Jim and Dolores Wavada were married on September 1, 1947. I was not there, and so I cannot provide details of that occasion. I found a few black and white photos of the event among my dad’s possessions. The one at the right is by far my favorite.
I don’t remember them making much of an occasion about any of their anniversaries. By the time of their 25th anniversary in 1972 I was working at the Hartford (story begins here). If they had a celebration, I did not attend.
In May of 1997—after living at 8800 Fairway in Leawood for thirty-five years—my parents moved to a bi-level apartment or condo in Overland Park.
At about the same time my parents had a falling-out with my sister Jamie Lisella. I did not learn of this until six months later when my dad wrote the following to me:
When you were here for my birthday I almost showed you the Mother’s day card, the last one, she sent your mom in 1997, which mom received just a few days before we moved from Fairway. The front says: Mom, I always thought it was great the way you cared for helpless animals. Inside it says:…. especially Dad. I can still see your mother’s tear-filled eyes as she said: “Isn’t she awful? She ruins everything.” I still have the card, which was sent about a month after she hung up on me when I told her mom was too ill to move to New England.
I don’t know if anyone invited Jamie. She was living in West Springfield, MA, and working at TSI at the time. I certainly would have paid for airfare for her. She did not attend.
In 1997 their many friends in the area wanted to throw them a party. I am pretty sure that it was held at the home of Ed1 and Betty2 Rafferty. September 1 was a Monday in 1997. I flew by myself to KCI and took the private shuttle service to my parents’ place.
I did not take any notes about the trip. Why would I? I did not own a camera at the time. If I took any photos with a disposable camera, I do not know where they are. My memories of the entire trip are very sketchy. In fact, I only remember clearly one detail.
My recollection is that my dad had been in the hospital. I think that he might have had pneumonia. There was quite a bit of chaos concerning the party. By this time my mother was having a great deal of trouble with her memory. She did not want to go to the party because she was afraid that she would not remember people’s names or commit some other faux pas. My dad did not know what to do. I sat down beside her and put my arm around her shoulder. I said something like, “Mom, these people are your friends. They don’t care about that. They want to see you and to help you celebrate this occasion.”
That was enough to convince her to go. She and my dad both had a great time. I don’t remember much about the party itself. I recall a feeling of relief when it was over. On the plane ride back to New England I was, of course, greatly concerned about my mom’s condition.
1. Ed Rafferty had been a naval air pilot during World War II, which meant that his planes took off and landed from aircraft carriers. He never talked about it. He died in 2017 at the age of 94. His obituary can be found here.
2. Betty Rafferty appeared to be living in Overland Park in 2023.
After the Golden Anniversary party in 1997 (described here) my mother’s physical condition deteriorated. I worked in at least one visit to Kansas City in the next several months. She was miserable and hated her life. She asked my dad what she could have done to deserve her condition. There was, of course, no answer. My dad communicated with me by telephone and email during this period. He told me that the doctors did not know what she had. They had given her a couple of blood transfusions. On Friday March 6 he called me at the office and told me in a broken voice that she was slipping away. I immediately booked a flight for the next morning.
I flew to KC and rented a car. When I arrived at my dad’s apartment he did not need to tell me that mom had died. It was written all over his face and his feet—he had on one slipper and one dress shoe. He was distraught but not sad. Neither was I. It had been apparent that she was very unhappy, and no relief was in sight. My mother was a doer and a planner. Her disease deprived her of the meaningful part of her life.
My dad and I talked about what needed to be done. He told me that he had an appointment with the funeral director. I agreed to drive him there. He did all the talking; spots at the Catholic cemetery in Lenexa, Resurrection, had already been reserved for both of them.
I think that the wake was held on Monday, and the funeral mass and burial were on Tuesday. I don’t remember whether anyone wrote an obituary to appear in the Kansas City Star or not. There is no obituary available online. II had not thought of this oversight even once in the intervening decades.
Sue caught a plane on Sunday and flew to KC. I picked her up at the airport. We stayed in the spare room in dad’s apartment.
Jamie’s entire family crammed into their van and drove to KC non-stop. I would have gladly paid the airfare. They stayed in a hotel. The younger kids were actually pretty excited about it because the hotel had a swimming pool.
I have no memory of the wake whatever. I am not even sure that there was one.
I clearly recall the funeral mass, which was performed at Curé of Ars in Leawood. Fr. Edwin Watson1, a long-time friend of the family, was the celebrant. In his sermon he had mentioned that he had been with my mom in her last hours, and he said that he had absolutely no doubt that she was now in heaven. I had prepared a few words to say, but I was too choked up to try to speak. Jamie made a nice tribute.
All that I remember about the burial at the cemetery was that it was cold.
We probably all went out to eat somewhere afterwards, but I don’t remember any details.
My dad told me that the doctors had recommended an autopsy, but he had refused to grant permission. I would have liked to know what my mom had. I inherited half of her genes; I certainly did not want to end up the way that she did. However, I did not argue the point.
On the following day we all went back to New England. Sue and I flew; the Lisellas drove.
1. Fr. Edwin died in 1999. The story of his life can be read here.
Aunt Margaret’s funeral: In March of 2007 my dad, Jim Wavada, was living in Enfield near our house. This situation has been explained here. He learned in a telephone call from either his brother Vic or one of Vic’s children that Vic’s wife Margaret had died on Tuesday, March 27. Vic and Margaret had resided in Trenton, MO, for as long as I had known them,. The services were scheduled for Saturday at St. Joseph’s church in Trenton.
Dad could not have undertaken the journey by himself. I retained only the vaguest memory of Aunt Margaret1, but I agreed to accompany him to pay his respects. I have absolutely no recollection of staying in or near Trenton on that occasion. I therefore have deduced that we flew to KCI airport on Friday and stayed overnight at the Hampton Inn near the airport. I have a pretty vivid memory of staying with my dad at that hotel, and I cannot imagine any other occasion on which we might have done so.
Why did we not fly out earlier and spend some time with the family? I can think of two possible reasons. Either I had business commitments that I could not get out of, or my dad wanted to minimize his time there. I strongly suspect that it was the latter. My last trip for the last major installation that I did (Macy’s South, as explained here) was in January of 2007. I don’t have any notes about major trips in March or April. Furthermore, I know from several conversations with him that my dad did not have much respect for his oldest brother.
I am pretty sure that we arrived at KCI on Friday afternoon. I rented a car from Avis. After we checked in at the Hampton, we treated ourselves to fried chicken at the Strouds restaurant near the airport.1
The next morning we ate an early breakfast at the hotel and then drove to Trenton. The drive took about an hour and forty-five minutes. I remember nothing about it.
In Trenton I got to see my Uncle Vic, and my cousins Charlie, Vic Jr., Margaret Anne Deaver, and Cathy. I also got to meet their spouses and children. Some of these people were probably at my mom’s funeral eight years earlier. The others I had not seen for at least thirty-seven years. Many I had never met at all.
St. Joseph church in Trenton.
I have very few memories of this occasion. I remember that my Uncle Vic had recently purchased a car. For some reason this upset my dad, who thought that it was a waste of money. I could not understand why my dad would care about this.
I am pretty sure that we stopped at Uncle Vic’s apartment before going to the church. I can visualize it, but I am not sure that I can trust the details.
The other memory that I have was a disparaging comment that Uncle Vic made about me. It was something to the effect that I thought that I was too good for them.
Since he was eighty-eight years old and did not know me at all, I did not get angry or embarrassed. My only mental reaction was to consider this a very strange thing to say about someone who had just paid to fly halfway across the country for services for someone whom he barely knew. At any rate one of my cousins, Margaret Anne or Cathy, reprimanded him for the comment, and he attempted to make a joke out of it.
In retrospect I surmise that the comment was really directed at my dad. I had not consciously done anything (or, for that matter, failed to do anything) that would provoke enmity with Uncle Vic.
I was happy to establish a little bit of communication with my cousins even though I am almost certain that we left shortly after the funeral and drove back to the Hampton Inn. It must have been during this drive that my dad vented about Uncle Vic’s car.
I surmise that we then flew back to Connecticut on Sunday.
Uncle Vic’s funeral: My dad and I returned to Trenton in October of 2009 for Uncle Vic’s funeral. He was ninety years old, which, unless I have miscalculated, tied him with his mother Hazel for the family’s longevity record. I have much more numerous and vivid memories of the second trip, but it is definitely possible that some of the events that I associate with it actually occurred in 2007.
On the second trip my dad and I shared a room at the luxurious Knights Inn3 just outside of Trenton. We spent at least two nights at the Knights. It made quite an impression on both of us. Our room contained an old light green rag that was covered with stains. A sign near it implored the temporary residents to use this rag to clean their firearms as opposed to the towels or sheets. This admonition was unnecessary for dad and me, as we both carried our own cleaning equipment whenever we brought our rifles on trips.
All of my cousins were again present. I am pretty sure that this time we went to the rosary and wake on Sunday evening. We also ate supper with them and some friends of Uncle Vic’s at what Vic Jr. called “a pizza joint”4 in Trenton. The atmosphere was fairly lively. My cousins lived in St. Louis, KC, and Denver. I had the impression that most of them were happy that they need never come to Trenton again. There was very little reminiscing about good old days with “Pop”.
I remember talking with an optometrist who was, I guess, Uncle Vic’s friend. I told him that I had been taking the PreserVision vitamins to try to stave off macular degeneration. He validated that this was probably a good idea.
I met Charlie’s wife Mary and Vic Jr.’s wife Theresa5. Margaret Anne’s husband was probably there, too, but I do not remember his name. John maybe? I don’t remember anyone asking about my sister Jamie.
On Monday we attended the funeral and burial. Afterwards there was a lunch at the church hosted by the Ladies Club. I sat near some of my cousins. I remember Vic Jr. remarking about his mastery of texting. He said that recently he and his son Matt had texted one another while they were in the same store. Theresa worried that people would become overly dependent on them and stop planning.
I recall quite a few kids, a few of whom were a little rambunctious. I can’t say that I tried very hard to assign names to all of them.
The return trip: My dad, who at this point began referring to himself as the last of the Mohicans6 was unusually talkative. He told me about a problem that he had had with Vic Jr.’s son, Matt. I don’t remember the details.
I think that it was either in the car ride or the airplane that he talked about Vic. It may have occurred at another time; I am not certain. He said that his mother, Hazel Wavada, had negotiated a deal with the Benedictines to provide a good high school education for her three sons at Maur Hill in Atchison, KS. One of them had to become a priest. Vic, thee oldest actually took the name Brother Hildebrand, O.S.B., before he quit the order. That, my dad said, was why his other brother, Joe, became a Benedictine priest.
He also told me that Vic had been married before he met Margaret to a woman in Birmingham, AL, of all places.
1. Her very brief obituary, which was posted here, says that “Mrs. Wavada retired from the Jewitt Library in Trenton after 28 years.” This was news to me. I also did not know where my Uncle Vic had been employed. His even briefer obituary, which was posted here, was no help. I have a vague recollection that he worked for a company known as Trenton Foods, which may have been purchased by a conglomerate.
2. My recollection was that the restaurant was near the airport. The closest Strouds that was open in 2023 was located in Oak Ridge Manor, sixteen miles southwest of the Hampton Inn. That is farther than I remembered, but we would have thought nothing about driving such a distance for real fried chicken, which is unknown in New England.
3. The building that housed the Knights Inn still existed in 2023. It was renamed the Cobblestone Inn and Suites. Its website is here. The exterior does not appear changed much, but the photos of the rooms did not seem familiar.
4. I don’t think that the joint survived until 2023. The only pizza places in town in 2023 that Google knew about were Pizza Hut, Godfather’s Pizza Express, and Casey’s, a “convenience store known for fuel and pizza.”
5. Theresa died in 2017. Her obituary has been posted here.
6. He only held this title for two years before passing it on to me. As of 2023 I have now been the most senior of the KC branch of the Wavadas for twelve years, almost 1/6 of my total life.
7. The original Brother Hildebrand of the eleventh century eventually became the famous Pope Gregory VII. I have written an entire chapter about his influence and posted it here. I also included him as a character in the historical novel, Ben 9, that I posted here.
In 2013 I was still working full-time at TSI. My bridge was mostly limited to evenings and weekends. My involvement with District 25 (New England) was mostly limited to maintaining the NEBridge.org website, but I did accept an appointment to be one of the people who represented Unit 126 (Connecticut) at the twice-yearly meetings of the Board of Delegates. The big attraction was the free breakfast.
The Larry Weiss award was about eighteen inches in diameter.
The Larry Weiss Award was actually instituted in 1982. Its history is recorded here. The first presentation that I witnessed was at a Board of Delegates (BoD) meeting in 2013. The winner that year was Frank Hacker1, an expert player from Vermont whom I had contacted about contributing materials to the district’s website. The presenter was the previous winner, Jim Rasmussen. Frank seemed shocked and a little embarrassed to receive it.
I read about the award on NEBridge.org. It was named after an expert player who had a national reputation for being very congenial at the table. The evident purpose was to recognize a good bridge player from New England who had similar comportment. In those days2 an accomplished player who was also friendly was rare.
Jim Rasmussen.
I was fascinated by the award, which was the only physical trophy given out by the district. I examined the list of previous winners. Most of the names were not familiar to me.
Not long after receiving the award Frank moved to Florida. No award was presented in 2014 or 2015. In 2016 someone retrieved the tray from Frank, and Jim Rasmussen was pressed into service to find a suitable recipient. I posted a notice on the website for him asking people to submit nominations to Jim’s email address. I submitted two names, mainly because I was afraid that no one else had bothered to respond.
Luke Gillespie.
A few months later I was taken aback when Jim called me aside at a tournament and asked me if I would be amenable to him just selecting the person to receive the award. I said that I certainly had no objection. The award that year was given to Luke Gillespie, whom I had played against a couple of times. I was a little surprised that he won. I had only seen him at a few tournaments. I had also encountered him at no meetings or in any of my undertakings as webmaster. Luke was very surprised when his name was announced. That was the only time that I ever saw him at a BoD meeting.
Both of Jim’s presentation speeches were brief. He described the award, but he never went into any details about the process used to determine the winner.
In 2017 I was again asked by someone on the Executive Committee to post an item on the website soliciting nominations for the award. This time I did not nominate anyone. The award was presented at the BoD meeting in Nashua NH in June. Earlier in the week Jack Mahoney had greeted me in an elevator with “Congrats on the Weiss!” I don’t remember what I responded. However, this revelation game me a day or two to think about what I would do if they actually gave me the award.
At the end of the meeting Luke Gillespie presented me with the Larry Weiss award. When he introduced me, he admitted that he did not actually know me. In fact, I had only played against him once or twice. The memorable occasion was in Johnston, RI, at a sectional. I distinctly remember one hand. He was playing with Sheila Gabay. My partner, Steve Smith (introduced here), had opened 3♦. Sheila had bid 4♣. I raised to 4♦. Luke ventured 5♣, and Steve said 5♦, which was doubled.
Sheila Gabay.
As I lay down the dummy, I remember my exact words: “I don’t know; I don’t think that they are making 5♣. Afterwards, Luke and Sheila gently chided Steve for usurping my captaincy.
I was well aware of the criteria for this prestigious award, at least one of which I did not in any way meet. I gave a little speech in which I argued that if they were going to lower the standards to consider a Bracket 4 player, they should have chosen my friend and frequent teammate, Bob Derrah, who had established successful youth bridge programs at two middle schools in Springfield. His devotion of time, energy, and his own money for this and other projects was truly “superior behavior.” His wife (and bridge partner) Shirley had also been a great help, but Bob had been the driving force.
Shirley and Bob Derrah.
At the very end I emphasized that I felt honored, but Bob would have been a better choice. I spelled Bob’s last name so that the fill-in secretary, Beth Bertoni, would be certain to get it right in the minutes. Sandy DeMartino said that I made a good point in that players should be encouraged to nominate people that they thought were deserving of the award.
Early in 2018 I followed the instructions that were posted on the NEBridge.org website. I organized a committee of nine players that had representatives each of the eight units in Di25. My first choice was Luke Gillespie. The text describing the award indicated that preference should be given to former winners. Luke agreed. The other members were Susan Smith, Shirley Wagner, Jack Mahoney, Wayne Burt, Linda Ahrens, Karen Hewitt Randall, and Bob Sagor.
Ausra Geaski.
I once again posted a notice for the submission of nominations. This time I asked people to reply to my email address.3 Only nine people responded; seven nominated one person, and Carolyn Weiser nominated Wayne Burt, Dick Budd, and David Rock. The other nominees were Paul Harris, Sabrina Miles, Joe Brouillard, Bob Derrah, Don Caplin, Pat McDevitt, Felix Springer, and Frank Merblum. I nominated Bob Bertoni and Ausra Geaski. No one was nominated by more than one person.
I created a pdf file of all of the nominations, included the arguments provided by the nominators and sent it with the following email to the members of the committee.
I received thirteen nominations for the Larry Weiss Award. I have enclosed them in a pdf file and a Word doc file. To some of them I have appended comments when I had personal knowledge of the recipient.
I think that the next step is to gather comments from committee members. No one can know everyone, and so in some cases we must rely on the judgments of others. Please read the documents and send me whatever comments you might have this week. During the week of April 9 I will assemble a new package that includes them. Then we can start the balloting.
One note: The last ten winners have been men. No woman has won the award since Jane Smith in 2003. This seems peculiar to me, since there seems to be nothing in the criteria that would predict such a bent.
Thanks for your participation.
There were only a few comments, but one person was very upset that one of the nominees was even under consideration and asked that I include that comment without attribution. Since I had said that I would allow anonymous comments, I did. The subject of that comment, who was also a voting member of the nominating committee, offered the opinion that only positive comments should be accepted. I did not remove the comment.
In the first round of voting I allowed all members to name up to three nominees who best, in their opinion, met the criteria. Only three people were named by more than one person: Joe Brouillard, Ausra Geaski, and Bob Bertoni. Bob and Ausra were named more often than Joe.
So, the final ballot was between Bob and Ausra. Ausra got four votes; Bob get five. I would have been happy with either result. In retrospect it seems remarkable to me that if I had not been on the committee, they would not have even been considered.
I announced on the website that the award for 2018 would be given out at the meeting of the Board of Delegates at the Granite State Getaway ( a regional tournament held in Nashua, NH) on Sunday, June 24, 2018. I did not disclose the winner’s name to anyone—not even my wife Sue.
I brought the award with me to the Senior Regional in North Falmouth, MA. When I gave the trophy to Carolyn Weiser to be engraved, I had to tell her who had won. A big smile appeared on her face.
My presentation of the award to Bob has already been chronicled here (search for “Weiss”), but that account did not include my actual description of the winner: “My friend, my boss, my guru, my hero, Bob Bertoni.”
This was the last presentation of the Larry Weiss award. Bob died in 2021. No one seemed to know where the silver-plated tray ended up.
My relationship to the award that replaced it has been described here.
1. I also played against Frank in a sectional in New Hampshire. He told me that he was an actuary. He also asked me if I knew Joel Wolfe. I did know him from the Tuesday evening games at the Hartford Bridge Club, but I was terrified of him. I never told Joel about the encounter in New Hampshire.
2. Behavior was apparently much less friendly in the eighties. In 1988 the ACBL instituted a set of laws governing behavior at the bridge table called the Zero Tolerance policy. Over the next three decades bridge gradually became a much more friendly game as it became “bad form” to be rude or abusive to the others at the table.
3. I am not sure why I did not send a district-wide email asking for nominations. The district certainly had its MailChimp account by that time, and I had been maintaining the database for many years. The description of the award says that the website should be used to ask for nominations, but when that admonition was written the district had no way to send a large set of emails. Perhaps I was worried about the cost, which would have been about $7.50.
The Larry Weiss Award (introduced here) was an engraved silver tray that was presented by the New England Bridge Conference a total of twenty-three times over the period of its existence—1982-2022. The history of the award, including its original criteria and evolution in 2023, is documented here.
The Larry Weiss award.
In 2017 I won the award. I was very proud of this, but I also pledged to myself that I would make sure that it was given to someone else the next year. The committee that I formed in 2018 voted for Bob Bertoni, who was the District Director. That responsibility left him little or no time to organize a committee to manage the process of selecting the next recipient in 2019. Then came the pandemic, and to make matters wors Bob developed cancer and died in July of 2021.
It did not make sense to try to give out the award in 2021. No regional tournaments were held in New England the entire year. In 2022 I argued in the Executive Committee’s Zoom meetings that the award should again be given out in 2023, and I volunteered to chair the committee again. There was no opposition. The president, Curtis Barton, told me to go for it.
A few months later I discovered that no one knew where the Larry Weiss trophy was. I was not about to call Bob’s widow, Beth, and quiz her about it. Besides, there was only room enough on the tray to squeeze in one more name. So, the EC voted that the award committee should decide on a new award, name it, set up the criteria, buy it, and present it..
When Natalie Bassil won an event in 2015, she asked me to post this photo of her. She hasn’t changed a bit.
I selected committee members in much the same way as I did in 2018. I wanted people who had participated in the post-pandemic tournaments, and I insisted that at least one person be from each district. A few people turned me down or never responded. In the end two EMBA players agreed to be on the committee, Natalie Bassil and Dan Jablonski. The others were Michelle Blanchard, Chris Soares, Lucia Carlisle, Sue Collinson, Dan Morgenstern, and Judy Hyde.
The protocol was similar to what I used in 2018. All of the communication among members would be via email. Nominations would be submitted by the players throughout New England. Two sets of votes would be held. In the first one committee members would be allowed to name three (or fewer) nominees who they thought were worthy of the honor. Then each person would vote for one person from the reduced list.
Dan Jablonski.
The first step was to come up with a name and a set of criteria. I proposed the name Weiss-Bertoni Award and added one criterion to the three listed on the Larry Weiss document. “Extraordinary service to promote face-to-face bridge at all levels in New England.” The one thing that I was most adamant about was the phrase “face-to-face”. I felt that online bridge, championed by the ACBL both during the pandemic and afterwards, was destroying the face-to-face game.
I sent an email to each committee member with my proposal and asked them to suggest improvements. The proposal that I attached has been posted here. A few members suggested that two proposals would make more sense. Since I had only been authorized to award one trophy, I did not put those ideas to a vote. Chris Soares was the only person who made a constructive suggestion:
Chris Soares.
Thank you for a thoughtful and concise revision.
In new Section 4 I’d suggest that
“It would seem to make sense for the committee selecting the current nominee to include the current winner…”
be changed to
“It seems sensible for the committee selecting the current nominee to include the current winner, if possible…”
A bit cleaner and addresses the unfortunate reality of death
I liked her suggestion. Since I could not imagine anyone objecting to it, I did not put it to a vote. So, we now had a name and some good criteria.
Gary Peterson.
Nominations: I asked the new webmaster, Gary Peterson to post an item on the main page of the district’s website to solicit nominations. Players were asked to send nominations with the reasons for their choices to my email account. At the same time I sent an email to all active players in D25. It is posted here.
The response was almost overwhelming. In the end I received ninety-nine emails nominating forty-one players. I nominated five people: Felix Springer, Trevor Reeves, Donna Feir, Linda Starr, and Joe Brouillard. I disqualified two of the nominees. Two people told be that I should be nominated. I told them that I was not eligible because I had won in 2017. One person nominated a woman who lived in New Jersey who, as far as I could tell, had never played in a tournament in New England. Chris Soares nominated someone who had recently died. Since he had been alive for most of the time since the last award was given, I allowed it.
Sue Collinson.
I wrote php code for a webpage on Wavada.org to allow the members of the committee to read what players had said about the people that they had nominated. A link to the webpage is here. I left the nominations open until March 17.
On March 18 I sent the following email to the committee members:
The nomination process is now finished. The last nomination–and it was for a player who had not previously been nominated–came in at 11:53 last night. I was very impressed by the response. I am quite sure that no previous nominating process sparked anything comparable.
I only disqualified two nominations. One was for a player who lives in New Jersey and never seems to have played in New England. The other was for a previous winner of the Weiss award.
I have created a word-processing document for each nominee. Every document contains all the supporting material that was provided by nominators. I will create a pdf file from each of these and post them where each of you can read them. I have written a program that will make it easy to find and open them. I will send the link to this program as soon as all of the pdf files have been checked. I want to make sure that nothing was lost in the transition.
I hope for the evaluation phase to start on Monday. Since I am playing f2f today and tomorrow, it may be a day or so later. During that phase you will be provided time to read all the materials and, if you wish, to send me your thoughts (attributed or anonymous) to add to the pdf files before we start voting. I will provide more details when I send the link.
Judy Hyde.
I made two mistakes in posting the nominations. I accidentally left off Ed Rothman, who Chris Soares had nominated. When she complained about it, I apologized, added him, and made sure that everyone knew about the mistake. I also left off Linda Starr, whom I nominated. I did not discover that until later.
The email containing the link and instructions for reading the nominating emails was sent on March 20:
It is time to start evaluating the cases for the forty players who have been nominated for the Weiss-Bertoni award. The official web page for this award is at https://nebridge.org/pages/481/. You can review the criteria there.
I have posted the text of all of the nominations on my website. You can view them through the alphabetical index at http://wavada.org/BAN001.php. When you get to that page click on the button at the bottom labeled “Generate HTML”. A list of the nominees, their units, ranks, and current masterpoints will appear. Beneath each nominee is a list of the people who nominated him/her. To read the text of the nominations just click on the underlined name of the nominee.
I did not edit the nominations except to leave out “thank you” and similar messages. I copied and pasted (as text) all of the messages. So, every message is in one uniform font without bolding, colors, emojis, or other flourishes.
The next step is to record your reactions and send them to me. You can specify that you want the message to be anonymous if you like. Otherwise, I will attribute it to the sender. I will either add the reactions to the bottom of the appropriate document or create a new document for reactions. I have not decided which to do. In either case you will be allowed to read them through the above link on my web site.
After everyone has a chance to digest the nominations and reactions, we will have a preliminary vote. In 2018 everyone was allowed to select three nominees whom they would be comfortable with as the winner. The people who appeared on at least five of these nine lists were considered finalists. The final voting was to select one of the finalists as the winner. Unless someone has a better idea, we will probably do it the same way this time.
Dan Morgenstern has agreed to be on the “subcommittee” that selects and purchases the physical award. If you have strong feelings about it (I don’t), you can contact him directly at dmdockayak@aol.com.
Please let me know that you received this email. I will send it again later in the week to anyone who doesn’t respond.
Dan Morgenstern.
Discussion phase: On March 30 I sent an email to begin the “discussion phase”:
The nominating process for the Weiss-Bertoni award has ended. Before taking votes I want to solicit information and opinions from the committee members. I know a dozen or so nominees very well and another dozen or so well enough so to greet at a tournament. The people whom I know well live fairly close to me or have served with me on committees, boards, or projects. I would like to know what committee members with different backgrounds and locations think. I am also eager to share some of the “insider” experiences that I have had.
To that end I would like the other members of the committee to—if they want to—send me their anecdotes, thoughts, and feelings about any of the nominees that they know fairly well. I will create a pdf file for each nominee who receives comments from members and post them on the list. Each comment will be attributed to the sender unless it was specified that it was to be considered anonymous. For each nominee the word “Comments” will appear in red beneath the list of nominators if any comments have been received and posted. Clicking on “Comments” will produce a pdf file with all the comments for that nominee. I should have this portion of the web page working by Monday, April 3.
We can then start voting when everyone has had a chance to comment and digest the comments of others. I think that we should be able to do so near the end of April. It’s been five years since the last award; we should take as much time as we need.
Please let me know when you receive this message. I am sending the emails one at a time to try to avoid spam filters.
I was disappointed with the response to the request for additional comments. Perhaps it was a surprise to people that there were so many nominations to read. I read them all. Almost all of them were very short. Hardly anyone listed any details. I added my own comments to quite a few, but only one or two other people on the committee expressed their opinions.
This was, I suspect, another unexpected result of the pandemic. People had not been playing in very many different places. So, they were unfamiliar with the people who were working hard in other parts of New England. I know that I was.
Voting: The first round of voting began on May 1;
The participation in the “discussion phase” by the members of the Weiss-Bertoni committee was somewhat disappointing to me. The discussion phase in 2018 was more lively. Several committee members this time said that they were not very familiar with any of the nominees. Perhaps this is symptomatic of the isolation imposed over the previous three years.
It is May now, and we should start voting. Please send me a list of up to three of the nominees. They should be people whom you would be most comfortable with as the first recipient of the Weiss-Bertoni award. The criteria have been posted at https://nebridge.org/pages/481/. The list of nominees, including descriptions by the nominators and comments by committee member is stall available at http://wavada.org/BAN001.php. A few additional comments were added over this last weekend.
Please try to send your list to me this week, if possible. I will tabulate all of the votes and come up with a short list of finalists. I still expect to present the award at the Board of Delegates meeting in June.
The following people received at least one vote in the first round of voting: Karen Barrett, Joe Brouillard, Lois DeBlois, Yan Drabek, Donna Feir, Bob Gaudet, Kim Gilman, Tim Hill, David Metcalf, Sue Miguel, Ed Rothman, Bob Sagor, and Caroly Weiser. Sue Miguel and Joe Brouillard received more votes than the others.
This email for the final vote was sent on May 9:
Thank you very much for participating in the process of selecting the first winner of the Weiss-Bertoni award. Thirteen nominees received at least one vote in the elimination round. Two candidates received more than the others. So, the final choice is between Joe Brouillard and Sue Miguel. Please send me your choice of one or the other.
If you wish to review the nomination materials or comments, they are still available at http://wavada.org/BAN001.php.
The final vote was very close. It was 4-4 as I awaited the final vote, which finally arrived on May 18.
The new trophy: My original idea was to procure a tray that resembled the original Larry Weiss trophy as closely as possible. It was round and silver-plated. There was enough space on it for the name of the award, a phrase that described it, and twenty-four name-date combinations. If we gave it out every year, I would be 98 when it was full, and no one would ask me about it.
I spent many hours on the Internet looking for such a thing. I was pretty sure that the original, which was in my possession for an entire year, was at least eighteen inches in diameter. I found nothing that exceeded sixteen inches, and those trays all had ornamentation on them that would have greatly reduced the available space.
I asked for some time at the Executive Committee meeting. Of course, I was last on the agenda. I asked for a budget and/or help in choosing the new trophy. People were very eager to end the meeting. In the chaos of the last few seconds Sue Miguel, Peter Marcus, and (I could be wrong about her) Carolyn Weiser agreed to “take it offline”, which I interpreted to mean that they would form a subcommittee and take care of it.
I asked for a volunteer from the awards committee to join them, and Dan Morgenstern said that he would. I did not forget about the trophy, but I stopped researching. I received the following email from Dan on April 8:
I am out of the country until 4/25…I won’t be able to comment .
Also, none of the folks who volunteered to come up with a gift have been in touch…I am thinking a small individual plaque rather than an engraved plate.
Hope you are well!
This was what he wrote when he returned on April 28:
I have been away in the South Pacific for the past month, little or no internet.
Anyway,sorry about the slow response.
I haven’t heard from Peter Marcus ( I think he was going to lead the trophy choice team).
If we chose individual plaques, I would think they would be the same from year to year…no decisions needed.
I am a bit surprised at the lack of comments, other than yours…you might think the nominators would want to post…
I know most of the top players, other than Mark Aquino, I don’t know that most of them have done much to popularize bridge. I will look more closely at the list…
I resumed my research. I discovered that, depending on what we wanted, we could spend less than $100 or more than $1,000. I needed a budget. I wrote this email to Curtis on April 25:
As I mentioned before, I have little confidence that the subcommittee that volunteered at the end of the last EC meeting is doing anything to procure the physical Weiss-Bertoni award. Can you tell me what I need to do to get a budget for purchasing the trophy?
Here is what he replied:
Curtis Barton.
We’ll discuss it at he next EC meeting (Saturday PM). If you have an idea what a suitable trophy would cost, that would help.
When I told him that we were in the process of voting, and I intended to award the trophy at the Board of Delegates meeting on the morning after the EC meeting, he told me just to get what I thought was appropriate.
I then asked Sue to help me with the project. She spent even more time on the Internet. As I did, she gave up on getting an appropriate tray. She did, however find a trophy with places for attaching a pretty large number of small engravings for winners and one big one for the name of the trophy. I liked it, and she negotiated a very reasonable price of about $150 including the shipping and engraving costs.
The vendor was Crown Awards. All of the engraving was done perfectly, and Sue assembled everything. I thought that it was very classy.
Presentation: The Board of Delegates met on June 25. Between twenty and thirty people were assembled. As always, I was last on the agenda. I made the presentation from my seat in which I was surrounded by the only other participants from Connecticut—Paul Burnham, Peter, and Sue.
I described the process that I used to select the nine committee members. I told everyone how pleased I was with the enthusiastic response to the solicitation for nominations. I held up the trophy for everyone to see. I told them that Sue had done most of the work in acquiring it. I said that if they liked it, they should compliment her. If not, they should keep their opinions to themselves. Then I read the name on the trophy: “Joe Brouillard”.
Joe was clearly stunned, but he wasn’t speechless. He gave a short acceptance speech. I was so happy for him.
General announcements: I had scheduled an email to go our to all active members of D25 at 10:30 while Sue and I were battling the traffic back to Enfield. It was short enough to post here:
Three members of the awards committee told me that they had enjoyed the experience and liked the trophy.
I also asked the webmaster to post a blurb that I wrote about it, and he did.
