William G. Sturm Sr., a retired businessman and avid tennis player, died in his sleep on April 8 at his home in the Blakehurst Retirement Community in Towson. He was 85.

William Granville Sturm was born in Baltimore and raised in West Baltimore and Catonsville. He was the son of Clarence W. Sturm, owner of a wholesale food distribution business, and Elaine Bozman Sturm, a homemaker.

He was a 1951 graduate of Calvert Hall College High School and obtained a bachelor’s degree in 1955 from what is now Loyola University Maryland.

He served in the Marine Corps from 1955 to 1957 and attained the rank of lieutenant.

In 1962, he founded DePuy Sturm, a distributorship that sold orthopedic implants throughout Maryland, Delaware and Washington.

He also established one of the first distributorships in Maryland for Prince Tennis Co., which manufactured a revolutionary tennis racket that had been designed by Baltimorean Howard Head.

“Dad was a successful investor throughout his life,” wrote a son, Larry Sturm, of Towson, in a biography of his father. “He enjoyed researching the latest medical innovations, from pharmaceuticals to medical devices.”

He retired in 1992.

An inveterate tennis player, Mr. Sturm was a founding member and former president of the Homeland Racquet Club.

He was also a member of the Baltimore Country Club, where he played tennis and, for 10 consecutive years, won the men’s doubles club championship with another son, William G. Sturm Jr., who now lives in Hilton Head, S.C.

Mr. Sturm was also the author of “The History of Baltimore Country Club Tennis, 1903-1998.”

A world traveler, he often planned travels around tennis and had attended matches at Wimbledon and the French Open.

He was also an amateur magician.

A longtime resident of Towson’s Fellowship Farms neighborhood and later Mays Chapel, he moved to Blakehurst in 2013.

Mr. Sturm volunteered at St. Vincent DePaul, and helped raise money to build a tennis court. He spent time teaching underprivileged children how to play.

He and his wife, the former Mary Joyce Kimmel, whom he married in 1955, spent winters at a second home they owned at Sea Pines Plantation on Hilton Head Island.

Mr. Sturm volunteered at the St. Francis Thrift Center in Hilton Head, where he helped serve Thanksgiving dinner to the needy.

His wife died in 2015.

He had been a communicant of the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen and later at Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church in Towson, where a Mass of Christian burial was offered April 16.

In addition to his sons, he is survived by a daughter, Kim Sturm Kozak of Millers, Carroll County, and six grandchildren.

—?Frederick N. Rasmussen