Verdugo Views: Love for tennis drove player’s success

Glendale High alum Gene Mako was a world-class tennis player and a colorful character, according to two longtime locals who knew him well: Reggie Perry and Jim Pagliuso.

Perry contacted me a few months ago to talk about Mako, a “fantastic tennis player” and a friend of her husband, Norm, also a top tennis player.

Intrigued, I asked for more.

I learned that Mako graduated from Glendale High in 1932, but that his story began in Hungary. Soon after he was born, in 1916, his family left and eventually settled in Glendale.

At age 10, he started his sports career by winning the Southern California Junior Handball championship for boys 16 and younger.

He went to Glendale High, played varsity tennis for four years and befriended fellow student John Pagliuso, who was president of the student body and active on campus. He graduated in 1930, went on to UCLA and married another GHS alum, Frances Birmingham. The couple remained lifelong friends with Mako, according to their son, Jim.

Mako had a long list of athletic accomplishments: among them playing on the U.S. Davis Cup team that beat Great Britain at Wimbledon in 1937 and winning the U.S. Open men’s doubles with partner, Don Budge, in 1936 and 1938, before joining the Navy in 1941.

After the war, Mako took on something new — constructing tennis courts.

Because of his illustrious accomplishments, Mako often played at the Los Angeles Tennis Club. And this is where a young student named Norm Perry first met Mako.

Reggie Perry told me that the two met in 1956, after Norm Perry became the top Junior in Southern California and was given playing privileges at the club.

Norm Perry, who went on to be a three-time All American and captain of the UCLA tennis team from 1959-61, often watched Mako play.

Norm Perry met Reggie Billig in Paris a few years later. They married in 1966 and later launched their own business here in town, NJP Sports. And that’s when Norm Perry again met up with Mako.

“Gene was a great tennis court builder,” Reggie Perry wrote in a recent email.

“Norm had his contractor’s license and acted as a subcontractor for Gene. They worked perfectly together, as both were perfectionists. Gene used the best contractors, never stinted on things. He wore a white sport coat and a pink dress shirt to supervise a pour,” she added.

Meanwhile, the Pagliusos remained close friends with Mako.

“I knew him all of my life,” Jim Pagliuso said during a recent phone call. “He loved to talk sports. He was opinionated, a nut on statistics, tennis, batting averages, football, how many yards carried, crazy things like that.”

When Jim Pagliuso was old enough to drive, Mako asked if he wanted to use his Lakers tickets.

He was told to pick up the tickets at a house in Bel Air, which turned out to be the home of Glenn Davis, a famous 1940s West Point football player. To his surprise, Jim Pagliuso said Mako, Davis and tennis champion Jack Kramer all showed up at the door.

Both Reggie Perry and Jim Pagliuso remember Mako — who died in 2013 at age 97 — fondly.

“He started playing tennis on public courts, entered tournaments without a coach and won. He was obstinate and self-confident,” Jim Pagliuso said. “He became a very close part of our family.”

“He was a fantastic tennis player, a real character,” Reggie Perry said. “We considered him a great friend as well as an employer.”

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Readers Write:

Paul Vanos, who lived in this area until his retirement 10 years ago, recently sent an email to the Glendale News-Press seeking information about the Glendale High mascot. The topic came up when Vanos, who now lives in Nevada, attended a 60-year Clark Junior High reunion at the Castaway restaurant.

“We were all on the subject of the ‘good old days’ and remembering our times at Glendale High. Someone asked where the mascot, a stick of dynamite, and the handle ‘Dynamiters’ came from and none of us know. Have tried to research and come up with nothing. Maybe you guys have something in your historic archives that would shed light on the subject?”

Readers: If you know the answer, let me know and I’ll forward the information to Vanos.

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KATHERINE YAMADA can be reached at katherineyamada@gmail.com or by mail at Verdugo Views, c/o News-Press, 202 W. First St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. Please include your name, address and phone number.