Thank you Leon!

Co-founder of Reflex Sports Productions and a great contributor to megaspin's success, passed away

Saturday, June 14, 2003

by Bernard Schembri, Webmaster, megaspin.net and Phyllis Ruderman, Leon's wife

Table tennis has suffered the loss of one of its greatest contributors in recent times. Leon Ruderman, co-founder of Reflex Sports Productions and a great contributor to megaspin.net, passed away on June 11th, aged 74. Leon founded Reflex Sports with his son Gary, committed to promote the sport through videos. It was Leon's initiative to partner with megaspin.net back in July 1999 that triggered a tiny table tennis website to grow into megaspin.net as you know it today. megaspin.net started promoting and selling Reflex videos on 18 August 1999. This formed the basis of megaspin's store which eventually started selling a complete range of products from key-chains to robots. megaspin.net has today become one of the largest table tennis shopping websites in North America. Things would have been different without Leon's contribution four years ago.

Leon was a dreamer, and he made many of his dreams become reality. His dream for table tennis was to change the image from a backyard diversion to that of a major sport. He not only competed fiercely, but he also worked fiercely to promote the sport. He convinced his son, Gary, that there was a market for videos of major tournaments, and so Reflex Sports was born. He kept working to find a way to broadcast major events, and found The Tennis Channel as an outlet. He put up the money to get these programs started and worked almost to the end to find sponsors so they could continue.

Although Leon had won many national titles in his age and rating group, he yearned for a title in the World Veterans tournament. He and Tim Boggan came close as they won the silver medal in Over-70 Doubles in Vancouver in 2000. Playing in the finals there was the highlight of his table tennis life. He did all this in spite of having been diagnosed with chronic lymphatic leukemia in 1984. He firmly believed that the conditioning he did for the marathon tournaments kept him strong enough to avoid the need for treatment until 2001. He might have been able to deal with the leukemia alone, but then he developed both Hodgkins and non-Hodgkins lymphoma. The triple whammy was just too much. He gave it his all, but his spirit and his body just gave out.

Leon never accepted "No" as an answer when he wanted to accomplish something. To him that just meant another way had to be found. He was creative, innovative and, above all, loved and respected.

Those in the table tennis world can honor Leon's memory by thinking to the future, by doing whatever is necessary to promote and expand the sport, and by continuing to love the game as he did.

Image courtesy of John Oros.

Read what others have to say:

Thanks Leon!
by Stephen H Walker on 6/27/2003 10:02:00 AM

I had the pleasure of meeting Leon and Gary back in the 70's. What a great ride it's been. We weren't the closest of friends, but Leon was always one of the guys I'd look for every year at the Nationals. We'd share old stories and talk about what we were doing and how we were playing.

Every Nationals I'll keep looking for you Leon, I'm sure it won't be long and we'll be reminiscing again.

Leon
by Tatapx on 6/23/2003 7:27:00 AM

Dear All,

We thank him a lot for his contributions to table tennis, without him table tennis may not be visible to the public as it is today. With his accomplishment we’re sure that he’s very happy up in heaven.

God bless and more power to Megaspin and Reflex Sports.

to schrembi bernard
by chilly van easy on 6/17/2003 4:40:00 AM

Thanks for the tribute to Leon, on behalf of players from my modest club.that's the least we could do.

Condolence
by Sandeep Sutaone on 6/17/2003 12:05:00 AM

It was really sad to learn of the passing away of Mr Leon Ruderman.My heartfelt condolences to the members of the megaspin.net and his immediate family

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