The father of pickleball. Joel was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1956, a 6-term US Representative from Seattle and a 2-term Washington Lt. Governor. It was the game of pickleball which he invented in the summer of 1965 that he felt was his greatest accomplishment. The kids were bored so he took a ping pong paddle, a woofle ball, and invented a game on his badminton court called pickleball that has proven to be his legacy.