Felix Yoffe has been many things in his 90 years of life – husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, Russian immigrant, Fermilab design engineer, woodworker extraordinaire. But the one description that might “serve” Yoffe best these days is “godfather of Aurora pickleball.” That’s the name many local players of this popular sport have bestowed upon the nonagenarian since he became an active part of the pickleball community a few years ago.
He plays with such a “wicked spin game,” notes fellow player Brian Tonner, that someone “called him out on his age,” even making Yoffe pull out his driver’s license to prove his date of birth. May 10, 1934, it turns out. Born and raised in Moscow, Yoffe worked as an engineer there until he and wife, Ina, who was a sound producer for the country’s sole and government-controlled television station, could no longer take the repression.
In 1981 the couple – he was 46, she 35 – left behind family, friends, careers and a comfortable life by their homeland’s standards, and made their way to America, first to Madison, Wisconsin, where a cousin working at the University of Wisconsin helped get them settled. The Yoffes stayed only a couple years there, however, before taking the thousand dollars they managed to save and joining Russian compatriots in Los Angeles, California, where they bought a home and in 1987 became U.S.
citizens. But the West Coast was not their final destination. After Yoffe’s company went b.