane.
We could not bear the thought of losing access to the courts where all our summer friendships and early romances had begun. With the support and encouragement of our tight knit community, we started to gather recipes from our family and all the summer friends we knew. Pat collated the recipes. Becky copied them because she had the best handwriting, and I added some illustrations to help organize the recipes into food categories. In no time at all, we were ready to take our masterpiece to a local printer.
Everyone who offered a recipe bought copies of the cookbook for family and friends. Everybody who knew anybody contributing recipes seemed to get on board, too, or at least that is my recollection. A real bonus was the fact that my aunt, Dorothy Etherington Powell, had a very influential friend who just happened to have a strong connection with the Carroll Reed Ski Shop in North Conway, New Hampshire.
Soon, cartons full of What’s Cooking on the Rocks? arrived at Carroll Reed’s before Christmas. Enough copies were sold between Maine and New Hampshire for us to reach our goal of Uncle Sandy’s asking price, $10,000.
And the rest is history! To this day, the courts, (one of which was converted into the present parking lot), and the soon-to-be-rebuilt clubhouse continue to be foundational to our beloved Fortunes Rocks community.
Polly Nodden, May 28, 2024, with much gratitude to Jim Oleson, President, the Board of Directors, and the entire Fortunes Rocks Association for your recent generous gesture regarding my Lifetime membership.