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showed the pictures from the World Trade Center, the people running, the dust, and finally the collapse. It was terrible.” Another side of the Rock Long before he was known as a poet, local pickleball players knew Myers best as the guy carrying a paddle. After moving to Glennwilde in 2012, Myers quickly became one of the city’s most recognizable advocates for the fast-growing sport. He taught beginner clinics, introduced residents to the game and spent years urging city leaders to build dedicated courts at Copper Sky. As for that nickname? It dates back before he could remember. Born Victor E. Myers Jr. in Mississippi, he was only a few months old when his mother took him to Hawaii to reunite with his father, a Marine Corps pilot stationed there. “My dad said, … ‘we ought to give him a nickname.’ The locals referred to Hawaii as The Rock, so my nickname became ‘Rocky,’” he said. The name stuck. School friends called him Rocky. Pickleball players called him Rocky. And for more than a decade, he became one of the most familiar faces on Maricopa’s courts. The pen is as mighty as the paddle Myers never had a complicated strategy for writing. The poems simply arrive when they arrive. Ideas would come to him while out on those morning walks or during time behind the steering wheel. A line would pop into his head. Then another. When they did, he hurried home to write them down before they slipped away. “I just started thinking about it, and it kind of came to me,” Myers said. “I would get a verse or two and then go from there. I usually had something roughed out in two or three days. Then I could refine it.” Over the years, he shared new poems with friends, family members and fellow pickleball players. His original “9/11 Remembered Forever” poem was even shared by InMaricopa on the event’s 15th anniversary. Myers may not write as often as he once did, but the poems remain close at hand. He can still recite many from memory — the same memory that carried him back to a chilly October night atop the Empire State Building and inspired him to pick up a pen all those years ago.
The poet and the paddle Local pickleballers may know Rocky Myers from the courts, but fewer know his poems inspired by America
Brand New!
BY TOM SCHUMAN
By Rocky Myers Our 4th of July Today is the 4th of July So fire up the barbie and let’s eat apple pie We slice up a big, cold watermelon This is about patriotism that I’m telling
R
OCKY MYERS REMEMBERS IT AS if it were yesterday. He left his sister’s Rhode Island home on a Wednesday and
boarded a train for New York City, planning to sight see and spend the night. It felt like living in a movie. He saw a play on Broadway. Hailed a cab to a deli. Then made an impromptu midnight trip to the top of the Empire State Building on a chilly October night. It was from there, standing more than 1,400 feet above the city and looking southwest, Myers could see the smoky columns rising from lower Manhattan. It was the vestiges of the World Trade Center. The Sept. 11 attacks happened just six weeks earlier. “I looked out over the ruins, and you could still see it smoking,” he recalled. “In the back of our hotel, there was a fire station. There was an easel there with pictures of all the firefighters they lost.” The experience stayed with him long after he returned home. On Sept. 11, 2002, Myers was taking one of his customary morning walks when the memories returned. The attacks still felt raw. As he thought about the smoke, the fallen firefighters and a city struggling to heal, inspiration struck. He wrote his first poem in years. It had been years since he had picked up a pen for that purpose, but the Sept. 11 remem- brance kindled a new passion. Over the next decade and a half, Myers authored more than a dozen poems focused on holidays — Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, Easter — and other events. He wrote some religious odes, personalizing psalms for people who lost a loved one. But that first poem, titled “9/11 Remembered Forever,” remains one of his favorites. “I lived in California [at the time]. I was up early [and] seeing it live,” he said. “They
This is our country’s story As we proudly fly old glory To our shores our founders did come To live in this land with freedom
So on this historic day of 1776 July Four The Declaration Independence they did score Declaring our freedom on the 4th of July They fought hard for our freedom to buy This is the day our freedom was made And we celebrate the 4th with a parade In the parade are colorful floats and cars Fly our flag with its proud stripes and stars We love this country with all its riches and perks As we light up the sky with bright fireworks Into the darkness the rockets and sparklers do fly Lighting up above us in a bright and glorious sky So have a hotdog and strike up the band We are so blest to live freely in this great land I am an American, I like to brag It does my heart good to fly our flag For this great country, the United States This is one of our most cherished dates And on this very special day we all say God Bless America and Happy 250th Birthday
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Rocky Myers
InMaricopa.com | July 2026
July 2026 | InMaricopa.com
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