Johnston Sectional in March: In January of 2024 Abhi Dutta asked me to play with him at the Rhode Island sectional tournament scheduled for March 2-3. I could not play on Saturday because it was my wife Sue’s birthday, but I agreed to play in the Swiss on Sunday. Abhi was out of town for most of the month of February, but he contacted me late in the month to report that he had acquired teammates. In Johnston I learned that our teammates were the DiOrios, Lou and Megan. I had worked with Megan on the committee for the NABC event in Providence in 2022 (introduced here), and I had played on a team with Lou some time before that.
I was not sanguine about our chances. The partnership of Abhi and me had really recorded only one good result (described here), and that was nineteen months earlier. Our more recent games were not memorable. I also did not remember great successes recorded for either Lou or Megan. The fact that we drew #13 did not raise my hopes, although I always remind people that for Wilt Chamberlain that number was reportedly lucky 20,000 times.2
In the first round Abhi and I played against Al Votolato and someone whom I did not know. The very first hand was weird. Al’s partner opened 1♦ in the second seat; Abhi passed; Al responded 1♠; I passed, and so did Al’s partner! Abhi made the mistake of doubling, which gave Al a chance to bid 2♦, which was the final contract. I asked Al if they had an agreement that allowed his partner to pass his response. He said that he was as surprised as I was. His partner at first defended his pass, but when he understood the situation he said that he did not realize that he had passed.
In the end, even though they were an A team, and we were a B team, we defeated them 29-0, which was a “blitz” that converted to the maximum victory point score of 20. We scored at least one imp on six of the seven hands, and the seventh hand was a push.
In the second round we played another A team, Dan Jablonski and Cilla Borras. They were both very good players whom I had played against several times. I made a horrible mistake in playing a 5♣ contract that Abhi put me in. For some reason I thought that we had nine trumps, not eight. I was therefore quite confident of making the bid when I dropped Dan’s queen on the second round of trumps. A little later, however, I mistakenly led a low diamond from the board. Cilla, who was on my right, ruffed it, and I underruffed even though I had a diamond! I took the requisite eleven tricks, but I was penalized one trick for revoking. Abhi insisted that he warned me when I did it.1
This faux pas cost us 11 imps. We would have lost the match anyway, but our running total of victory points was four fewer—21 as opposed to 25. This was not all bad because we got to play a much weaker B team in the third round, and we beat them 31-0—another blitz.
In the last round before lunch we played a much better B team, Mike McDonald and Tom Floyd. We beat them by 12 imps. At the break we had amassed 56 out of a possible 80 victory points. That was good enough for second place.
I had ordered a salad for lunch. I ate about half of it as well as a bag of chips and a Diet Coke. I sat by myself. I don’t know where my teammates went.
In the fifth round we played the team that was in first place. It included Sheila Gabay and Alan Watson, who had won both sessions of the pairs game on Saturday. The foursome had blitzed both of their last two opponents. Abhi and I played against another very fine pair, Max Siline and Carrie Liu. On the first hand I made 3NT, and our Sheila and Alan had a misunderstanding in their bidding. That was enough for a ten-imp swing, but we would have won the match anyway. The final score was 30-13. Abhi and I had no negative scores at all. I was wondering if it were possible to lose with no negative scores (Yes!), and I was worried that I would find out. I had played against Sheila’s teams at least six or seven times, and I had never won before.
I thought that I played pretty well in the sixth round, but we lost by 16 points to a very good B team. It seemed to me that most of the problems were at the other table. I was most proud of the fact that two of our twelve imps came from when I passed in the fourth seat.
In the last round we played against people whom I did not know. I again passed in the fourth seat, and this time it was worth five imps. Since our margin of victory in this match was only nine imps, I was very surprised to learn that we had won the event by two victory points over both the Siline team and the team from the Hartford Bridge Club (HBC)—Tom Gerchman, Linda Starr, and Bob and Ann Hughes. I was still in a foul mood because at the very end of the last hand Abhi had trumped a trick that I would have won anyway. That mistake cost us six imps, which would have given us two additional victory points. Even so, we brought home 7.15 silver masterpoints.
I did not receive much satisfaction from this result. I had made one huge and embarrassing mistake, and Abhi had made several smaller ones. However, out teammates were very excited about winning. They even asked Tom Gerchman (of all people) to take a photo of the four of us with a cellphone. He had a great deal of difficulty with the assignment.
Was our victory a fluke? I thought so at the time, but after examine the results, I am more inclined to think that we were the best team that day with that set of cards in a fairly weak field. We played all but one of the top teams. We never played against a C team. We beat the top-seeded team decisively in our match with them. We could easily have had quite a few more victory points than we did.
I still had a ninety-minute drive ahead of me. The traffic was slow, and for the first half hour the sun was really brutal even though I had on sunglasses and pulled down the visor as low as I could get it. The high temperature that day was 67 degrees.
On the way home I stopped at Big Y in Stafford and bought a cake for Sue. I should have done it so she could have enjoyed a piece on her birthday, but this was much better than nothing.
St. Patrick’s Day Sectional in Orange, CT: Bill Segraves did a tremendous job of setting up and running this tournament, which occurred the weekend of March 15-17. I am glad that he took the job of president. I would not have had the energy to pull something like this off. The date was the best that could be arranged, but it conflicted with the first weekend of the NABC spring tournament in Louisville. So, undoubtedly some of the best players could be expected to be at that event. That date also meant that it might be difficult to find a director. Robert Neuhart from Troy, NY, was hired. I had no previous familiarity with him.
The design and promotion of this tournament was much better than what was done for the previous ones. I thought that the St. Patrick’s Day theme, which I in fact suggested, was a little overdone, but people seemed to be having fun with it. I planned on wearing on Sunday my bright green sweater that my dad bought in Ireland. Before play started Bill paraded around in a hooded green jumpsuit and a green mask. To goose the Sunday attendance the games on Sunday were designated to support the Grass Roots fund.
A decision was made to increase the masterpoint limit for the Friday and Saturday limited pairs games to 750 masterpoints, but only non-Life Masters were allowed to play. This turned out to be a good decision. The limited games, which had been a problem, were pretty well attended throughout.
I decided to play all three days. Eric Vogel agreed to play with me in the pairs games on Friday and Saturday. I had difficulty finding a suitable partner and teammates for the Sunday Swiss. I sent out a solicitation to my usual list of potential partners, but the only responses that I received were from Buz Kohn, Joan Brault, and Terry Lubman. Terry said that she was still in Florida. Buz was the first to respond positively, but he backed out shortly thereafter. So, I agreed to play with Joan. No one expressed any interest in teaming up with us. So, I sent a request to the email address for partnerships that was on the flyer. Bill replied with an email that indicated that he would find someone. He eventually assigned us to play with Ivan Smirnov from Staten Island and Joe Lanzel from Foxborough, MA. I told Ivan that I would be wearing a bright green sweater with “Ireland” on the chest.
I commuted all three days by myself. Each trip to Orange took a little over an hour, but that included my usual stop at the McDonald’s in Cromwell to purchase a sausage biscuit with egg sandwich. The price at the McD at the end of the ramp for Exit 21 charged a dime less than the one in Hartford. However, the man taking the order on Sunday entered it as “sausage biscuit, add folded egg.” The cost was almost $1 less.
I left each day at about 8:25 and arrived at 9:30. The traffic was heavier on Friday, but it did not really slow me down. A strange thing happened with my car in the mornings. I was accustomed to turning on the front window defogger on cold days. This heated up the car on Saturday, but on Sunday it blew nothing but cold air.4
The return trips were as uneventful as the morning drives, except for the Sunday evening drive. The line of cars backed up on the parkway at the exit that led to I-91 north was more than a mile long. It took me more than ninety minutes to complete that trip.
I decided to wear a mask throughout the tournament. Almost no one except Bill and Frank Blachowski wore one.
Since I arrived on Friday morning before Eric did, I got in line to buy our entry fee. For some reason the director did not allow purchasing of both sessions. I charged the first session. Eric later bought the afternoon session. There was no problem with the transactions on Friday and Saturday. However, the computer connection with the card reading device did not work on Sunday. and so everyone had to pay in cash. I was the customer for whom the malfunction first was discovered. I don’t know if the problem was ever fixed.
The first thing that I noticed about the pairs games on Friday was that Peter Marcus was in attendance and was actually playing with Bill Segraves to fill out the movement. I had seen him at many tournaments, but I had only seen him play bridge once, and that was at the HBC.
The second peculiarity was that there were no clocks to keep track of the time remaining in each round. I cannot remember ever playing in a tournament in which there were no clocks. I never heard why this was the case in Orange. Perhaps the unit has depended on the directors to bring them.
Once play began it was pretty evident that, although the attendance was good (seventeen tables), the field was not as strong as it usually was. That was definitely reflected in the results. Eric and I were in first place after six rounds, but in the last round we were passed by a C team from the HBC, John Lloyd and Donna Simpson. We still won 5.84 points. I did not think that we played particularly well.
Eric and I had two egregious bidding mistakes in the morning session, but only one of them hurt us. Eric had apparently not reviewed our card thoroughly enough.
On one hand we were on defense after I had opened 1♠. I led the ace and then the queen. Eric ruffed it. After the hand I explained that when I led ace and then queen of a suit that I had bid, it meant that I also had the king. He asked why I didn’t just lead the king after the ace. I said that if I did, he would not know that I also had the queen.
Our level of play did not diminish in the afternoon, but our results dropped off a lot. I did not circle a single hand on the scorecard. We finished above 50 percent, but we did not make the overalls, and so we did not get any points.
We actually played better on Saturday. We earned over 9.37 masterpoints over the course of two days. That was not close to Rich DeMartino’s total. He won all three pairs games in which he participated.
We might have gone over the ten-point mark if Eric had not made an uncharacteristic blunder near the end. Acting as declarer, he intended to set up a cross-ruff for the last three tricks, but he discarded the wrong card from his hand. That left him with a heart and two trumps in both hands.
A strange situation occurred on Saturday. The opponent on my right was about to declare a hand. His partner was in the act of setting down the dummy when he accidentally dropped most of his cards on the floor. I did not look, but he said that some were face-up. He said that he was not able to get down on his knees to pick them up, and therefore he called the director, who was also not very spry. I volunteered to put my lead on the table and gather together the cards, but the director insisted on doing it himself.
Eric and I bid a slam in spades after he had opened 2♣. He had hearts and spades. We decided to change our response to the 2♠ follow-up so that the relay to 2NT could be broken if responder had spade support. This eliminated the ambiguity of the sequence 2♣-22♦-2♠-2NT-32♥-4♠. Previously it could have meant signing off in spades or Kickback for hearts.
Ordering lunch was embarrassing. I only wrote the six letters of my last name, but on both occasions the result was almost unreadable.
By the way, both lunches were good. The only problem with Friday’s salad with lots of meat and cheese on Friday was that the only beverage available was a small bottle of water. The sandwich on Saturday was even meatier. This caterer also brought cans of soft drinks. There were only two Diet Cokes, but I managed to claim one. The pizza on Sunday was OK, but the pairs game was still in process when the ninety-six people playing in the Swiss went to lunch. Usually there is enough pizza for seconds, but by the time that the pairs players ate, the teams were back in combat.
Our first round was against Debbie Prince’s team. We won by seven. In the second round we were blasted by 26 imps by a very good team. Joan and I thought that we had more or less held our own, but no hands showed positive results. Our teammates failed to set a 4♠ contract that I could see no way to make. They also bid an impossible slam that got doubled. We won the third round by 13 imps over a C team.
After lunch we played Mike Heider’s team. The results on two 3NT contracts startled me. On one I went down, and they made it at the other table. On the other they made it at our table with two overtricks, but our teammates did not even make the bid. In the fifth round we faced the team from the HBC that had done well in Johnston. Joan and I played against Ann and Bob Hughes. We thought that we had done pretty well, but we were worried about one hand on which we bid 3♠ but made 4. In reality, that hand was our only positive result in an extremely painful 17-imp loss.
Halfway through the sixth round against a team that obviously was over its head I lost interest and started playing badly. Nevertheless, we won the last two matches by 21 and 5 points to finish with four wins and 70 victory points—exactly average.
Our worst hand all day was the last one. We were playing Cappelletti, the only notrump defense that Joan will play. Cindy Lyall, sitting West, opened 1NT, and Joan doubled for penalty. I had a flat hand with only one honor, a queen. Cindy ended up making 3NT for 380 points. It would have been better for them to bid and make 3NT, but at the other table Joe went down in 1NT. Since I did nothing except follow suit and discard the four spot cards in hearts that I was dealt, I have no way to know whether Joan’s defense or Joe’s declarer play was more to blame for this fiasco.
Shekhar and Shashank won the afternoon session of the 0-750 pairs! They won almost three silver points in their first day at a tournament.
The attendance at the tournament was good through the entire weekend. That proved to me that good planning, good marketing, and a good schedule are still the keys to successful attendance in the world of tournament bridge.
1. If Abhi said that he warned me, and I am sure that he did. However, if I were the dummy, and my partner did what I did, I would have said, “Wait a minute. Are you sure that you did not have any diamonds? You underruffed!” I take great pride the fact that none of my partners has revoked in more than fifteen years.
2. In his 1991 book, A View From Above Wilt claimed to have slept with 20,000 different women during his life.
3. In the period after the pandemic I have had trouble getting teammates from the HBC. Perhaps the problem is the timing. Some arrangements are made many months in advance; many are made at the very last minute. My efforts seem to fall in the middle.
4. I brought the car into Lia, my dealership, on Friday, March 22. They gave me a lift home in their shuttle. I had only been there a minute when they called to tell me that the heater was working perfectly. I had tried it on Tuesday and Wednesday without success. There must be more to this story.
The problems: Unit 126 of the ACBL, i.e. Connecticut, ran three sectionals in 2023. All three were held at St. Barbara’s Greek Orthodox Church in Orange. I attended two of them. The third was scheduled at the same time as … Continue reading →
The problems: Unit 126 of the ACBL, i.e. Connecticut, ran three sectionals in 2023. All three were held at St. Barbara’s Greek Orthodox Church in Orange. I attended two of them. The third was scheduled at the same time as the sectional in Great Barrington, MA. Since I had already made commitments to play in that event, I did not go to the Orange sectional in August.
How, you may ask, could such a thing happen? Aren’t Connecticut and Western Mass (Unit 196) adjacent, and is not the scheduling of competing sectionals in adjacent units prohibited.
The heart of the problem is that the unit has not had a tournament manager for some time. Cornelia Guest asked to be relieved of her responsibilities before the Pandemic, and no one had been found in the interim. So, the president, Peter Marcus, had been performing these duties. This was a terrible situation. Peter had three other jobs in the bridge world: Director-in-Chief of District 25, Tournament Coordinator for District 25, President of Unit 126. In addition, he was a very active participant in both of the district’s important committees and he had a firm commitment to attend every New York Mets game.
So, Peter the U126 Tournament Manager selected the dates for the August sectional and sent them to Peter the D25 Tournament Coordinator. The latter Peter ignored the conflict and scheduled the tournament. The U126 Peter later told Peter Samsel, the president of U196 that he would compensate him for lost attendance. I have no way of determining if he did or not. If he did, he probably took it from his own pocket. He often solved problems that way.
The Board of Governors of U126, of which I was a member, did not meet at any of the tournaments. We had one or two Zoom meetings that focused mainly on nominations for the officers for and representatives for 2024.
The other problem is communications. Our emails are decidedly pedestrian. They do a poor job of motivating the players with fewer points to attend. The ones that I composed and sent for the first limited sectional (documented here) brought in fifty-seven tables in one day. Compare those with the figures in the following sections.
April 21-23 Sectional in Orange. Two months before the tournament I committed to play in the Sunday Swiss with Mike Heider and Jim Osofsky. I could not find partners for that event, and I also needed partners for the pairs game on Saturday. Mike suggested that I try Ros (short for Rosalind and pronounced as Roz) Abel, who lived in Southington, CT. I did, and we agreed to play on Friday and Sunday in Orange. Ros could not play on
In preparation for the event, we worked on a card that we both could tolerate, and we played together once in the open game at the the Hartford Bridge Club (HBC). She has subsequently become a member of the HBC, which is actually the closest club to her house.
I learned that Ros had recently moved to Southington from the New York area, where she had run a club. It died during the Pandemic. Somehow she found the club in Newtown, but not the HBC.
We did not score too well at the HBC, but our results on Saturday at the sectional were promising. We finished seventh in both sessions out of thirty-nine and forty. We won over four silver points. We had a chance to place in the Swiss as well, but we were defeated badly by a team from the HBC. I remember that on a critical hand Ros made a bid that made it clear that she did not know how to bid controls when looking for a possible slam.
The attendance in the open games was pretty good, especially on Friday, but there were only 25 tables in the two days of pair games for the 0-499 group. The Swiss on Sunday had eighteen tables, but there was no score given for the 0-499 group.
August 11-13 Sectional in Orange: I wasn’t there, and so I can only report on the table count, which was much worse than in April. Here are the totals by day:
Friday: Open: 15 in both sessions; 0-499: 5 and 4.
Saturday: Open: 13.5 and 13; 0-499: 5 and 5
Swiss: 15.
Mike Heider and Jim Osofsky.
August 12-13 Sectional in Great Barrington: I played with Abhi Dutta. On Sunday we defended our title in the Swiss with our teammates, Jim Osofsky and Mike Heider.
On Saturday morning Abhi and I were eighth our of forty-two, quite a good showing. In the afternoon, however, we were barely above 50 percent. Our combined score was not good enough to place in the overalls. Only sixteen tables were needed in the afternoon.
In the Swiss we got off to a terrible start. There were sixteen tables. By winning the last match in a blitz against a bad team we jumped up to sixth place. We did not play any of the teams that were ahead of us.
September 23-24 Sectional in Johnston, RI: At some point in August Abhi Dutta asked me if I wanted to play in the Rhode Island sectional in September. I agreed. I like going to this sectional because I have a lot of friends in the RI bridge community, and the sectional has always been well run.
On Saturday Abhi and I did what we always seemed to do in pairs games. We had one pretty good session and one awful one.
Our teammates for the Sunday Swiss were Ken and Lori Leopold, who had won the second session on Saturday. We drew Mark Aquino’s team in the first round. On the very first hand Mark opened 1NT. His partner, Andrew Chesterton, announced it as 12-14, a “weak” bid. I had thirteen points and a flat hand. I doubled for penalty.
Andrew redoubled to indicate that he had a long (at least five cards). Mark considered this for at least one minute, and then passed. So did I. In fact, Mark had a strong NT opener and forgot that he and Andrew were playing 12-14. He made exactly seven tricks for a very high score. Andrew said that if Mark had bid 2♣ (as he was required by their runout to do), he would have passed and gone down. Mark admitted that he had been lucky.
Our luck did not improve until the third round. We ended up with three wins and five losses. We could easily have won all of those matches except the first.
The table count put Connecticut’s to shame:
Saturday: Open: 20 and 20.5; 0-749: 8 and 7.
Sunday Swiss: 27! 0-299 pairs: 3.
Bill Segraves.
Recognition Committee: At one of the Zoom meetings Bill Segraves, the webmaster for the unit’s website, CTBridge.org, proposed the idea of four committees to address the problems that the unit faced. One of those was a Recognition Committee to address the various awards and trophies for performance at regionals and perhaps to create new ones. I paid little attention to this because I did not consider it a very important problem, but I was not averse to someone else putting some time in on it.
On October 18 Bill sent the following email to Sandy DeMartino and me:
One of the committees we discussed setting up at the last CBA Board Meeting was the Recognition Committee. Basically, the idea was to set up publicity for our awards and trophies and make them more relevant to the membership, maybe even generate some excitement for the races.
I don’t think this should take a lot of time and I would hope the committee would come up with idea but then others could actually do some of the work, such as authoring emails to go out about trophies being given out at the next tournament, etc.
OK to do this?
I did not immediately respond, but John Lloyd said that he would like to be on the committee. Sandy declined, and so the committee consisted of Bill, John, and me. Bill set the criteria in the following email:
The main things on my mind for attention soon are the following, as they all affect what we post on the website and what will go into the upcoming edition of The Kibitzer as we approach the end of the year.
I thought some of these had already been decided on by the board, but then questions were re-raised and it seems a good idea to resolve them with some real clearity.
1) It was my understanding that the Barb Shaw Trophy would be awarded to the player who earned the most masterpoints in all of Connecticut’s I/N sectionals during the year. Only the I/N sectionals count, not points earned in limited games of the open sectional, STaC’s, or anything else. I don’t think anyone else is going to have an I/N this year, so that’ll he Hartford I, Branford, Newtown and Hartford II. We basically ratified this by posting it on the web that way after the board had discussed it, but I think it’s good at least to affirm that among ourselves, and then I think we can just report on it at the next board meeting. (I don’t know that we’ll have the official winner and standings yet, but I can easily determine the unofficial winner.) Side note: I am aware of no restriction saying that this is a member of the Unit.
2) There was somewhat less clarity on the Monroe Magnus Trophy. This has traditionally been awarded to the highest masterpoint winner in all Connecticut Sectionals. (STaCs do not count for this.) As far as I have understood it, it is not restricted to Unit members. At one of the board meetings, someone (I don’t recall who) said that they thought that the I/N sectionals should not count for this. I don’t think this received wide support, and I certainly don’t agree with it. A sectional is a sectional. At that time, it actually mattered, since there was a pair who did very well in the Harford I/N and then in the Open (!) in the CBA Spring Sectional, but it’s no longer relevant at this point. I do suggest that we go ahead and present to the board a motion that the Magnus trophy race counts points in all Connecticut Sectionals (exclusive of STaCs). Make sense? We will know the Magnus winner after the sectional next weekend.
3) It was proposed in one of our board meetings that there be a new award/recognition for something like a Connecticut Non-Life Master of the Year. I quite like this idea, but the devil is in the details. The basic idea is that eligible people would be anyone who met the rank criteria at the beginning of the year and was geographically eligible throughout the year. Maybe I am making this too complicated but I think it’s best to spell out all this stuff in advance.
1) Is it open to any Connecticut resident or just Unit members (this can easily matter – we have some Connecticut residents who are members of the New York unit)? I’m open to either answer.
2) Does the person have to meet criterion #1 for the whole year or just at the beginning, just at the end? People who move in or out? Part year, e.g. college students or snowbirds eligible? I would tend to recommend something like anyone who has had a substantial presence during the year by any of a) completing a semester of school, b) living in-state for at least 6 months, c) maintaining a home here and living here on an ongoing basis for at least four months a year.
3) What events count? Connecticut sectionals? All Connecticut events? And District 25 events? All events? All f2f events? All pigmented events? I would propose all pigmented events (this eliminates the BBO ACBL games but not the VACBs). If you want to limit it to f2f events, I’ll investigate how difficult this is. It may not be too hard. I think there’s a way to filter for VACB leaders and then subtract that.
4) Is there a MP limit? We have some non-LMs who have well over 1000 MP. I would recommend that we restrict this. Not only does it defeat what I see as the purpose (encouraging newer players) to be recognizing players who already have a pile of masterpoints (maybe even twice as many as I had at the beginning of the year!), but if a player never gets their black or silver, e.g., they would never become an LM and would remain eligible indefinitely. I suggest non-LM under 750 at start of the year.
5) Can a person win it more than once. I’d suggest no.
6) Any other criteria?
7) Do we award it for 2023? I would suggest we do.
8) What do we call it? Connecticut Non-Life Master of the Year for now? I think we can come up with something more evocative of success but see no point in waiting.
9) What’s the award. For now, I think it’s fine just to get it on the website. The sooner we do it, the sooner we can publish the standings and start giving it a little publicity.
This latter award is complex enough that I’d suggest we ratify the status quo on the other as soon as we can and then talk by Zoom or three-way phone to hit the NLM award issues, come up with a proposal and present it to the board. My schedule pretty flexible Sunday through Thursday.
Anything else you guys would like to have the committee address sooner rather than later?
I only skimmed most of this, but I objected to a few of the items in the first few paragraphs. I sent the following response:
I strongly disagree with some of this, and I don’t think that anything has been decided by the board. At least there was no vote on it. You can proceed this way if you want in 2023, which is a transition year, but we should have policies that are voted on for 2024. That means a motion and a count of votes, not the “silence must mean approval” method used this year.
The primary purpose of the awards has always been to promote the bridge activities of the UNIT. The trophies were bought and managed by the unit’s government in some distant day. The secondary purpose was presumably (I was not around when any of these were established) to honor the name on the trophy (well, maybe not the governor).
A sectional is NOT a sectional. The I/N sectionals are club activities that, like STaC games, happen to pay silver points. They are sponsored, financed, and promoted by the clubs. It is fine and probably necessary to help the clubs in any way that we can, but that was not part of the design of any of the awards. If I had known that attendance at the HBC sectionals was going to help someone win an award, then I would have trumpeted that in the emails for the award. There is also the problem that the I/N sectionals do not have the same rules about who can play as the unit events (or even one another). Surely, the criteria for eligibility should be set and announced before competition begins. There are other small problems that have to do with players changing residences and points awarded to foreign players by the ACBL. I know that those can be addressed because I did so when I ran the “Best in Class” awards for the district.
At this time I think that the main goal should be promoting play at unit-sponsored sectionals by the I/N group. Our record on this so far is, in my opinion, miserable. Awarding the Barb Shaw trophy for persistent performance as opposed to performance in one tournament is also problematic, but the problems are probably addressable. I am not opposed to this change, but the standard for eligibility should be the player’s standing as of January 1. We should be encouraging players to graduate from the I/N game to the open one when they reach the limit, not discouraging them by removing their eligibility for the award when they achieve success.
I do not have strong feelings about whether we should limit participation to members of the unit. I enjoy seeing people from other units at our sectionals. Some have won the trophies in the past, but in at least some cases they didn’t bother to take them.
I do not have strong feelings about the other awards. The nice thing about the way the awards worked was that it gave us something novel to promote for each event. I don’t think that we ever took advantage of this as much as we could have in the past. I have been attending board meetings for ten years, and the only thing mentioned about the trophies was in the form of “Does anyone know who has the _____ trophy?” The number of people who actually care about the other trophies is probably small, but I always have, and I know a few others who do.
In any case the principal problem to be addressed is the promotion (i.e., emails and other advertising), which has always been meh. The board did not care much because attendance without promotion had been good (go look at the 2019 results) and increasing over time. The unit’s finances were so good that we were actively looking for ways to spend our excess money. That has changed dramatically, and we need to react.
Bill then tried to schedule a time for the three of us to meet or have a Zoom meeting. I agreed to meet before or after the games on one of the days of the Orange. So, we agreed to meet before the game on Saturday at 8:30. I started the meeting by mentioning that I had never won the Barb Shaw Trophy and that Michael Dworetsky’s name was horribly misspelled.
Shirley and Bob Derrah, Tony Norris and me in 2015.
Bill could not understand how the first mistake happened. I explained it to him. He asked me what he should do if he could not find out why I was listed. I said that I would prefer to change it to Bob and Shirley Derrah1, the people who were given the trophy.
Bill provided a summary of what we agreed to:
Barb Shaw Trophy
Traditionally, the Barb Shaw Trophy was awarded to the top Flight C masterpoint winner in the CBA Winter Sectional. The award was last made in 2020. There has not been a Winter Sectional since then and the award was not made in 2021 or 2022. For the transitional year of 2023, the CBA Board approved the award of the Barb Shaw Trophy to the top masterpoint winner in all of the Connecticut I/N Sectionals combined. With the end of 2023 and the first planned I/N Sectional of 2024 (Branford in January) rapidly approaching, the Recognition Committee discussed criteria for the award of the Barb Shaw Trophy in 2024.
The Committee does not recommend continuing the 2023 practice of awarding the Barb Shaw Trophy to the top masterpoint winner in Connecticut I/N Sectionals but would instead prefer criteria that recognize or at least include recognition of performance in Connecticut’s Open Sectionals and “graduation” into progressively more challenging events. We present two options for Board consideration, with a very mild Committee preference for the first option.
Option 1: The 2024 Barb Shaw Trophy will be awarded to the player who begins the year with <750 masterpoints and wins the most total masterpoints in all Open and I/N Connecticut Sectionals.
Option 2: The 2024 Barb Shaw Trophy will be awarded to the player who begins the year with <750 masterpoints and wins the most masterpoints at one designated Sectional.
For Option 2, in the likely absence of a Winter Sectional (acknowledging that March may currently be a formal possibility), the award could be made to the top masterpoint winner at the first sectional of the year. The Committee recognized, however, that if the Scott Loring Trophy (normally awarded at the Spring Sectional) were awarded at the the same tournament, it is possible that the same person or pair could win both the Barb Shaw Trophy and the Scott Loring Trophy. The Committee also considered it desirable to spread out the recognition of developing players over more than one tournament. One way to address this, if the Board prefers the single Sectional option, would be to award the Barb Shaw Trophy to the <750 masterpoint winner at the Summer Sectional. (Pushing the Scott Loring Trophy to the second Sectional, expected to be the Summer Sectional, would have disadvantages including increasing the likelihood that the same person would win both the Scott Loring Trophy and the Governor’s Cup.)
While we continue in this transitional period, the Recognition Committee would plan to re-evaluate the criteria for award of the Barb Shaw Trophy approximately one year from now and make recommendations for 2025.
New Recognition Awards
The Committee also considered potential new awards to recognize the success of our developing players. There are a number of ways in which this might be done and the Committee considered the relationship of any such awards to the Mini-McKenney awards and the Barb Shaw Trophy. The Committee recommends that the Board consider two new categories for recognition, Connecticut Non-Life Master of the Year and Connecticut Newcomer of the Year.
The 2024 Connecticut Non-Life Master of the Year would be that Unit member who begins the year as a non-Life Master with <750 masterpoints and earns the most masterpoints in all face-to-face play during the year.
The 2024 Connecticut Non-Life Master of the Year would be that Unit member who begins the year as a non-Life Master with <50 masterpoints and earns the most masterpoints in all face-to-face play during the year.
These two awards would be clearly distinguished from the Mini-McKenney award by including only points earned in face-to-face play (the Mini-McKenney criteria include points earned in virtual club games and online regionals). And the former award would be distinguished from the Barb Shaw full-year option by the inclusion of all face-to-face club and tournament play at any location, not just in Connecticut’s Sectionals.
The Committee has investigated the technical aspects of applying these criteria and received confirmation that the application of any of these criteria should not present any particular technical challenges. The most complex question related to the proposed new Recognition Awards is how eligibility would be determined for people who may only be Unit members for part of the year. Should such a case arise, the Committee recommends that the Unit rely on the established ACBL criteria for GNT eligibility as the basis for a case-by-case determination as to eligibility.
The Committee has begun what will be a broader discussion of how all of our trophies and other awards are made, including when and how they are awarded and whether there is a physical trophy and will solicit input from the Board and other unit members on this subject. We consider it essential, however, that the Unit take full advantage of all opportunities to publicize these awards widely and to use them to recognize achievement and actively to promote Connecticut bridge.
The Committee also began discussion of other questions for Board consideration during 2025 and welcomes input from the Board and other Unit members about any matters potentially under the Committee’s purview.
October 27-29 Sectional in Orange: On October 25 Bill sent the following email to all of the members of the unit’s Board of Directors:
Thank you again to everyone who pitched in to make the August tournament a success. We should be in much better shape hospitality-wise for this tournament with Stacy Herbert working the mornings and with all of us having had a little more experience.
It would be great if a few of you could help out with some things this weekend. On Friday morning, my wife Carol will bring me and help with getting stuff out of our car, but I won’t be able to carry much myself (broken leg for those who may not know – healing well but limiting my ability to walk without crutches). Stacy will help, too, but a few additional sets of hands will be great. I’ll arrive at 8:15 and Carol, Stacy and and I can get the coffee stuff out so Stacy can get that running, but another set or two of hands by around 9 would be great.
The bigger challenge this weekend will be getting stuff back into the car on Sunday. Carol won’t be able to come get me until about 7:30 on Sunday evening, and I don’t want her to have to load it all by herself, so if anyone can hang around for a bit or if someone who lives close by can come back to help, that’d be great.
I said that I would get there as early as possible on Friday. I did not volunteer to stay late on Sunday. The drive to St. Barbara’s takes at least an hour, and I would be mentally exhausted after three days of bridge.
Eric Vogel agreed to play with me in the pairs games on Friday and Saturday, and Mike Heider and Jim Osofsky asked me to play with them in the Swiss on Sunday. I had a very difficult time finding a partner. Linda Green, a board member, said that Terry Lubman of Riverside, CT, wanted to play. I contacted her, and we eventually agreed on a convention card.
I arrived at the church at about 8:30. Everything was pretty much already set up. Renee Clift and I distributed BridgeMates for the director, Tim Hill. Otherwise, I twiddled my thumbs for an hour and a half.
I did not think that I played too badly, but I did not have a good tournament at all. Eric and I scratched in only one of the four sessions. I might have been off my game because of the distractions.
Terry Lubman.
Terry and I were almost never on the same wave length. The worst one was when she doubled an opponent’s 2♥ bid when their wie3 2qw vulnerable. Although I held Q10xxx of hearts (enough to leave a double in according to the Rule of 92), I did not want them to play for 650 points needing eight tricks in an eight-card fit. So, I bid 3♣ even though I only had three. It turned out that Terry only had the QJ of clubs. The opponents drew our trumps and then took their hearts. I managed only four tricks for -500. It was small comfort that the opponents could easily have managed eight tricks in hearts. We only won three of the seven matches.
It was a long lonely ride home. Worst of all, I had only one day to rest and prepare for the regional in Marlborough that has been described here.
Here were the table counts:
Friday: Open: 17 and 17.5; 0-499: 2.5 and 0!
Saturday: Open: 16 and 18; 0-499: 3 and 0.
Swiss: 19. For the third consecutive tournament, the unit advertised a 0-500 event that did not attract enough people to play.
1. Bob Derrah, who worked for Monsanto for decades, died in 2018. His obituary has been posted here. Shirley died two years later. Her obituary can be found here. I played on teams with them several times. We also worked together to teach bridge to young people in the Springfield area. I documented that effort here.
2. The Rule of 9 was invented by Mel Colchamiro as a way of gauging whether it is OK to pass a takeout double. He advised not to unless the total of three things was at least nine: 1) the number of cards held in the trump suit; 2) the number of trump cards higher than 9; 3) the level of the bid. In this case the numbers were 5, 2, and 2. Therefore, I could (but was not required to) have passed.
The details of the event, its planning, the first email, and the brouhaha that followed are described in the excruciating long blog entry that is posted here. You almost certainly won’t want to read the entire entry, but the first few paragraphs are rather essential to the understanding of this one.
If you refuse to use the link, you should at least know that the Hartford Bridge Club (HBC) was planning a Limited Section on Sunday, March 26. The details were handled by Linda Starr, but Donna Feir, the club manager, oversaw the project. Two flights were planned—0-299 and 0-750 non-Life Masters. A free lunch would be served between the two sessions.
Westchester County is outlined in red.
While engaged in the back-and-forth concerning the scandalous Tonto email, I cobbled together a similar one for the people in Westchester County, NY, the wealthy suburban area that is west of southeastern Connecticut. You can view a sample of this email here. Before I sent it out, I showed this to the officers of the Connecticut Bridge Association (CBA). They liked it, probably because I removed the toxic character who featured in the first one. This version went out on January 31.
201 people eventually opened the email, most of them repeatedly. Ten clicked on the link to the flyer to get more information. Not great, but most of these people were facing a two-hour drive to the HBC.
The second set of emails was sent on February 23. It used some obscure facts that I unearthed on the Internet. They highlighted the dearth of silver in southern New England. A sample is posted here. Just as I had sent it out, Linda Starr asked me via email:
Did you send out the latest email about the March 26 sectional? I haven’t gotten even one new registration since the few days after the first email went out and I only have 6 tables at this point. So if you get a chance, any additional publicity would be helpful!!! I have been announcing it at the Friday afternoon games and have asked to have it announced at all the other games. Any suggestions on what else I can do to promote it?
We had decided to ask people to register early so that we would know how many lunches to buy. Peter had told us that ACBL rules prohibited excluding players who failed to register.
I replied that I had just sent out the first part of the second batch. I also reported some statistics:
As of 5pm 1305 deliveries, 521 opened, 17 clicked (one twice), 19 bounced, 3 unsubscribed. I will send to Westchester tomorrow.
I will work on a third email over the weekend emphasizing that the HBC is a nice place to play. It should go out on March 12. I am open to other suggestions.
There was one small issue that Linda had to address. A page on Unit 126’s website, CTBridge.org, advertised that those playing in their first tournament would get a free game. There was also something about people who joined the ACBL. The concern was whether either of these policies, which were put in place years earlier, would apply to a tournament run by a club. The webmaster planned to take down the notice as soon as the HBC’s Limited Sectional was over. Linda wrote,
I emailed Peter this morning asking if he wanted us to promote the free game for first time tournament players or just give it to those who asked. Haven’t heard back yet but depending on his reply, that might be something else to promote.
I had made no mention of this in any previous emails. I needed to know whether to emphasize it in the last email. I wrote “Since everyone in my database is a current or former ACBL member, it would have to be a request for people to ask others who are not members.”
On March 6 Linda wrote “So far it appears that no one knows the answer. So just go ahead and send out the reminder without the info about the free sessions. If any non members show up, I’ll deal with it then.”
As I was almost ready to send the emails, Linda received an answer from Peter Marcus, the President of the CBA.
I will admit, I tend not to be too concerned with these kind of freebies. If no one takes them, it costs nothing. If a lot of people take them, while that could amount to some money, it means we are getting a lot of new players that, over time, will more than cover the costs. So, I tend to be open to being very liberal about things like this,
I don’t totally understand the guest membership program of the ACBL. But, from my understanding, guest memberships get all the information to “add someone to our database” so we can contact them. To me, that alone is worth a free play, let alone the possibility of them becoming a full, recurring ACBL member.
The HBC Bulletin Board.
An email in praise of the HBC’s outstanding facility, a sample of which is posted here, was sent in two batches: one (sent on March 5) for players having between 200 and 750 masterpoints, the other (released on March 8) for those with less than 200 points.
Meanwhile, a signup sheet had been posted on the club’s bulletin board. People were needed to help setting up the tables and chairs, to run the two registration tables, to organize and set out the lunch, and to clean up. I volunteered to take photos and to help out in the morning. Seventeen other members of the club signed up.
By the middle of March it was clear from the number of registrations that the tournament would be a success. More people signed up for the 0-200 flight than for the 0-750 NLM flight.
On the morning of March 9 Linda sent me this email:
I thought I’d see if you know the answers to the questions below rather than take up a lot of time — and look stupid : ) — at the Zoom meeting tonight.
In the paperwork you gave me, you said there’s a $50 sanction fee for the tournament, an $8/session charge for boards, and a $2 or less per table charge (not sure what that is). Can you tell me who these fees are paid to? the ACBL? the unit? Will we be billed in some way?
Also, do you know how I get the files for the hands? Are they emailed to the club automatically because we have a sanction or do I need to request them? I assume we’ll make our own boards? Is there anything else you think I should know? (Assume I know nothing!)
I had read everything that I could find on Limited Sectionals, but I was certainly not an expert. I replied as follows.
My understanding is that the unit charges us nothing. I don’t know how/when the ACBL gets its pound of flesh.
I assume that someone will send pbn files, but that is just guessing.
Everything that I know I told you. Bill Watson may know more since he did essentially the same thing for a few years.
Hours later Linda received an email from the ACBL. A guidebook for the directors of IN (Intermediate/Novice) tournaments was attached. I have posted it here.
The event: The first session of the tournament was scheduled to begin at 10:00. I arrived before 9:00, but many of the volunteers and a few of the players were already there. Because more than half of those who had registered were 199ers, Linda had placed the 199ers in the main room of the club. She was expecting fifteen tables. I wandered around and took a few photos.
John Willoughby & Linda in the 199er Room
The 0-750 Room
Ausra Geaski in the Kitchen
The HBC before the players arrived en masse.
I don’t remember what was in the SWAG bags.
Winners won mugs.
The HBC always serves coffee.
Goodies in the morning.
By 9:30 quite a few players who had not previously registered for the event appeared. The great majority of them were in the 0-750 flight. A few more tables in the backroom were provided with bidding boxes and BridgeMates. At about 9:45 more tables needed to be set up, but there were no additional bidding boxes. Fortunately, I had a suitcase filled with bidding boxes in my car. I brought them into the club.
Very early 199ers.
The line got pretty long…
…in both rooms.
Volunteers ran the registration desks in both rooms.
Both sections had fifteen tables, about what was expected for the 199ers. The 0-750 section had a lot more than predicted. At the last minute two tables were moved from the very crowded backroom to the main room. Thirty tables! This was so far off of the chart for post-pandemic attendance that no one could believe it.
By a few minutes after 10 both rooms were packed.
The only tables that were not used in the first session were the two that were set up for registration. I told Linda that if more people came, I would pull my Honda into a handicapped space, and they could play on the hood. The weather was nice enough for it.
A few players wore masks.
Donna directed the 199ers.
Linda seems puzzled by a 199er director call.
Yes, there definitely was a free lunch.
After the first session I took photos of the winners. Then I went home after advising Linda that someone else should take photos of the winners in the afternoon sessions.
As My dad used to say, “The winners laughed and told jokes; the losers just said, ‘Deal the damned cards.'”
Bill Segraves, the eager-beaver webmaster of the CBA asked how the event went. Linda replied,
It was a great day! The worst part was wondering if we were going to run out of tables. We had 57 tables in total for both sessions. And lots of excellent feedback! Mike has lots of pictures too!! We’re happy to do it again any time.
The next morning Linda sent the following email to the volunteers and directors:
Thank you all SO much for volunteering at yesterday’s tournament! The “powers that be” think the tournament was a success because we had 57 tables over the course of the two sessions. But those of us who were there know that the tournament was a success because of all of you! If we’d had 57 tables of unhappy players, the tournament would have been a huge failure. Thanks to you, that didn’t happen. Susan, Donna and I received many, many comments from players unfamiliar with the club about how friendly the club was and how much they enjoyed their time there.
So thank you all for decorating, greeting, cleaning up, baking cookies, answering questions, taking pictures, pitching in wherever it was needed — for everything you did to make every player who attended feel comfortable and welcome and at home. Each and every one of you was the secret to the success of the tournament and on a bigger scale, of course, you are the secret behind the success of HBC. Hopefully many of those who attended will, because of their experience yesterday, continue to play and help regrow the game we love.
Betty Kerber and Peggy Arseneaux counting the 199er receipts.
The event earned the HBC a few thousand dollars, which just about matched what it had been losing each month from its day-to-day operations since reopening in July 2021.
Plans were immediately made for a second event in the fall.
If you were offended by the title of this entry, you know where you can cram it.
Bill Watson.
In the twelve years before the pandemic the Hartford Bridge Club had hosted a one-day, two-session 199er Sectional, usually in October. For at least two of these events I emailed promotional pieces. The last one in 2019 was run by Bill Watson. The club was open in October of 2021 and 2022, but the event was not held.
The ACBL had special rules for Limited Sectional. They were sponsored by the unit, but run by the club. The unit had no financial stake in the outcome.
The most attractive rule was that the club did not need a Tournament Director certified by the ACBL; it club could use its own directors. In late 2022 I researched the feasibility of resuming this activity and proposed to the Planning Committee and the Board of Trustees that the time was right to try it again. I created a spreadsheet (posted here) to demonstrate the profitability of the undertaking under certain assumptions. Although Bill was not interested in resuming his role, the other directors were on board, especially Linda Starr.
However, just as the club was finalizing its plans, the ACBL changed the rules: a TD or an Assistant TD would be required for Limited Sectionals. To become an Assistant TD one must pass an exam that had not yet been written. Peter Marcus, the president of the Connecticut Bridge Association and a qualified TD, assured us that we could hold the event as long as he was “standing by” if needed.
Donna Feir.
So, in January Donna Feir, the HBC manager, was considering applying for a sanction. On the 15th I sent an email to Linda Starr asking whether the directors had set a date, and, if so, did they want me to send emails1 promoting it. She answered the next day:
Yes! We have decided. We’re having a one-day, two-session 0-750 NLM2 sectional on March 26. (The flyer is attached.) Who do you send the information to? (Just curious. I’d love to have you send it out to anyone 😁)
The flyer to which she referred can be viewed here. The event actually had two flights: one for players with less than 200 points and one for non-Life Masters with less than 750 points.
I had been thinking about how to approach the emails for this event for a few months. The key aspect, in my opinion, was the color of the masterpoints: silver. When I think of Silver, I think of the fabled steed of the Lone Ranger. So, I decided to make the horses of the LR and his faithful Indian companion Tonto the theme of the first email. You can view it here.
I sent a copy to Linda, whom I considered to be my boss on this project. She responded enthusiastically, “Thanks, Mike! This announcement is great!! It should get plenty of interest.”
Well, she was right about the interest. I sent the email to players in four units: Connecticut Bridge Association (CBA), Rhode Island, Central Massachusetts, and Western Massachusetts. 1,300 were sent; 54 bounced; 770 recipients opened the email a startling 1,794 times. The flyer was opened 90 times.
No one was in any way angry about it, but two people did not like the focus on Tonto. Elaine Reitman wrote this:
Not Tonto.
Don’t you think that in this day and age when sports teams from schools through NFL Pros are urged to change their team names exploiting Native American stereotypes and the US as well as local governments are expunging the term “squaw” from place names that this is a decidingly jingoist message. Couldn’t bridge players be encouraged to attend a tournament for their own benefit without bringing midcententury stereotypes into play. It’s insulting to receive messages using pidgen language and dated images.
Not Jay Silverheels.
Her reaction frankly surprised me. Did she really feel insulted? I doubted it. Uncomfortable, maybe, about the fact that she was in the same group as someone who used a metaphor that had been a familiar part of the culture for nearly seventy years. I wrote back to her:
Did you think that the Johnny Depp movie was insulting? Jingoist? How so? The LR and Tonto on TV were good friends, and all of the bad guys that I can remember were white men. I used “Tonto” and “Scout” in the headline rather than “I am scouting for” to help people remember that Scout was the name of Tonto’s horse.
It is very hard to get people to read emails in this day and age, and I really care about reviving face-to-face bridge. I would not want to eliminate about half of the possible metaphorical references from my youth.
I am sorry that you did not like my choice of metaphors. I don’t get paid for this. I just do it because I love the game.
She did not reply. I received one other email in the same vein from Butch Norman:
If I am the only one to comment on your use of the pejorative word “Tonto”, then I guess it is my problem. However, if I am not, then you do have a problem that needs to be addressed. The Native American definition of “onto” is “idiot, fool, stupid”.
I was surprised to learn this. Actually, the Native Americans have a very large number of languages. I didn’t have any idea which one Tonto spoke. here was my response:
One other, so far. I certainly did not intend to insult Native Americans. To me Tonto was a TV character who caught bad guys in the fifties. He talked a little funny, but so did Gabby Hayes and a lot of other sidekicks. Maybe that is problematic, but I don’t see it.
Butch sent this reply:
Thanks for your reply. Please don’t apply to today the standards of what was acceptable in the 1950’s. (Amos ‘n’ Andy comes to mind. I know you to be a better person than that.
I would have been happy to argue with him about Amos Jones, but I had to admit that Andy Brown was a blockhead. What that had to do with Tonto, who, in my opinion in no way conformed to any racial stereotypes, I never did figure out. I just let it go.
Bill Segraves.
The next email that I received was from Bill Segraves, the new webmaster for the CBA. He was not on the mailing list, and so someone must have shown a copy to him. He had a very different concern:
I just saw a copy of the draft advertisement for the 750 sectional and I very strongly advise against it.
I asked my wife, a non-bridge player “how bad is this?” She said “Bad, very bad. Do you know what Tonto means in Spanish? It means stupid.” I loved the Lone Ranger when I was a child, but we live in different times.
PS – if this fell into the wrong hands, it would be potentially very damaging publicity for Connecticut bridge. This is not how we want to make our appearance in the newspapers.
I don’t know why he thought that what he saw was a “draft”.
I blame Miss Goldsich.
In the seventh grade at Queen of the Holy Rosary School in Overland Park, KS, I had a class Spanish, but I don’t think that Miss Goldsich ever drilled us on the twelve words in Spanish that mean “stupid”.
I checked my text again to be certain. All of the rest of the email was in English. Of what importance was it to anyone what one of the words meant in Spanish?
I could not let the claim in the PS go unanswered. Did he really think that someone was going to report us to the thought police in the media over this email? I sincerely hoped that they would! If they did, they would be required to let me respond, and I was quite sure that the CBA would come out very well in such an exchange.
Peter Marcus.
The President of the CBA, Peter Marcus, asked me to put the email on hold. It was too late for that, as I explained:
718 people have opened this email. Only two complained. I responded to both of them. Only eight people unsubscribed, a very small number. 32 people clicked on the link to the flyer. The content was approved by Linda Starr, the HBC director who is managing the project. She said that it was “great”.
I think that this is a tempest in a teapot, and everyone I asked at the HBC today agreed with me.
Peter’s response was typical of his bombastic communication style:
So, first, a small story/analogy. It is customary in the Jewish faith to name a child after an important dead relative. Sadly, my father’s father died 7 years before I was born, so, in a normal situation, it would have been automatic that I was given his name. It was a perfectly good name when he “got it” long before, and there was no problem with it at that time.
Yet, I was born in 1955, and my grandfather was Adolf Marcus. As you can imagine, the number of new “Adolfs” in 1955, particularly in a Jewish home, was pretty small.
The point is, something that was totally normally in 1900 was completely unacceptable in 1955. Obviously, if my father had named me Adolf he wouldn’t do it to offend anyone or for a bad reason, he would do it to honor his father. But, motives and intent didn’t matter; it was wrong and no amount of “good intent” could make it right.
I too grew up in the era of The Lone Ranger, watched it as a kid, and, between being desensitized to any bad undertones and living in the society at the time, it became part of my “normal world.” It was not widely seen as wrong back then, at least to a small child in the early 60s, so it entered my mind and environment as totally normal.
But, we grow up, we advance, we learn from our mistakes. What was societally acceptable in 1960 or, for that matter, 1860, is seen as wrong in 2023. Much of this comes from how we grew up and the people around us. And, while my parents didn’t express any concerns about the stereotypes in The Lone Ranger, they constantly reminded me not to repeat anything that I heard when we visited my mother’s parents, both of whom were of Southern society from the late 1800’s and thought nothing of using “the N word” in every day conversation. To them, that was normal, what they grew up with, and they wouldn’t understand how anyone could see that as wrong. But, thankfully, my parents had advanced from that mindset.
Mike has called this “a tempest in a teapot” and that is a fair view in some ways. But, it is also the view of people who aren’t part of the stereotyping of Tonto, Kemosabe, etc. People with that background may see it as more than that, as well as others who don’t have that background but understand that there are analogous things that could be said about whatever their ethic, religious, national, or cultural background is that they would find much more than “a tempest in a teapot.”
But, even if that is true, so what? Are we “proud” that, in less than 12 hours, 2 people expressed complaint and 8 unsubscribed? What will those numbers be 24 hours from now? And, even if the protest is miniscule, what happens when this gets more public exposure? Do we really want to read about this in Bridge Winners, or get a call from ACBL headquarters, let alone if this reached a wider audience? As unlikely as it is, I really don’t want, as President of the CBA, to be explaining to a Hartford Courant reporter that we just see this as “a tempest in a teapot.”
At the same time Peter sent the following email to the officers of the CBA, with cc’s to Donna, Bill Segraves, and me.
I am sending this to just the CBA Officers and asking for as quick as possible your input/view on what has happened and what we should do.
Attached below is an ad for the March NLM sectional being held at the Hartford Bridge Club. This is a tournament that was quite successful pre-pandemic and is targeting the very players who seem to have stepped away from face-to-face bridge. So, we really want this to be a big success and have begun advertising it. This started with an email to a fairly wide audience (a little over 700 people) who are eligible to play in it and live in the greater CT area. The contents of the email are below.
When this was brought to my attention, I immediately sent a note and left a phone message asking to hold off on sending this out, but it had already been sent. We have so far received few comments; 2 people complained, not sure who, and 8 people requests to be unsubscribed from our email distribution, both relatively small numbers. But, of course, that is in just the last 12 hours during which time most people were probably asleep, so who know what will happen in the next day or two.
A small group of players in the Hartford area saw this and thought it was a very effective ad. And, in many ways, it is. So, there was no serious concern raised about it.
But, I did get input from someone and, when I saw it, and then passed it by some other people I respect and they saw it as a very, very serious problem. While it is true that people of my generation and my ethnic background watched The Lone Ranger and saw nothing bad about it, that was when I was 6 and we lived in a different society. In reality, this was a very bad show (Tonto is the Spanish word for fool or idiot) and, back then, the respect shown to Native Americans was so non-existent that the TV producers had to hire a Caucasian actor with heavy make-up, since it was just “known” that American society wasn’t ready for an honest depiction of a Native American. Sadly, that view extended to many other groups seen as “lesser” by mid-20th century America. But, the fact that it was customary and normal doesn’t mean it isn’t seriously offensive in 2023.
Below is an email I have written to apologize for this ad. I am asking the officers for quick feedback on two issues
1) The apology itself and any rewording you want to suggest
2) How widely do we disseminate it, to just the people who got the email or to a wider audience, such as the CBA membership and/or the website
As to the 2nd issue, I can make arguments on both sides. Wider distribution will just put this in front of more eyes who may be offended. Lesser distribution can look like an attempt to “sweep it under the rug.” Sadly, by the time we learn which of these is correct, it will be too late to actually do that.
Anyway, please get back to me as soon as you can. I really would like to address this today, if at all possible before 12:00-1:00 so we can get something out before we start to get more negative feedback. As I have said to someone, as unlikely as this may be, the last thing we really want is for the President of the CBA to be interviewed by a reporter for the Hartford Courant.
Two things about this are noteworthy: 1) I sent the email to Rhode Island, Central Mass, and Western Mass, not just CT; 2) Peter did not ask the officers whether they thought it was a good idea to send the apology; he just asked them to comment on the wording.
Despite Peter’s claim that it might be considered “sweeping it under the rug”, the three other officers said that the apology should only be sent to the addressees. One proposed a change in the wording. I had a different take.
So, the standard now is “can be offensive”? Who judges that? I am not only offended but insulted by this entire process. Can I veto it?
By the way, the people whom I informed about the two complaints asked me if I told them where to cram it. I did not. I responded politely, as I always do.
If anyone was actually personally offended (as opposed to imagining that others might be offended), which I doubt, I will be happy to apologize to them face-to-face with great sincerity. However, I would insist that they tell me what about this totally innocuous character (other than his name, which in a language not spoken by either major character is one of the twelve words for “stupid”) they find threatening or even discomfiting. I never heard of Tontophobia, and I doubt that more than a minuscule portion of the target audience has. Tonto merchandise and reminiscences are all over the Internet. I have never heard of anyone complaining about them. I can understand, to an extent, Bill Cosby being upset about Andy Brown and Kingfish, but I cannot understand anyone getting upset about Tonto.
I am as woke as anyone. I think that the rest of us owe an unimaginable debt to Native Americans. However, I think that it is a huge mistake to make any more of this. Two complaints out of 719 opens is a very small number. Believe me; I have read every single response to the more than a million emails that I have sent promoting bridge.
I also think that it is a terrible idea to try to rein me in. I have a proven track record over this last decade of grabbing people’s attention and getting them to tournaments.
Frankly, I would welcome any attention drawn by outsiders to the campaign. They would be forced to let me respond, and I would emphasize how hard it is to get people’s attention, how innocuous Tonto’s behavior is, and how important it is to get out our message.
Peter responded in his usual way.
I am sending this to you alone. If you want me to expand the audience, I will.
1) No, you cannot veto it. I am sorry if you feel offended by the process. That was never the intent, but, if it had that effect, I apologize for that. I am not telling you that you are wrong to be offended, the fact that you feel it is real, just as offense at the email is real. But, I can be sorry that I had a part in making you feel that way, and I am.
2) Not sure I understand your comment about “…where to cram it.” I have no doubt that you handled any complaints fairly and professionally. My primary interest in knowing who they are is, if there is an escalation by them, I would know they were “the original two” and not new concerns.
3) Actually offended, yes. Obviously you do not feel that way, nor does Linda, and likely others who helped develop it at HBC. But, under the heading of who were offended, we have
me
Bill Segraves
Sue Miguel (when I asked for her opinion if this was an issue, since I didn’t want to over-react based on my personal feeling alone, she immediately called me back and screamed “Are you out of your mind!!”)
Gail Marcus (twice CEO of half-billion dollar corporations who has experience with unintended but negative publicity)
I would also note that none of the CBA officers–Phyllis, Deb or Cindy–made even a suggestion that apologizing for this wasn’t necessary.
You ask what is offensive about this. I will speak for myself alone. The first think I thought of, when I learned what Tonto means, is, as I was watching my tv when I was 6 and enjoying The Lone Ranger, what was the little 6 year old in the next apartment, whose parents came from Puerto Rico and spoke fluent Spanish, thinking as he saw a tv character called “Fool.” Another group of people who lived in America (actually the first who lived in America) being insulted by American society, in this case, the TV industry. This was what offended me as an individual, and it was a profound sorrow.
As to your record, I have to be one of the most understanding of that since my tenure being involved in these tournaments is the longest. It is true, you have been outstanding at the technical issues of publicizing tournaments. But more importantly, your copy, particularly for district emails to open players, is accurate and very effective. I very much enjoy your humor and think you do an amazing job. But, no one is perfect and I believe this was a well-intended but real error. I do not see it as a concern or something for the future. No one is trying to “…rein you in…” or even suggest that you shouldn’t use your considerable talents in marketing and humor to create bridge notices. In fact, when someone suggested that, as President of the CBA, I should approve all CBA-related email, I rejected that concept totally. I have complete trust in what you are doing (as I do with what Bill is doing on the website, Robin on the Kibitzer, etc.) and I have no belief that I need to approve everything or make sure there are no problems. No one is “sitting over your shoulder.”
On a final note, sorry, but this is what I don’t understand; why is this an issue? Linda’s email from yesterday (and a follow-up that she sent to me alone that I have chosen not to respond to) basically raise the “pc police run amuk” issue and you refer to yourself as being “as woke” as anyone. All of these are newly introduced political terms to just feed ridiculous debates.
Even if one person was slightly offended, should we not care? Is there really an argument being made that there was no way to publicize this tournament other than the Lone Ranger reference, that it was mandatory to use this imagery, and none other? Why can’t we do a great job and not run the risk of offending someone? And then, when someone is offended, rather than recognize that and address it, we get mad and raise the ante by suggesting their being offended is wrong and we shouldn’t care. And, would we really be making this argument if the title of the email were
Imbecile Scout for Silver, Kemosabe
Because that is exactly what it says and I am sure some of the players who got it understand Spanish, let alone have Hispanic heritage. While not Hispanic, my Grandmother was Spanish and my father’s full name, born in Berlin, was John Theodore Ricardo Roccamora Marcus. I don’t understand Spanish (my wife does and knew immediately) but I was aghast when I learned what Tonto meant.
Bottom line: this was a good, clever, interesting idea that, in another environment, would have been exactly what it was intended to be without any excess baggage. However, we live where we live, not where we wished we lived, and, in our world, this was a mistake. It has to be recognized as such and, when there is a mistake, you apologize and move on. You don’t dwell on it, but you don’t ignore or defend it either.
I should have insisted on a change to the wording of the apology to make it clear that the decision to send it was not approved by either the Hartford Bridge Club or the Board of Directors of the CBA. I was not impressed by Peter’s attempt to appeal to authority (his wife and Sue Miguel). It was a ridiculous notion that someone writing in English must check every word in a missive against every other language’s use of that combination of letters. It was also totally ridiculous to set the level of judgment as the potential that one person might be offended. I WAS personally offended by the apology. Why was my actual offense ignored in favor of fear of the imagined offense of some vague group?
Peter then sent me one of his shortest emails ever: “When you send out the email, could you add me (or make me a cc) for it, so that I know it has gone out. In the unlikely event that I hear about this independently, I would like to know if that happens before or after someone sees the follow-up.”
My response was even shorter: “Who said that I was sending out a follow-up?”
He sent me another long email. The important part was “In response to your latest question, ‘Who said I was sending a follow-up?’ the answer is me, President of the CBA.”
Of course, I knew that he was the president. I had attended meetings of the CBA for over ten years. The president presided at those meetings. I never heard of any other president ordering anyone to do anything. Peter had the only copy of the bylaws that anyone knew about, but I seriously doubted that the president had authority to order anything.
I responded simply: “I never agreed to send this, and I am not in charge of communications for the unit. I am absolutely convinced that this is just opening a can of worms for no good reason.”
His next email was another long one. The key paragraph was this: “I do not care what you are convinced of. I am the President of the CBA and I am instructing you to send this to the same distribution list that you send the Tonto email to.”
I wasn’t impressed. I wrote back: “What gives you the right to order me to do anything? I am convinced that this Is unnecessary and potentially counterproductive. I refuse to do it.”
Cindy Lyall (right).
An email from Cindy Lyall, the treasurer of the CBA and daughter of Rich DeMartino3, put things in a different light: “Hi – just seeing if we have sent out an ‘apology’ yet. If we have not, and only received 2 ‘complaints’, are we sure it’s necessary? Don’t want us to exacerbate the ‘situation’ unnecessarily. “
Peter ignored this attempt to cool things down and instead sent the following:
At your convenience, find a dictionary and look up the meaning of the word President.
Since you claimed not to be responsible for communications for the unit, by what authority did you author and send this out? There never was a vote of the CBA Board not approval from the Officers. While the tournament may be run at the HBC, it is a unit function, not an HBC function, and the unit has responsibility for the tournament.
However, I have no interest in fighting with you.
You will send out the email apology as I instructed to the entire distribution list, copying me, and you will send me a copy of that distribution list to me as well. This will go out before 5PM today.
Failing that
1) I will develop a list and send it myself.
2) I will inform D25 that, as President of the CBA, you are no longer on the D25 Executive Committee.
3) I will bring a motion at the CBA meeting on Thursday that you be removed from the CBA Board.
4) As District Tournament Coordinator, I will not sanction the tournament, so there will be no tournament to advertise. I believe it is not in the interest of the CBA, ACBL or bridge to be associated with a tournament that appears to associate itself with offensive imagery and language and then refuses to correct it. Your call.
I was not afraid of the CBA board. I had a lot more experience working with them than Peter did. I knew how they thought. On the other hand, I did not want to be removed from the Executive Committee, which had become dominated by people who had very different ideas about how to resurrect bridge after the pandemic.
I took a different approach with my next email:
I asked for permission to use the CBA letterhead before the Orange tournament for which I drafted two emails because the CBA’s emails were so meh.
I will be happy to send you a spreadsheet with the names and email addresses of the people to whom I sent the email, but I will not participate in any apology or retraction. If you want to do those other measures, go ahead. I won’t like it, and I think that they are stupid moves. The only things that I live for are my cat, who is dying, my wife, who has a half dozen chronic illnesses, and face-to-face bridge. This does not affect the first two, but I am convinced that it is bad for the last. I also find it unbearably humiliating.
Peter responded with this:
Fine, please send me the distribution list. Since the email does not come from your account and would be over my name not yours, your intransigence in this matter mystifies me but it is what it is. Given that, I would welcome you changing your mind and doing the purely mechanical function of sending the email to end this disagreement. Failing that…
I will inform Carolyn Weiser that you are no longer on the D25 Executive Committee.
You can either send me an email with your resignation from the CBA Board or, on Thursday, I will bring a motion for your removal per the CBA by-laws.
Since you are providing me with the distribution list, I will not do anything to impact the tournament itself. There is no good reason to harm 50-100 bridge players4 because of your position.
It took me a few hours to produce the spreadsheet that I sent to him. In his next email he expressed sympathy for the condition of Bob the cat and asked me if I intended to resign. I ignored the former and answered his question in the negative.
At this point Peter sent a copy of the emails that we had exchanged to all of the members of the CBA board. He included the following text:
I am sorry, this is not a pleasant issue to raise. Over the last few days, I have been dealing with an email, sent out under CBA auspices, advertising the March 26 NLM sectional at the Harford Bridge Club. This has engendered a long series of email back and forth between myself and the other CBA Officers – Phyllis, Cindy and Deb, Mike Wavada and Linda Starr and Bill Segraves. It concerns the advertising copy for this tournament and the issue that I and a number of other people found it inappropriate if not offensive. This email was sent to about 1350 NLMs in CT and surrounding units.
As President, and with the input of the Officers, I generated a follow-up email, apologizing for the content and sent over my name and contact information. Linda and Mike objected and didn’t want me to send it, believing the email was not an issue and that sending an apology would bring more attention to it. I and others felt that this was the kind of issue that, as unlikely as it might be, could explode on social media and other venues and that the best approach was to be forth wright, apologize and move on. As CBA President, I was willing to “take the heat” and did not expect Mike or anyone else involved in its creation to be publicly criticized or humiliated.
Yet, over the past few days, Mike, who had the distribution list that it was sent to, has categorically refused, despite my request and then my instruction as President, to send out the apology. He has, finally, sent me the distribution list and I have sent out the apologies (you all received one), despite the fact that this caused some havoc with my personal email due to the volume being sent.
While we can disagree on the severity of this issue, I maintain that there is no setting in which offending even a small number of players is good when other imagery and wording could have been used which would offend no one. I have also been accused of being part of “PC cops run amuk [sp]”, having no authority to make this decision, etc. I did decide to move forward without the full Board, because of concerns about the timing, but did involve and get at least tacit agreement from the other officers.
Sadly, I cannot accept having Mike Wavada on the Board with his repeated refusals and hostile attitude towards my role as President.
Therefore, per CBA By-Laws 6.12(b) – Removal – An At-large representative may be removed by an affirmative vote of the Board of Directors,
as Mike is one of the 4 at-large representatives, I am requesting a vote on his removal from the CBA Board be held at Thursday’s meeting.
It should be noted that, while there are very specific rules concerning removal of a District Representative Board members, including certified notice 30 days before the Board meeting (ByLaw 6.12(a)), that is not true for at large representatives, who per by-law 6.6(f), “…shall service at the will of the President and the Board of Directors.”
Attached are 8 .pdf files, numbered 0-7, the first (#0) showing the original email advertisement for the tournament that is the subject of concern, and the next 7 being copies of emails (I believe complete showing all correspondence to which I was a party). In each case, I have put the name of the person sending the email in red, so you can more easily follow the discussions.
Obviously, this is not a pleasant request, as I have know and worked with Mike for many years. But, given the exchanges over the last few days, I do not see any alternative.
Feel free to call or email as you wish. My next email will be the ZOOM instructions for the meeting.
The only word that upset me in this email was “finally”. I had set to work on preparing the spreadsheet as soon as I sent the email promising to do so. It involved exporting the “audience” from MailChimp to my PC. I had not done this for several years and never using Chrome, which is the browser I used when working on my free account. Chrome displayed the page in a way that threw me off. It also has a totally different way to handle downloads than Firefox, which I had previously used. I did not dawdle. It took a few hours to figure this out, find the extract file, unzip it, load the file for the subscribers into the spreadsheet program, remove all of the columns except the email addresses, save it as a csv file, and send it to Peter.
Peter did not ask for anyone’s opinion on the matter, but the response was overwhelming. Jan Rosow’s was the first to arrive:
I am against Mike Wavada being removed. His articles have no malicious intent and are creative with researched pictures. I am sorry that this is overblown in my opinion. Mike has given countless hours of volunteering and web site creation and it would be a Major loss not to have him on the Board!
Someone whom I did not know named Marsha Scherr sent me a very nice email. I have included a photo that she embedded in it:
Clicking on the above image will take you to the story that inspired Marsha.
Hi. I feel a need to write to you to say I’m sry you got grief from people who, in my opinion, are uninformed about The Lone Ranger, Tonto, and the whole Lone Ranger cult. Of course I’m talking about anyone over the age of 60. My friends and I have had an email exchange and we feel similarly. We were all Lone Ranger fans. We girls had Lone Ranger lunch boxes, etc. Girls loved the sexy Lone and appreciated the friendship of Silverheels. I think all kids understood we were watching 2 friends who trusted one another, who were from different cultures, & worked together to get the bad guys (& I sort of remember the bad guys were white guys).
Silver was a euphemism in the days of Tonto and the Lone. You made it a meme so kudos to you
PS: Please add my name to distribution list of CT Bridge
Take care & don’t let the naysayers get to you.
This was followed by supportive emails from Esther Watstein, Deb Noack, and Roger Caplan. Others must have called Peter. This long defense of his conduct was in his inimitable style.
I am sending this directly to the 5 people on the Board who have responded to me directly, copying the other Board members. Obviously, for those who have not responded so far, your views are welcome and appreciated.
Let me make my position very clear.
Mike Wavada is an extremely valuable resource. As I said in one of my emails, I probably know this better than almost anyone as he has served as the communications chair and webmaster of D25 for many years and we have worked together quite successfully. I also wrote that I have seen dozens of examples of Mike’s authoring publicity for tournaments that is creative, funny and very effective and I have told him and others that many times. Someone suggested that, in addition to expressing the CBA’s apology for this email, I should tell Mike that he could not send out any future unit-based communications without my prior approval. I rejected this concept totally. However, ill-advised I believe the “Tonto” email was, Mike has, as he has said, a long track-record of excellent communications and one email, if it is unfortunate, cannot wipe out a long history of excellence.
I personally feel the “Tonto” ad was a mistake, not intentional and not malicious, but a mistake nonetheless. I did not come to the decision to act on this view based on my personal opinion; in fact, I asked a number of bridge players their view to see if I was over-reacting and, to a person, was told that this was totally inappropriate.
Someone (apologies, but I believe it was Roger, best wishes to your daughter) commented on his view that this should have gone before the entire Board. That is certainly a valid view but, in my opinion, not logistically workable until Thursday and taking action that far away would not be effective. And, I did, and do, believe that action was necessary. So, I did bring into the discussion the other Officers; none suggested doing nothing and Deb was kind enough to rewrite and significantly improve what I had originally written. From this, I believe I was acting with the support of the Officers.
As I have said, I do not want to wade into the offensive/woke debate. I do not believe that this email is about either. Mike wrote that he would welcome responding to people who were offended. Personally, my goal is to not offend people who will want a response. While I do know that people can be offended by anything (a friend told me of neighbors who are offended at one of them flying the American flag from their porch), I think minimizing such offense has to be a reasonable goal of any organization. It is with this in mind that I believe the “Tonto” email was unnecessary.
For the record, I believe I sent out something like 1300 emails and have so far received a total of 4 responses, two of them thanking me for addressing an offensive email and two of them telling me, in basically so many words, “To get a life.” I have responded to all, thanking them for taking the time to express themselves.
Anyone involved in media knows that, if you get a small number of replies, there are a lot of people who feel the same way who don’t bother to write, so I am sure there were many people who were not offended and some who were. However, I believe that, if the imagery were a silver mine, or a silver tea service, or anything else silver, there would have been none offended. Wouldn’t that be better, particularly when we are working overtime to try to get people back and cannot afford to lose even a small number of players?
But, I do not believe this is now about the “Tonto” ad. It is about the roles on the CBA Board. After consultation with the Officers, I wrote to Mike to send out a communication to the members expressing the view of the President and the Officers. While Mike wrote that he was not the Board Communication Chair, the original email was sent over his name and I did not see any email from Mike to Ken with the proposed copy or Ken’s approval as Communications Chair.
I could understand if I had told Mike to send this out over his name, basically making him publicly apologize for “his mistake.” But that was never the case, and all he as asked to do was “push the computer button” that would send out the emails. If Mike has the information of whom he sent email to, and the President asks him to send an email to that audience, particularly after the other Officers have been involved so this is not “a President run amok,” I expect him to do it. If Mike, or anyone on the Board, has the authority to flatly refuse to do this, then the President is no longer the President. It is for this reason, not for the original copy, not because Mike (and others) felt it wasn’t offensive, and not because he (and others) expressed their disagreement to me in ways that I found offense (I am a “big boy” [in man ways] and have heard a lot worse things said about me, just ask any ACBL Board of Directors member), that I requested Mike’s removal from the Board.
I have repeatedly written to Mike that I am sorry if he disagrees with what I did. I have never meant to offend him, impugn his work or anything else. If Mike will write to the Board that he apologizes for the way he handled this, not the original email but his refusal to send out the communication that I sent him, and accept that I had the right to ask him to send it, then I will withdraw my suggestion that he be removed from the CBA Board. That will allow us to put this in the rearview mirror and move forward.
The “Push a button” comment was not accurate. Peter was ordering me to use my personal email account to send an email that I was convinced would be both humiliating to me and more likely to be counterproductive than not for reasons that I had already explicated. The idea would not have been as innocuous or anonymous as he depicted:
My email address (Mike@Wavada.org) would be listed on each mail. It was probably the most famous email address among bridge players in New England. If I changed the setting for this one message, it would increase the probability of being flagged as spam. I had twice faced dealing with being blacklisted. I took great pains to avoid that possibility.
My home address was listed at the bottom of each email.. I doubt that I would have remembered to change it. This would be another red flag.
My experience told me that a good number of people would unsubscribe if only because it came so soon after the previous message. I needed to use this account for planned future emails for this event and others.
Linda Starr.
Linda Starr, who at the time was also on the CBA Board, wrote the following shortly after receiving Peter’s email.
Regarding the Tonto issue itself, you might be interested in some facts. If so, you can check out the Wikipedia entry on Tonto, in which it says: “The radio series identified Tonto as a chief’s son in the Potawatomi nation. The choice to make Tonto a Potawatomi seems to come from station owner George Trendle’s youth in Mullett Lake, Michigan. Located in the northern part of the Midwest, Michigan is the traditional territory of the Potawatomi, and many local institutions use Potawatomi names. Trendle gained the name “Tonto” from the local Potawatomi, who told him it meant “wild one” in their language.” Note that Tonto, whatever it means in Spanish, is not and never was taken from the Spanish language. Wikipedia goes on to say,”in the Spanish dubbed version, the character is called “Toro” (Spanish for “bull”) or “Ponto”. I found this information on several other sites as well, but this was the most concise.
Also, on Britannica, it says, “Tonto was identified in some stories as a member of the Potawatomi tribe and was presented as principled, virtuous, and fiercely loyal. Despite his stunted English, he was also portrayed as both intelligent and wise.”
So perhaps with a little research and greater early communication with the entire board, we might have simply decided to provide this information to anyone who was offended and let them decide for themselves if Tonto was, in fact, an unflattering and “horribly offensive” representation of Native Americans.
Beyond those facts, and whatever you choose to believe about the appropriateness of Tonto, I believe the request to remove Mike from the board or of subjecting him to any further repercussions is … honestly, I simply lack appropriate words to respond to this proposal. We all know the tremendous amount of great work Mike has done on a volunteer basis to support and promote bridge in New England for many years. And in this case, as is characteristic of Mike, he simply stood up for what he believed despite enormous pressure. I admire him for it.
PS: Just as I was about to hit Send to this email, I received Peter’s latest email. I do NOT believe Mike owes anyone an apology. This just goes on and on.
Peter must have received negative feedback from others. At this point he decided to resign as president! Here is how he did it.
(I am copying Rich DeMartino since he initially approached me and asked if I would be willing to be put on the nominating slate for CBA President.)
I am sending this to you as the Vice-President. As of Tuesday, January 31, I will be resigning as President of the CBA. The way the organization and the Board is responding, not just to the original email, which I agree was well-meant but unfortunate, but then to the response by people like Mr. Wavada and Ms. Starr, is not one that I feel I can properly represent.
Things that need to be done:
1) I am a CT representative to the D25 Executive Committee, and the next week is in two weeks. Phyllis will need to appoint a replacement (Mike Wavada is the other CT representative). You need to communicate your choice to Carole Weiser, D25 Secretary.
2) Cornelia Guest resigned as tournament coordinator, send me information about the church for a sectional, and they have written to me. You need to contact them so they will contact you and not me. You will also need to appoint a new Unit Tournament Coordinator.
3) You need to inform the ACBL of the change in officers so they will send future emails to the correct individuals.
4) If you wish to have the Board meeting I called for this Thursday, someone will need to set up the ZOOM meeting and send out the invitation information.
I wish you all the best. I was hoping this would be an enjoyable and beneficial relationship for me and the CBA and a return to the unit that I served for so long. Sadly, it appears that cannot be the case.
I did not want this outcome. Several of my open projects required assistance from him in his other roles. I had no relationship with the vice-president, Phyllis Hartford. I did not know her very well, but I doubted that she wanted the job under these circumstances.
Rich DeMartino.
I received a telephone call from Rich DeMartino. He told me that he thought that this issue had gotten “way out of proportion”, which was in accord with my “tempest in a teapot” comment in the beginning. At his request I sent him this email concerning whether I could continue working with Peter.
I have no objection. I consider Peter one of the most talented and the most generous person that I have ever met. I have worked closely with him on several projects, some of which are still ongoing. It would be a lot easier for me if he agreed to continue and let bygones be bygones.
I am only speaking for myself.
Peter asked to talk to me on the phone about continuing to work together. I said that I really hated to talk on the phone, but I provided my cell number if he thought it was best. Instead he sent this email.
I want to express my concern, sadness and regret at how events have unfolded over the last week. Specifically.
1) I do not and never have blamed you or felt you did something wrong in creating the image and copy of the email notice for the Hartford I/N sectional. I did, and do, feel that some will find it offensive and do not believe it is effective to advertise a bridge tournament by offending anyone.
2) While I am new to the CBA, I have worked with you for many years at the district-level and seen your excellence at developing tournament marketing. Your words and pictures have always been not only effective but creative and funny. I have repeatedly told you that before many tournaments.
3) Nonetheless, for this latest email, I felt that something more was needed, so I worked with the other CBA officers to develop a follow-up email, which was actually written by Deb Noack, improving on the one I originally wrote. I believe sending this out had the support of all the Officers and I believe, with the support of the officers, I had every right to expect this email to be sent out on behalf of the CBA.
3) The message did not in any way implicate you nor criticize you or anyone else. It would have come from the CBA, not your personal account over my signature so, to the extent that there was embarrassment, it would have fallen on me, not anyone else.
4) I asked you, as the expert in using the email system and the originator of the distribution list for the Hartford tournament, to send this subsequent email to the same audience.
5) When you repeatedly refused to do so, I reacted angrily by proposing your removal from the CBA Board. This was a serious over-reaction and I apologize for doing it and for any negative implications it had.
I hope you will accept this sincere apology and we can move forward collaboratively.
“See” you this Thursday.
My reply was, as usual, much shorter:
There was no need to apologize. I don’t hold anything that you did against you.
You certainly had a right to send the apology. I had reasons for not wanting to send it myself, but I did not express them. I apologize for that. I tried to get the list to you as rapidly as I could, but I had never done that in Chrome (which is what I use for CBA stuff), and I could not find the file that I had exported for almost an hour. I am also sorry that I did not ask you or someone from the board to review the original email.
Most of all I am sorry that this whole mess caused a battle of wills between two people who need to be on the same side in the fight to prolong the future of face-to-face bridge.
A lot of people approached me at the club in the ensuing weeks to tell me that they were sorry that I had to endure this. I did not say so, but in fact the only thing that really bothered me was the prospect of being removed from the D25 Executive Committee.
Epilogue: I received one more mild complaint. Lynn Thomas, whom I did not know, wrote me that the email was “very un-PC”. I asked her who would be offended. She replied “the entire Native American community”.
I sent this email to her:
I have researched this and seen absolutely no statistical evidence for your claim. Are Native Americans offended by James Fenimore Cooper’s secondary character of Chingachgook, the Last of the Mohicans? Do you think that it is impossible for a writer to create an inoffensive character of a different race, nationality, or gender? Tonto was beloved by millions of Americans, and merchandise that features him is still all over the Internet.
I think that Tonto’s character stands on its own. He was as close to a flawless individual as I can imagine, and he was portrayed on TV by a Native American, Jay Silverheels. His grammar wasn’t great, but obviously English was not his native tongue. If he is compared to anyone, it should be to the other sidekicks, who were always quirky and sometimes buffoons. My firm opinion is that we should not cancel the character of Tonto.
And his horse, Scout, was just as cool as Silver, and he didn’t rear all the time.
I should have also emphasized that Tonto really rocked those buckskins.
The clue for 8 Down was “The Lone Ranger’s Companion”.
Linda Starr had the last word: “From Monday night’s (actually Tuesday’s, I think) NYT online crossword puzzle. I was so offended, I could barely finish the puzzle. I hope the press doesn’t get hold of this!!!”
The Limited Sectional that the original email promoted was very successful. You can read about it here.
1. I maintained a relational database that contained one record for everyone in the ACBL from 2014 on. I also had a free MailChimp account that allowed me to send emails to several thousand people at a time, and I was allowed to use two lists. One list I used several times per week for the Simsbury Bridge Club. The other I used for this project.
2. NLM is short for non-Life Master. The rank of Life Master had several criteria, one was the earning of 75 silver masterpoints. All points at sectional tournaments were silver. Other opportunities for receiving them were rare.
3. Rich DeMartino was a legend in the CT bridge community. He held the highest rank in the ACBL, Grand Life Master, and had won a World Championship. He was District Director of New England for many years. Both Peter and I had worked closely with him and held him in very high regard.
4. The actual attendance, even excluding the considerable number of volunteers from the HBC, was considerably more than the upper limit that Peter mentioned.
