who-nu

Obviously, Rabbi Fuchs wasn't always a rabbi. This page is dedicated to some of the highlights and little-known facts about Stephen Lewis Fuchs.

Playing hockey for East Orange High School in 1964.

East Orange High School Tennis Team 1962

1975, Winning the first of three Columbia, MD Memorial Day Singles Championships

Stephen, Marty Riessen, Clark Graebner, Gene Garrett, Ron Holmberg, Arthur Ashe. In 1967 Rabbi Fuchs gave up his more lucrative position as Head Pro at Spring Garden Country Club in NJ to accept the position as Assistant Pro at the famed Concord Hotel in the Catskills. There, he worked under former NCAA Doubles Champ from UCLA in 1950, the late Gene Garrett. Stephen came to the Concord on the condition that Garrett would spend time coaching him in off hours. Gene and Stephen became close friends.

Rabbi Stephen Fuchs & Arthur Ashe 1967, Concord HotelPicture

The Concord Hotel, 1967. Stephen Fuchs, Gene Scott, Gene Garrett, Arthur Ashe, Pierre Barthes and Rafael Osuna.

Below is a memory shared by Gene Garrett's daughter, Helen Garrett:

It was the summer of 1967 and I was 8 ½ years old. What stands out the most was that Steve was extremely handsome, and all the young women at the Concord used to hang around trying to catch his eye.

This included cozying up to me.

I was thrilled to suddenly have all these new glamorous ‘friends', until it dawned on me that they had ulterior motives.
They were trying to get to Steve through me! From then on, whenever they would come around I’d just roll my eyes.
Years later when my father told me Steve had become a rabbi, I thought back to that summer and my ‘older’ friends and thought, “There must be lots of disappointed ladies out there!"

Helen Garrett is now a nonprofit consultant living in Brooklyn, NY, primarily working on human rights and social justice issues.
Her father, Walter Eugene Garrett, was the tennis pro at the Concord Hotel for five summers, and a Philosophy Professor during the rest of the year. Her mother was a WWII refugee from Antwerp, Belgium who arrived in NYC in 1941 at the age of eight, after nearly a year in transit.

How many rabbis do you know who’ve been on The Dating Game?

The gyrations came when the bachelorette asked Mr. Fuchs (Bachelor #3) to do his best Elvis Presley imitation.
She also asked Bachelor #2 the same thing, and he won (as she revealed when Jim Lange asked why she chose him) because he really could sing!