Not quite match point

June Casagrande

NEWPORT BEACH -- Many remember her from the days when there was little

more than four tennis courts and a card table. She remembers when there

was nothing there at all.

After 36 years as one of Newport Beach Tennis Club’s most central

characters, Carole Johnson, is retiring. Amid hundreds of members and

well-wishers, the club co-founder and longtime employee said her goodbyes

this week over salad and iced tea.

“We’ll really miss you,” Cathie Hall told Johnson at the

well-attended, casual goodbye luncheon Thursday.

“I’ll still be around some,” Johnson assured Hall and other members.

Though she’s leaving her full-time job at the club to pursue her

long-simmering interest in fine art, Johnson, 69, said she will continue

to work in the pro shop about one day a week.

Still, members and co-workers say, the place won’t be the same without

Johnson’s far greater presence.

“Her dedication to the club will really be missed,” said Ted Winston,

who has been a member of the club since the 1960s and who now works

there.

But even Winston, who’s known Johnson for more than three decades, is

at a loss to describe all she does for the club. In fact, Johnson doesn’t

even have a job title. She just does what needs to be done.

“She’s always been there to take on anything she’s asked to do,” said

Dee Armstrong, a charter member.

“Everybody loves her,” Hall added.

Johnson helped her husband, Larry, found the club in 1965 as a way to boost sales of a then-radical product: condominiums cropping up in the

area. The club took hold, and Johnson became a regular on the courts.

Then, in 1975, Larry, now deceased, asked Carole to take a temporary job

there, just to help out during one of the fledgling club’s growth spurts.

“Six months turned into 26 years,” she said.

Since then, she has worked as newsletter writer, court manager and

all-around necessity for the now-sprawling facility with 19 tennis

courts.

“I’ll miss it here, the members especially,” Johnson said. “But I

won’t be too far away.”