He is unbeaten and unbowed.
Such is 74-year-old Jim Elsman, a Birmingham attorney who continues to enjoy success in – and on – various courts.
Elsman, whose litigation practice focuses on plaintiff class action cases, has won the Michigan Senior Olympics singles title 20 years in a row, a tennis record worthy of hall of fame consideration. Yet, Elsman would rather talk about a Detroit tennis club, which he has owned for 40 years, where junior players train in hopes of securing college tennis scholarships.
Last year, Elsman won a trip to Houston by winning the Michigan Senior 70’s title and in May won the Senior 75’s crown by defeating Paul Ilitch 6-3, 6-2 in the final at Farmington Racquet Club, stretching his unbeaten streak in championship competition to two decades.
“But,” said Elsman, “like in trial law, you can win for a while and then lose an easy one – that is life. It is not permanent, even if you are Andy Roddick or Serena Williams.”
Of greater joy for Elsman is his role with the Metro Racquet Club on Grove Street in northwest Detroit, near 6 Mile and Schaefer.
“This is the most enduring black-white social club that I have ever heard about, nationwide, and we have been that way for 40 years,” he said. “Why? We don’t see color, except yellow balls.”
Elsman was among the founders of the club in 1971, just four years after the devastation of the Detroit Riots. He was among three whites and two blacks who founded the club by purchasing the former site of Detroit Tennis & Squash, which is now on Drake Road in Farmington Hills.
At Metro, there are six outdoor clay courts and two indoor squash courts. None of Elsman’s original partners survive, but the club is run by Mrs. Emeral Crosby, who owns the majority interest following the recent death of her husband, a prominent educator and principal for Detroit Public Schools.
“Mrs. Crosby is amazing,” Elsman said. “She may be over 80, but we don’t dare ask her. She runs the club from sun-up to sun-down, sweeping the clay and everything. Every time that I see ‘lists’ of prominent Detroit Metro leading female executives, I think to myself: ‘Whose story is better than her story?’”
According to Elsman, the club serves as a lasting tribute to Dr. Crosby’s memory, while also continuing its original mission, “that poor, inner-city children of any color should be given a fair chance to go to college, hopefully with a tennis scholarship.” Thus, the Summer Junior Program remains at the heart of the club and has served as a springboard for a number of college-bound players, including Jeff Collins, the former U.S. Attorney in Detroit, as well as the daughter of Werner Killen, a former career lawyer at Michigan Bell.
As Mrs. Crosby said, “We don’t stage fancy fund-raisers, but, if you wish to contribute to a great cause, send your money to Metro for our Juniors Program. It keeps the kids off the streets. You can come down here some days and see 35 to 60 kids learning tennis for hours at a time. We have fun, but the children also learn love and discipline.”
On any given day, the likes of Mayor Dave Bing, former Detroit Lions great Lem Barney, and former NBA star Spencer Haywood might be playing at Metro, according to Elsman. When there are tournaments, Mrs. Crosby lays out a feast of ribs, chicken, beans, potatoes, and more. No other club does that, said Elsman.
“Players love our tournaments,” Elsman said, “and the courts are close to the spectators, so there is plenty of kibitzing . . . It is very convivial in a unique way. And, you don’t have to bring your match – Mrs. Crosby will team you with somebody who is just sitting around. That is our form of forced integration!”
For Elsman, and others in the legal fraternity, tennis has medicinal benefits.
“Tennis is a great way to relieve the stress of law practice or whatever you do for work, plus lose some pounds that collect around your middle,” he said. “Indeed, if you want to play increasingly well, you must play year-round. That means a winter indoor club, plus cross-training at some gym facility – even long walks. If you don’t, your knees, hips, or other parts will take you down, and your general health will suffer. Too many people die too early because they don’t take care of their bodies.”
Elsman trains at Power House Gym in Birmingham, and is a member of the Bloomfield Open Hunt Club and the Naples Bath & Tennis Club in Florida, among others.
“Hallelujah, so far I have never been cut on by the docs, nor been in a hospital, though my opponents are noticing that I am fighting a losing battle with belly weight,” Elsman said with a smile. “Like hungry wolves, they stalk me.”
In his youth, Elsman had definite liberal leanings. He was editorial director of The Michigan Daily in the late ‘50s, then the largest college paper in the country with a circulation of 30,000. He trained one of the “Chicago 8,” Tom Hayden, who later married Jane Fonda, not-so-affectionately known as “Hanoi Jane” for her outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War.
While he was editor of The Daily, Elsman “got two separate entrepreneurial stories which attracted the CIA” to him, as he had studied Russian and Chinese. First, he was a “Freedom Rider,” three years before the “Riders.” In the fall of 1957, after President Dwight Eisenhower had sent the U.S. Airborne to guard Little Rock (Ark.) High School from violence upon the first “forced integration,” Elsman snuck into the school for The Daily. There he snapped a prized picture of Jefferson Thomas, one of nine black students who were attempting to integrate the all-white school. Elsman sold the photo to Time/Life, using the proceeds to start a scholarship fund at the school. His story documented that “the white and black children got along fine – it was the rednecks outside who were the problem.”
In the spring of 1958, Elsman used his vacation to travel to Cuba in an attempt to interview Fidel Castro, a young revolutionary who was attempting to lead an overthrow of the Batista regime. Elsman was arrested by Batista troops before he could get to the mountains where Castro was holed up, staring down the barrel of a Thompson sub-machine gun. He was imprisoned in the infamous “Moncado Barracks,” where Castro, himself, was once jailed.
Before enrolling in law school at the University of Michigan, Elsman attended Harvard Divinity School, studying theology with “Catholics, Jews, and just plain Protestants,” he said.
Upon graduation from U-M Law School, Elsman took a job with the legal department of Chrysler Corp., where he “learned where the ghosts could hide in corporate America.” After three years there, Elsman branched out on his own, forming a firm of 15 lawyers in the Guardian Building. Elsman eventually moved his firm to Birmingham and after 50 years of law practice has come to the conclusion, “I like the simplicity of a small firm.”
As to his political leanings, Elsman confessed now to being a “Milliken Republican,” even though he once was on the U.S. Senate ballot in the Democratic primary of 1976 when Donald Riegle was elected.
“Am I a liberal?” Elsman mused. “Well, Damon Keith (of the U.S. Court of Appeals) did get $500 out of me when I couldn’t afford such for a life NAACP membership, and I marched down Woodward with MLK (Martin Luther King Jr.) and Walter Reuther, et. al. Judge Keith was then just a divorce lawyer in the Guardian Building with Keith, Conyers & Anderson, and we used to meet up in his office and talk about the future of the city, along with his associates, Myron Wahls and Joe Brown. Damon is still our leader.”
Yet, the legal and societal landscape of today remains a puzzle, according to Elsman.
“I don’t even know what ‘diversity’ means and nobody can explain it to me well,” he said. “I certainly don’t want a bar that is anything other than an equal playing field. Minorities and women cannot be favored in the courtrooms of justice. Do the kids growing up around my tennis club have an equal playing field? No. We have to improve both child and adult remedial education for all.”
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