You Too Can Be a Champ

Learning to live with diabetes is tough --especially tough for children. The careful diet and the regular shots of insulin may become a painful, depressing routine for them. The well-meant sympathy of parents and friends may make diabetic children begin to think of themselves as permanent invalids.

Last week, at the New York Diabetic Association's Camp NYDA, 80 diabetic youngsters got a stirring show of what they can do with themselves. Two fellow diabetics, U.S. Davis Cup Captain William Talbert (33) and ninth-ranking Amateur "Ham" Richardson (19), turned up to play a strenuous exhibition tennis match on the camp's one ramshackle court. Winner: Talbert (6-4).

Between games, Ham and Bill sipped orange juice to restore the sugar balance in their blood. Later they had lunch with the campers, and Talbert explained how he came to take up tennis in the first place: to burn up sugar and so cut down his insulin take. The kids could see for themselves that there was really nothing to prevent a diabetic from becoming a top-flight athlete, although one or two frankly wondered how Old Man Talbert could keep up the pace at 33.

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