While cleaning out some of our file cabinets recently, I came across a file containing many of my old Trentonian columns, including this one on a pair of brothers you may have heard of: Erik and Lyle Menendez.
Say WHAT?!
At the time, the Menendezes lived in Hopewell, New Jersey, and the brothers trained at an indoor club where I taught tennis for a year after college. I worked a good deal with Eric, the younger brother, and was a practice partner (not instructor) with Lyle, the elder. During that time, I also gave tennis lessons to their mother, Kitty Menendez.
I featured them in the article below because they both won a major Middle States (South Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware) tournament on the same weekend. Lyle won the 18-and-unders while Erik captured the 14s. As I wrote the article, I suspect I was both a proud coach and an interested journalist.
What I was NOT, however, was clairvoyant.
I did not foresee that just over four years later, on August 20, 1989, the boys would murder their parents in their Beverly Hills home. Nor did I predict the sordid trials that followed, the TV specials, and the cottage industry devoted to all things Family Menendez.
