Through 2023 I have mainly played bridge with people from the Northeast in the Hartford Bridge Club (HBC) and the Simsbury Bridge Club (SBC) in Connecticut and at tournaments. There were two sets of exceptions: the two bridge cruises that Sue and I took and a few occasions in which I picked up a partner at a club game when I was on the road for business or some other purpose. Only eight out of my 144 partners through 2023 fit in these categories.
Club games: I have included one game in Northampton, MA. The other two locations were in Charlotte, NC, and the Tampa Bay area.
Dave Wroblewski was the father of Denise Podavini (introduced here). He lived in Charlotte, NC, which was the location of the headquarters of Belk stores, one of TSI’s most important users of the AdDept and AxN systems throughout the twenty-first century. Denise was TSI’s primary contact at Belk from her arrival in 2008 until the dissolution of TSI in 2014 (described here).
I learned from Denise that her family was from Massachusetts and that her father was an avid bridge player. Denise was not even slightly interested in the game, but her father was attempting to teach her daughter1 how to play. When he heart that I had become a Life Master he invited me (through Denise) to play with him at the Charlotte Bridge Club one evening when I was in town consulting and gathering specs. This probably occurred in 2010, but it may have been a little later.
Dave and I had a nondescript game together. I am sure that I made a few mistakes. In those days my assessment of my abilities was somewhat inflated.
David was still a member of the ACBL at the end of 2023. He did not receive any masterpoints in 2023, which struck me as peculiar. He needed less than 27 masterpoints to reach the Diamond Life Master level of 5,000. I had to wonder if something happened to him to prevent him from playing.
It occurred to me while writing this section that my wife Sue has played with Ann Wroblewski, who lived in South Deerfield, MA. I had to wonder if her husband John was related to Dave. The name is not that common.
A year or two before the pandemic my friend Judy Hyde was trying to promote the novice game in the Northampton Bridge Club.3 She invited me to come up and play in the Pro-Am game at a room at the Methodist Church in NoHo. It was a long drive, and Wednesday was the worst possible day for me The time of the game (1pm) conflicted with the morning game at the HBC. It did not directly conflict with the evening game in Simsbury, but working out how best to get from Noho to Eno Hall and to eat supper by 6:30 would not be easy.
On the other hand, I wanted to help Judy get the game established, and so I agreed to play with Susan Lantz
It appears that playing one round with me did not inspire her much. She stopped paying dues to the ACBL in 2022, at which point she had only 26.71 masterpoints.
My wife Sue’s parents moved to Clearwater, FL, in 1982. In the subsequent years Sue and I went down to visit with them on several occasions. Occasionally Sue and I visited one of the local bridge clubs for a game. They found appropriate partners for both of us.
The Clearwater Bridge Club4 played on the second floor of the Regions Bank building. They still were playing there at the end of 2023. Occasionally local residents Eric Rodwell and his wife have been known to attend games. The one time that I played there I was paired up with Dr. Mark Goldschmidt, a retired pediatrician who was a very good player.
My recollection is that we had a pretty good session, but we did not win. In 2023 Mark was still active in bridge. He had about 1,700 masterpoints.
The other club near Clearwater is the St. Petersburg Bridge Club, which is actually in a shopping center in Panellas Park, FL. I can only remember going to this club once, but my list of partners lists two from this club, Marvin Kistler of Kenneth City, FL, and Chris Person from Tampa. Both of them were still members of the ACBL in 2023, but Marvin had earned no masterpoints all year.
I have one fairly vivid memory of playing at this club. I think that I was playing with Chris, but I could be mistaken. On a hand in one of the very first rounds we were playing against one of my partners from Connecticut, Michael Varhalamas (introduced here). Chris opened 1♣, and the opponent to my right passed. I had a very weak hand with shortness in clubs. I passed, and so did Michael. Chris had to play in 1♣ with less than half the points and less than half the trumps. We received a very bad score.
I asked Michael if he would have bid with my hand. He said that he would have because opener could have as few as three clubs. He said that if he had opened any other suit. I have remembered that advice, but I am not sure that it is the right choice in all circumstances.
Sue has much more vivid memories of this club than I do. She was there when someone drove their car through the flimsy wall and stopped just short of where Sue was sitting. Mark Smith was directing that day. He ran up to Sue and helped her out of the “death seat”. He claims that he saved her life, but Sue remembers it a little differently.
The St. Pete club is still operational in the same building in 2023. Its website is here.
Sue and I took two bridge cruises together. Both of them featured Larry Cohen. The first one was in 2012, right after Sue and I got married. I have recorded the details here. We have often referred to it as the “Honeymoon for One. ” The sordid tale has been posted here.
One of the tournament staff was assigned the job of assuring that everyone had a reasonably appropriate partner. I was originally assigned to play with a lady, but she dumped me before the first hand. Instead my partner for the entire cruise was Frank Evangelista from Boca Raton, FL.
I really liked Frank, and I communicated with him a few times in the years following the cruise. Frank stopped paying dues to the ACBL in 2021. I could not find an obituary or any other clear reference to him on the Internet.
The other cruise was two years later. It was longer and had a much better offering of excursions. My journal of the trip has been posted here. My partner for this one was Marty Singer, who had houses in both New Jersey and West Palm Beach, FL. We intended to play together at an event that was proximate to both of us, but it never happened. He is still playing regularly at national and regional events.
On December 24, 2014, Marty was not available to play. I was paired up with Jacques Sopkin of Newport Beach,CA. The journal page for that experience is here. Jacques died at the age of 91. His obituary is here. His LinkedIn page is still available here. For “experience” only “007” is listed.
1. I never met her, but I think that this must be Katie Podavini, who was still an ACBL member at the end of 2023. She only had 37.71 masterpoints and none in 2083. It is incredible to me that so many people were still paying dues in 2023 but not playing at all.
2. The Charlotte Bridge Club appears to have survived the pandemic. Its home page is here. On the day that I wrote this entry (12/16/23) the club was holding a “Christmas/Holiday” party.
3. The Northampton Bridge Club was struggling in 2023. Their Tuesday night game was taken online during the Pandemic, and it never returned to face-to-face play. Judy’s Wednesday game persisted in 2023, and they sometimes had special games at Amherst. The club’s website can be found here.
4. The Clearwater Bridge Club was running seven in-house games per week and two Swiss events per month at the end of 2023. They were still playing in the bank. The website is here.
This entry describes my partners who participated in the mentoring program of the Hartford Bridge Club (HBC) and the ones with whom I have only played once or twice. The regular partners can be found here. Those I encountered outside of the HBC mentoring program after the pandemic have been posted here.
Mentoring: The HBC’s Board of Trustees established a mentoring program several years after I became a Life Master. I cannot think of a way to set the date. The purpose was to allow newer players to pick up a few tips from more established players by playing together as often as possible over a three-month period. The incentive for the mentors was that one game per month was free. I always participated. I am not certain of the order of my partners, but I have put them in chronological order as closely as possible.
My technique varied little from year to year. I asked my partner what they wanted to focus on. I then asked them to send me a copy of the convention card that they were currently using. I wrote up a series of questions about the card/ After they answered we scheduled our play at mutually convenient times.
I communicated very little during the play. I generally try not to watch my partner’s play very closely because I do not want to make them nervous. If we had time after the round I might fo over anything that I noticed. Afterward I went of
My first partner in the mentoring program was Susan Glasspiegel1, who was already a pretty good player. At the time she played mostly with her husband Bob on holidays, in night games, and occasionally at the SBC. I also encountered them sometimes at nearby tournaments, where they often teamed up with Ru Cole and Silvia Szantos. I remember losing my temper when my team lost to them. I did not mind losing, but Ru was late turning in the score—for no good reason. That meant that both teams received the dreaded red dot. Two red dots would result in a loss of a victory point. My team never got the second dot, but theirs did.
I don’t think that playing with me had much effect on Sue’s bridge game. At the time she was pretty set in her ways. Bidding has always been my favorite aspect of bridge, and she made it clear that she needed to continue bidding the way that she did because Bob was unlikely to change.
I remember that Sue played Standard American rather than 2/1, her sparse set of conventions included the Brozel defense against 1NT openings. She also insisted that if she was responder after a one-level opening in a suit, and her right-hand opponent overcalled, that a 1NT response did not necessarily imply a stopper in the overcaller’s suit.
In later years Sue played at the HBC quite a lot with Lee Wilcox and a few other people. By then I think that her bidding was more sophisticated.
Sue suffered a very bad accident in 2022. However, when she heard that we had two and a half tables in Simsbury, she told Bob that she wanted to play so that we could have a reasonable game. That was very nice of her.
JoSue Coppa: JoSue usually played with her husband, Gene, described below, both in tournaments and at club games. I was a little surprised to learn that she had signed up for the mentoring program.
I cannot remember any memorable occurrences during our partnership. I don’t think that she advanced a lot.
Gene and JoSue moved to Fairfax, VA, during the Pandemic or shortly thereafter.
I also don’t have a lot of memories of playing with Linda Erickson. The main one is that I was scheduling games for her at the time that I had scheduled a game with Linda Starr. It was the first and (so far) last time that I double-booked. The other Linda was very gracious about the situation, although she admitted that she had placed a curse on us. Linda E. and I had a horrendous result.
I remember that Linda said that in her house she was the CEO of the kitchen. She evidently did not appreciate her husband messing around with culinary paraphernalia.
Linda served as vice-president of the HBC for a while. I guess that she was in line to become president, but for some reason she decided not to. My wife Sue, who was on the nominating committee speculated that her reluctance was because of the fact that she and her husband were moving to Charlotte, NC. However, she was still playing locally in 2020, so she must not have moved before the Pandemic.
Fran Weiner2 was a member of the HBC long before I returned to the world of bridge, but she did not have a lot of masterpoints. We only played together a couple of times. In fact, I ended up owing her
At the time, Fran’s daughter Jennifer, a novelist was involved in some kind of promotional event in California for one of her novels or screenplays or something. So, Fran went out to the West Coast to help her or to babysit or something. I expected Fran to get in touch with me when she returned, but she never did.
Bridge was not a very important part of Fran’s life. She was in the ACBL for twenty-nine years, and she only amassed 282.19 masterpoints. I doubt that she got much out of our association. Nevertheless, I was quite disappointed that she seemed to disappear from the HBC after that. I wanted to learn more about how her daughter managed to break into the world of publishing.
I often say that everyone in bridge has an interesting backstory. Hers certainly qualified.
John Calderbank came to the mentoring program with a specific objective, to learn the 2/1 bidding system. I wrote up a description of the differences between the Standard American that John had always played and 2/1. The differences were not insignificant, but there were not a lot of new things to learn.
John probably got more out of our partnership than any of the other people with whom I worked. When I wrote this entry in 2023 I was still playing with him in the morning game at the HBC nearly every Tuesday. I subsequently have taught John a few new conventions, but he mostly has wanted to take it slowly.
John and Mary Sullivan (below) took over management of the mentoring program in 2022. Their oversight was far superior to the previous coordinator’s.
In 2023 John was still doing a lot for the club behind the scenes. In addition he and his wife Nancy (below) were running an unsanctioned game in their home town of Glastonbury. He also took and passed the ACBL’s directorship test. His first assignment for the club was to direct the Sunday afternoon High-Low game. My wife Sue and I played in it regularly.
Of all of my mentoring partners3, Mary Sullivan was the most conscientious. She always responded to my emails, which she shared with her regular partner, Xenia Coulter, and she usually had additional questions.
Xenia was already a Life Master when I started playing with Mary It did not surprise me at all when Mary achieved the same rank in 2022.
In 2023 Mary was still running the the club’s mentoring program with John Calderbank (above). She also was assisting several of the other programs aimed at helping newer players.
Mary has hearing difficulties and macular pucker, scar tissue in the macula that can distort vision. Through my first seventy-five years I avoided the first of those, but I was still struggling with the latter in my left eye.
In 2022 Nancy Calderbank asked me to be her mentor. Like her husband, John, she had been playing bridge for a long time, but she wanted to learn how to play the 2/1 bidding system. We only got to play together a few times, but I am pretty sure that she had mastered 2/1 by the time that the mentoring period was finished.
I also worked with Nancy for three years on the HBC Board of Trustees. She and John, whom she called a “busy-body”, also ran an unsanctioned bridge game in Glastonbury, CT.
In the summer of 2023 I got to meet and play with Fran Gurtman, who had much less experience than any of the other players whom I had mentored. She was still a practicing physician when we started playing together.
Fran had taken online lessons. The first convention card that we played was very unsophisticated. It had no defense against 1NT openings, and it also lacked Jacoby 2NT, New Minor Forcing, Drury, and other conventions used by most of the mid-level players at the HBC. We only played together, but she felt comfortable adding most of them.
On November 8, 2023, Fran was driving from her home in Avon to play with my wife Sue in the weekly Wednesday evening game at the Simsbury Bridge Club. A deer jumped in front of her car. The collision killed the deer and damaged the auto. She called Sue to ask if she was still needed. Sue told her that we would not be able to have a game if she dropped out.
So, after filing a police report Fran drove the car, which was difficult to steer, to her house and drove a different car to the game. She arrived only a couple of minutes late.
A new mentoring session started in January of 2024 and ran through March of the same year. I was assigned by the mentor program to work with Mike Kaplan, who had even less experience than Fran did. Our convention card contained a lot of blankness. I taught him New Minor Forcing, Fourth Suit Forcing, and the two-suited bids.
Unfortunately, we had to play in the open pairs games at the HBC. Our results were therefore not very good, but I think that Mike learned quite a bit. I wrote up all of the hands on which we did poorly as I always did. I could have played for free in three of the games, but I donated the money to the HBC, which got reimbursed $30 by the CBA.
Playing with Mike on March 7 I was dealt the following hand: ♠A5432 ♥A653 ♦A5 ♣62. This hand had no face cards and only forty-four pips, an incredibly low number. The lowest possible number is twenty-eight. Mike had a very good hand, which got a lot better when blended with my three aces. He took all the tricks, but we only bid 4♥. We got a bad score.
At the same time I served with Mike on the HBC Planning Committee.
One-time partners: For quite some time I have maintained a spreadsheet with one line for each person with whom I have played at least one entire session in a sanctioned game at a club or tournament. Below is a list of the ones with whom I played only one or two games at the HBC. They are listed in alphabetical order, mostly just to make things easier for me to make sure that I did not skip anyone.
A guy whose last name was Balasubrama played on Saturdays a few times one summer at the HBC. He asked everyone to call him Bala, but the spreadsheet also has KC in the First Name column. On at least one of those occasions I played with him. He was pretty good, and he liked to play with me.
I could find no trace of Bala either online or in my database of players. Perhaps he dropped out of the ACBL before I began downloading the rosters in 2013. It is also possible that I have his name wrong. Unfortunately, in 2023 there is no longer a way to look up HBC results on the Internet.
Myrna Butler lived in Southwick, MA. She came down to the HBC to play occasionally. I played with her at least once at the HBC. I am pretty sure that she answered one of my mass emails soliciting partners.
I remember that some time after we played together I found a card filled out by Myrna at the partnership desk at the regional tournament in Cromwell. My team had been eliminated in an early round of a knockout. We planned to play in the next day’s “Loser Swiss”, but one of our team members was not feeling well. Since we had already played together, I assured the remaining members of the team that I would play with Myrna. However, I was unable to get in touch with her. I later learned that she had gone home and had neglected to remove her card from the partnership desk. I don’t recall how the team dealt with the situation.
I played in a Swiss team event at a tournament in (I think) Hyannis, MA, with Myrna and her partner, Connie Dube (introduced here). They were late for the first match. Helen Pawlowski, the tournament manager, and Sally Kirtley, who at the time was learning Helen’s job, sat in for the first match. After she learned whom she was replacing Helen said, “Oh, Myrna’s always late.”
Myrna has played a few times at the HBC since it reopened after Covid-19.
Gary Cohen played bridge for only a little more than a year, but what a year it was! He played mostly at Stan Kerry’s West Hartford Bridge Club (WHBC) game at the temple in West Hartford3. During his first year of play Gary amassed more masterpoints at club games than any other rookie in all of North America. That earned him the national Ace of Clubs award, as well as the district and unit versions. Since I was still playing with Dick Benedict, that must have been in 2008.
I am pretty sure that I played at the temple with Gary once. He made a joke about getting out the big (circumcision) knife. Although we did pretty well, I did not enjoy the experience much. Stan’s laissez faire style of directing was not appreciated by serious players like myself.
I am certain that I played with Gary at the HBC. It was on December 31 of, I think, 2009. Gary asked me to play in hopes of augmenting his chances of winning the award. We did win a fraction of a black point, but, as it turned out, he didn’t need it.
I remember playing on a team with Gary at the Cromwell tournament the next year. We had to play against Y.L. Shiue’s team. Gary did not think that it was fair for us rookies to be matched against “the best card-player” at the club.
Gary, who was a professional photographer, often went on vacations with both his wife and his ex-wife—at the same time! He insisted that he could get away with this because he was “a catch”. His LinkedIn page is here.
Gene Coppa and his wife JoSue (introduced above) joined the HBC a few years after I did. I played with Gene at least once at the club. We played together at a limited game on Wednesday afternoon that was designated as an NAP qualifier. There were at least ten pairs. Gene and I were the only people in the B strat. All of the other players were in the C strat and had considerably less experience than we did. So, we should have easily been able to qualify; in fact, we should have won.
Instead I got the worst result that I had ever received at the HBC. We finished dead last, and we did not earn our Q.
I was playing East that day; prior to that time I had always sat in North, South, or West. For quite a few years thereafter I refused to sit East in that building. When I began playing with Joan Brault (introduced here), she insisted on playing West when we were assigned to sit East-West, I reluctantly discarded the superstition.
Gene served a term as HBC president. He also served as hospitality manager for Unit 126 before the Pandemic. He and Jo Sue moved to Fairfax, VA, in 2022.
Phyllis Crowley
Phyllis Crowley was a fairly new player when I was paired with her for some reason. She was, in my recollection, somewhat overwhelmed by the event.
I think that she still plays in limited games in 2023. I have not seen her in any open games, but she was still on the email list.
Lucie Fradet.
I remember playing with Lucie Fradet once at the HBC, but I do not remember the circumstances. I remember, too, that Felix Springer and I helped her to win some gold points at a regional while playing in a Swiss event of some sort.
In 2023 she was still a member of the HBC , but she mostly played at the WHBC.
In real life Lucie had been a French teacher, and she still loved to speak in that language.
Marsha.
I am certain that I played with Marsha Futterman only once at the HBC. She was a very good player at one time. She even won the Governor’s Cup at a sectional, but she refused to take the very large trophy home.
Carl.
Marsha often played with Peter Katz. She told me that she thought that she was a better bidder than Peter, but Peter played his cards better. That may have been true then, but Peter’s bidding improved, and Marsha’s play did not.
Marsh directed the Saturday games at the HBC. Her husband, Carl, often came with her, helped set up and clean up, and filled in at the bridge table when necessary. When Marsh played with him (to avoid a sitout), she was constantly frustrated by the way that he played. I suggested that she could play with my partner, Peter, and I would play with Carl, but she did not want to do that.
Marsha gave up bridge after the Pandemic. I don’t know why.
Carl Futterman died on November 12, 2023, while I was composing this entry. His obituary can be read here.
Margie Garilli
Margie Garilli has for year run one or two games in the northeastern suburbs of Hartford. She has played at the SBC quite a few times, mostly with Donna Lyons. She seldom came after the Pandemic because she could not drive at night.
Margie, who is a pretty good player, asked if I would play a game with her at the HBC. I quickly agreed. I don’t know if she got a great deal out of it, but she seemed to have a good time.
Marilyn Goldberg.
Marilyn Goldberg was an exceptionally good player with much more experience than I had. She asked me to play with her very late in her career. I made a mistake—I don’t remember the details—and she remarked that she knew that I would do that. That hurt.
Marilyn died in 2022 at the age of 93. Her obituary can be read here.
Judy Hyde.
I played with Judy Hyde quite a few times before she moved from the Hartford area to Northampton, and I played with her a couple of times at the Northampton Bridge Club before she paired up with Bob Sagor.
On one occasion at a regional tournament in Nashua, NH, my wife Sue and I went out for supper with Judy (my partner at the tournament) and Judy Cavagnaro (Sue’s partner). The unusual aspect was that Judy C. was married to Jud H.’s ex-husband, Tom Hyde. There was not a bit of animosity between the two Judys.
On her eightieth birthday Judy bought herself one lesson and game with a local pro, Doug Doub.
Judy served as the representative of Unit 186 (Western Massachusetts) on the committee that I formed to determine the first winner of the Weiss-Bertoni award. That process was described here.
C.J. Joseph.
C.J. Joseph‘s first name was Carolyn, but absolutely nobody called her anything other than C.J. I only played with her once.
C.J. met her husband, who was (to the best of my recollection) a hospital administrator while they were both attending the University of Michigan. So, most of our conversations were about the Wolverine football team.
She left the Hartford area for a seaside home they built in Englewood, FL She scoffed when joked about her house being washed away. I don’t know; the Ross Ice Shelf is several hundred meters thick and the size of France. Nothing but friction is holding it back.
In 2023 C.J. was still a member of the ACBL, but she did not appear to be playing any more. A lot of that happened during the Pandemic
Joel Krug.
Joel Krug was still a regular at the HBC as I wrote this in late 2023. I only played with him once, but I recognized him on an old photo of an annual meeting, and none of the other members looked familiar.
The only thing that I remember about our game was that he was surprised that I knew how to play the McCabe Adjunct as well as the Brozel 1NT defense.
Joel was one of the best players at the club. He may have lost a step over the years, but he was still formidable.
I played at least one round with Pam Lombardo, when she was just a novice. Maybe it was during one of the first sessions of the Sunday high-low game before Covid-19.
Pam has had significant health issues that seemed to affect her ability to play, but in 2023 she was still an active member of the club.
A friend of hers named Butch Norman was one of two recipients who objected to me using the name Tonto in one of my emails. I discussed this incident in detail in the blog entry that I posted here.
At one time Donna Feir planned to hire Pam as a director, but that plan never came to fruition.
Jim Macomber (MAY cum ber) was a regular player in the Tuesday evening games when I first started playing at the club in 2008. I may have played against him more times than against anyone else.
One of Jim’s regular partners at the HBC morning games was Jeanne Striefler. I asked Jeanne and Jim to team up with Eric Vogel and me for the knockout in the Presidential Regional in Southbridge in February of 2023. We did very well on the first day, but terrible on the second. The saga has been recorded here.
Later in 2023 I finally got to play a round as Jim’s partner. I had long respected him a great deal. Our result was uninspiring, but it left me hoping for a second chance.
When Jim had his cataracts removed in the late summer of 2023 he was left with double vision, something to which I could relate. He was unable to drive until he got a pair of glasses to address the situation.
Partab Makhijani was my regular partner on Tuesday mornings at the HBC before Covid-19 caused the club to close. We played a fairly sophisticated card. I remember that he criticized one of my bids once, but I don’t recall the details.
Partab did not return to the club after it reopened in 2021, and I have not heard any explanation for his absence. His LinkedIn page, which is posted here, in 2023 listed him as part of the adjunct faculty of the University of Hartford.
Lesley Meyers was (and still is in 2023) one of the best players at the club. We only played together once. There must have been something about my style that she did not like. She never responded to any of my emails after that.
Lesley (LEZ lee) notices things about people. She was the only person who noticed the golf-ball-sized lump on my left elbow that was presumably caused by the effort required to extract gallons and gallons of water from the basement of our house in Enfield after Hurricane Ida in September of 2021. That episode is recounted here. I am glad that she noticed the problem. I saw a doctor about it, and he gave me a wrap that eventually reduced it to nothing.
Lesley was also the only person who asked me about the fingernails on my left hand. They apparently got severely bent and bruised when I fell in Budapest in May of 2022. That misadventure has been described in detail here.
When I first started to play at the club, no one intimidated me as much as Lesley. She was not tolerant about novices who took excessive times concocting their bids.
I remember distinctly that Nancy Narwold told me that one day that she would surprise me and respond positively to one of my emails soliciting one-time partners. Her name is on my spreadsheet, and I have a convention card for her. Therefore, it must have happened, but I don’t remember it. It seems strange that I remember the off-hand comment more than the 3.5 hour game that it resulted in.
I do recall that before she became a Life Master Nancy played almost exclusively with another woman whose name has escaped my memory—Karen Somebody, I think. The HBC held a party when the two of them achieved Life Master status. I attended. The other lady told tales about their efforts to attain the rank, including something about answering a knock on the door of their hotel room in a nightgown. I always considered Nancy a much better player than her partner.
After that event I don’t think that they ever played together again. From then until the closing for the Pandemic Nancy played mostly with Joel Krug. She also ran an unsanctioned bridge game at one of the country clubs on the west side of town.
I have deduced that in 2023 Nancy teaches business at Manchester Community College. If so, her LinkedIn page is here. She is still winning masterpoints; she probably plays online.
Val Orefice was not as serious about bridge as most of the people on this list. Although she joined the ACBL in 1994 (ten years before I did), she only made Bronze Life Master in 2012, a year after I did. She dropped out in 2018.
I remember only two things about Val. The first was that she did not seem to be familiar with several of the conventions that nearly all the accomplished players used. The other was that she pronounced her last name the same as the common word “orifice”. The Italian word orefice means goldsmith and is pronounced oh RAY fee chay.
I played with Pam Palmer a few times when her main partner, Aldona Siuta, could not play. Pam. They played a much simpler system than I was accustomed to. They very seldom made mistakes, and both of them were very good at playing the cards.
In 2023 Pam was still playing, but at a much reduced rate. She seemed to be very frightened of Covid-19, perhaps on account of her partner.
Both Pam and her partner were quite active in the same church attended by the Calderbanks.
Susan Pflederer, who was (and still is in 2023) one of the best players at the HBC, once told me that she wanted to play with me because she had a hard time playing against me. This astonished me because I did not remember having particularly good results when I played against her.
I know very little about Susan. She had been playing bridge for a long time when I started. I seem to remember that our results were mediocre. I probably made some mistakes that she noticed and I didn’t. We never played again.
After the Pandemic Susan has played less than she did before.
Trevor Reeves has the unique distinction of playing with me without making it onto my spreadsheet. When we were scheduled to play together a second time, he was able to show me the results from our first partnership. I cannot imagine how it could have happened, and I took no notice of it.
Trevor learned to play bridge in England, which explains why his BBO handle is ACOLyte. Trevor is a very good player. Although in late 2023 I still have more masterpoints than he does, the people in the club obviously consider him a better player than I am.
Trevor formerly played as a teammate of mine at many tournaments, and we did quite well. He also played with me in a pairs event at the Summer NABC in Toronto in 2017 (no notes?). We won our section in the evening session.
I would like to play more with Trevor, but he obviously prefers other partners. He asked me to play with him in the sectional in Orange in August of 2023, but I had to turn him down because of a previous commitment to play in the sectional in Great Barrington, MA.
Trevor’s primary partner at tournaments has been Felix Springer. They have a great record together and even made it to the semifinals of Flight B of the Grand National Teams in 2022.
Trevor served as both the president and then treasurer of the HBC. He was responsible for implementing the accounting changes that allowed the club to do accurate budgeting during and after Covid-19.
Joan Salve.
I cannot say that I enjoyed the one time that I played with Joan Salve. Her world view was just too different from mine. I don’t remember any details, but I was happy when the session was over.
Carol Schaper.
I met Carol Schaper at the SBC. She was a regular there when I first started playing. I liked her a lot.
She played with a former nun named Louise Alvord. Carol was interested in my book on the popes (posted here). She especially liked the title, Stupid Pope Tricks: What St. Mary Immaculata Never Revealed About the Papacy. Louise, however, did not want to hear anything about Roman Catholic clergy, good, bad, or just unusual. Carol tried to defend me, but Louise did not want to hear it.
I played with Carol only once at the HBC and never at tournaments or, for that matter, the SBC. I thought that she had the potential to be a pretty good player, but she did not want to put in the effort.
Carol was one of the thousands of people who let their membership in the ACBL lapse during the Pandemic or shortly thereafter. She had enough points for Life Master, but she must have been short some gold and/or silver.
Susan Seckinger has long been a key person at the HBC. She was hired as a director and Donna Feir’s right-hand person. Before that she was a critically important official for Unit 126. She had the formidable responsibilities of being both the treasurer and the tournament manager at the same time. She did a good job in both roles.
Susan’s husband Gary was considered one of the best players in Connecticut. He often played with Deb Noack at sectionals. He died in 2014, just as I was becoming active at the district and unit levels.
I only played with Susan once. I think that we both enjoyed it, but we never played again. She has long had a small group of women with whom she played regularly.
Mike Smith almost always played with his wife Susan. They became a formidable pair during their stay in the Hartford area. They even won a pair of national championships. Mike was a Life Master when they moved to God’s country. I spoke at Susan’s Life Master party and complained that she had never once agreed to play with me and that they had stolen my favorite teammates, Bob and Shirley Derrah.
I never got to play with Susan Smith, but on one occasion Mike asked me to play with him on a Tuesday evening when Susan was busy elsewhere. I jumped at the chance. I really enjoyed it, but he was an intimidating figure (both physically and at the table). I made a mistake that kept us from having a good round. It was embarrassing.
Mike was still working full-time while the couple lived in the area. So, his presence at the HBC was pretty much limited to evenings, weekends, and holidays. Susan, however, became a rather active member. I an pretty sure that she participated in the mentoring program.
In the post-Pandemic period the Smiths moved to Alexandria, VA. I have not encountered them since they did.
Linda Starr.
I first met Linda Starr during the Tuesday evening games. She usually played with Mike Carmiggelt in those days. They—and many other players in those games—were good enough that they intimidated me. Once Mike accused my partner and I of something unethical. When I responded with a one-word interrogative: “Ethical?” Linda immediately responded by saying that Mike was just crabby because he was hungry. I am not sure why, but Linda has not played with Mike for a few years.
I have paired with Linda a few times at the club and at least once at a sectional in Orange. That experience has been recorded here.
Shortly before Covid-19 struck Linda passed the director’s exam and was hired by the HBC. At my suggestion the club bought a subscription to MailChimp to send emails about news of the club. Linda took over the project of maintaining the database and composing emails. Her emails throughout the closure helped maintain a sense of community among club members.
Doug Eitelman.
Linda came up with the idea of the High-Low game on Sunday as a way for experienced players could help the less experienced. She has unofficially mentored Doug Eitelman and greatly improved his game.
Linda and I worked together on the fantastically successful Limited Sectionals that were sponsored by the HBC in 2023. Documentation of those events begins here. At the time she was a member of the board of the Connecticut Bridge Association (CBA). She became very upset at the handling of the notorious “Tonto Scandal” that has been documented here. After a short sting on the CBA board she resigned. At the HBC’s annual meeting in October of 2023 she became the first director ever elect to the Board of Trustees.
Gary Cohen put together a team for a Swiss event at the HBC. I don’t remember the date. I was assigned to play with Merrill Stein, whom I barely knew. I don’t remember any more details. I think that Merrill died in 2018. An obituary for someone with that name has been posted here.
Jeanne Striefler has been an active member of both the HBC and the SBC for longer than I have. We have played on teams together at tournaments quite a few times and we have paired up at least once or twice.
On a few occasions Jeanie (as everyone called her) invited my wife Sue and me to the house in West Simsbury that she shared with her husband Fred4. One of those occasions was when she celebrated making Silver Life Master, and Susan Seckinger celebrated making Gold Life Master. She probably would have invited us more often if we had reciprocated. Fat chance.
Fred Striefler.
Jeanie served as the HBC’s secretary for many years.
Jeanie and Fred went on a Viking cruise in France at the same time that I took the European cruise (described here). She contracted Covid-19 near the end of the cruise and was unable to leave Paris for several days. She reported that she had had a terrible experience. She was surprised that I enjoyed my journey and thought that Viking did well under the circumstances.
I learned when I played with Rowna Sutin at the HBC that she had been a professional opera singer in Pittsburgh. She appeared as Musetta in Puccini’s La Bohème. I immediately remarked that she must have sung the show-stopping aria, Quando me’n vo’5. I then asked her if she wore a red dress. She said that her dress was not red, but it did have a very long slit in the skirt.
I also discussed with Rowna about the version of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin that was performed on television and is available on YouTube here. Rowna did not like the cuts that were made. I felt that the cuts made it a much better television show and highlighted the talents of the wonderful choir and dancers.
I told Rowna about my favorite Tchaikovsky opera, Cherevichki. She replied “How come I have never heard of it?” I wasn’t sure how to explain why it has not gotten much attention in the U.S. I speculated that it might be because it was difficult to stage. I refused to believe that it had anything to do with the music.
That was the last time that I saw Rowna. For some reason she stopped coming to the HBC. She was still a member of the ACBL in 2023, and she had won a few masterpoints during the year.
Bill Watson.
Bill Watson became the president of the HBC shortly after I joined. As president he arranged for Michael Lawrence, a world champion and highly respected author, to visit the club and give a free presentation on takeout doubles. He even let him stay overnight in his house.
I attended the event. During a break I encountered Mr. Lawrence in the men’s room. He stumped me with a question about whether the faucet’s water ever became hot.
Michael Lawrence.
Bill was also a director at the HBC and with Laurie Robbins ran the club’s education program for new members. For six years he ran the Limited Sectional that the club hosted every October.
I played with Bill a few times before Covid-19 shut down the club in 2020. I remember that he was shocked when I said that a bid at the two-level in the fourth seat should show a minimum opening hand. The club’s experts agreed with me, but later when I played with Barbara Gallagher that the best players in Denver played that the same bid at the one-level was weaker.
Before the Pandemic Bill often was the public address announcer at football games for one of the local high schools in Hartford.
Bill and I have not played together since the club reopened. He mostly has played with Mike Carmiggelt and Larry Bowman.
Bill drove a red Jaguar that gave him a lot of grief in 2023.
John Willoughby started playing at the Tuesday evening games a little after I did. I think that I only played with him once, and I don’t remember any details about the occasion. My wife Sue played with him pretty often online during the Pandemic.
Although he and his wife had moved to North Haven in 2022 John continued as president of the HBC until his sudden and very unexpected death in the summer of 2023. Previously he had lived in Suffield. In his business life he worked as an underwriter for one of the insurance companies. His obituary can be found here.
When John was vice-president of the HBC, he was also the chairman of the Planning Committee, of which I was a member. The committee came up with many good ideas during this period.
The club held a special event as a tribute to John. Many of his family and friends attended. Over $6,000 was raised for the club.
1. In September of 2023 Bob and Sue Glasspiegel moved to Charleston, SC.
2. I was surprised to discover that Fran was still living in West Hartford when she died in 2021. Her obituary is posted here.
3. Stan had just opened his club when Gary began the year of his feat. Stan took advantage of a loophole in the ACBL rules to give extra points by designating every game as a “charity game”. In addition, although all of the games were technically open games, almost no Life Masters ever attended. So, because the games were fully rated—and then some—it was much easier to earn points at the WHBC than at the HBC, where the open games were dominated by experienced players. .
4. Fred was introduced here. His real first name was Manfred, not Frederick.
5. The long version would be “quando me ne vado”, which just means “when I go out”. I don’t know what happened to the “e” in “ne”.
The Larry Weiss Award (introduced here) was an engraved silver tray that was presented by the New England Bridge Conference a total of twenty-three times over the period of its existence—1982-2022. The history of the award, including its original criteria and evolution in 2023, is documented here.
The Larry Weiss award.
In 2017 I won the award. I was very proud of this, but I also pledged to myself that I would make sure that it was given to someone else the next year. The committee that I formed in 2018 voted for Bob Bertoni, who was the District Director. That responsibility left him little or no time to organize a committee to manage the process of selecting the next recipient in 2019. Then came the pandemic, and to make matters wors Bob developed cancer and died in July of 2021.
It did not make sense to try to give out the award in 2021. No regional tournaments were held in New England the entire year. In 2022 I argued in the Executive Committee’s Zoom meetings that the award should again be given out in 2023, and I volunteered to chair the committee again. There was no opposition. The president, Curtis Barton, told me to go for it.
A few months later I discovered that no one knew where the Larry Weiss trophy was. I was not about to call Bob’s widow, Beth, and quiz her about it. Besides, there was only room enough on the tray to squeeze in one more name. So, the EC voted that the award committee should decide on a new award, name it, set up the criteria, buy it, and present it..
When Natalie Bassil won an event in 2015, she asked me to post this photo of her. She hasn’t changed a bit.
I selected committee members in much the same way as I did in 2018. I wanted people who had participated in the post-pandemic tournaments, and I insisted that at least one person be from each district. A few people turned me down or never responded. In the end two EMBA players agreed to be on the committee, Natalie Bassil and Dan Jablonski. The others were Michelle Blanchard, Chris Soares, Lucia Carlisle, Sue Collinson, Dan Morgenstern, and Judy Hyde.
The protocol was similar to what I used in 2018. All of the communication among members would be via email. Nominations would be submitted by the players throughout New England. Two sets of votes would be held. In the first one committee members would be allowed to name three (or fewer) nominees who they thought were worthy of the honor. Then each person would vote for one person from the reduced list.
Dan Jablonski.
The first step was to come up with a name and a set of criteria. I proposed the name Weiss-Bertoni Award and added one criterion to the three listed on the Larry Weiss document. “Extraordinary service to promote face-to-face bridge at all levels in New England.” The one thing that I was most adamant about was the phrase “face-to-face”. I felt that online bridge, championed by the ACBL both during the pandemic and afterwards, was destroying the face-to-face game.
I sent an email to each committee member with my proposal and asked them to suggest improvements. The proposal that I attached has been posted here. A few members suggested that two proposals would make more sense. Since I had only been authorized to award one trophy, I did not put those ideas to a vote. Chris Soares was the only person who made a constructive suggestion:
Chris Soares.
Thank you for a thoughtful and concise revision.
In new Section 4 I’d suggest that
“It would seem to make sense for the committee selecting the current nominee to include the current winner…”
be changed to
“It seems sensible for the committee selecting the current nominee to include the current winner, if possible…”
A bit cleaner and addresses the unfortunate reality of death
I liked her suggestion. Since I could not imagine anyone objecting to it, I did not put it to a vote. So, we now had a name and some good criteria.
Gary Peterson.
Nominations: I asked the new webmaster, Gary Peterson to post an item on the main page of the district’s website to solicit nominations. Players were asked to send nominations with the reasons for their choices to my email account. At the same time I sent an email to all active players in D25. It is posted here.
The response was almost overwhelming. In the end I received ninety-nine emails nominating forty-one players. I nominated five people: Felix Springer, Trevor Reeves, Donna Feir, Linda Starr, and Joe Brouillard. I disqualified two of the nominees. Two people told be that I should be nominated. I told them that I was not eligible because I had won in 2017. One person nominated a woman who lived in New Jersey who, as far as I could tell, had never played in a tournament in New England. Chris Soares nominated someone who had recently died. Since he had been alive for most of the time since the last award was given, I allowed it.
Sue Collinson.
I wrote php code for a webpage on Wavada.org to allow the members of the committee to read what players had said about the people that they had nominated. A link to the webpage is here. I left the nominations open until March 17.
On March 18 I sent the following email to the committee members:
The nomination process is now finished. The last nomination–and it was for a player who had not previously been nominated–came in at 11:53 last night. I was very impressed by the response. I am quite sure that no previous nominating process sparked anything comparable.
I only disqualified two nominations. One was for a player who lives in New Jersey and never seems to have played in New England. The other was for a previous winner of the Weiss award.
I have created a word-processing document for each nominee. Every document contains all the supporting material that was provided by nominators. I will create a pdf file from each of these and post them where each of you can read them. I have written a program that will make it easy to find and open them. I will send the link to this program as soon as all of the pdf files have been checked. I want to make sure that nothing was lost in the transition.
I hope for the evaluation phase to start on Monday. Since I am playing f2f today and tomorrow, it may be a day or so later. During that phase you will be provided time to read all the materials and, if you wish, to send me your thoughts (attributed or anonymous) to add to the pdf files before we start voting. I will provide more details when I send the link.
Judy Hyde.
I made two mistakes in posting the nominations. I accidentally left off Ed Rothman, who Chris Soares had nominated. When she complained about it, I apologized, added him, and made sure that everyone knew about the mistake. I also left off Linda Starr, whom I nominated. I did not discover that until later.
The email containing the link and instructions for reading the nominating emails was sent on March 20:
It is time to start evaluating the cases for the forty players who have been nominated for the Weiss-Bertoni award. The official web page for this award is at https://nebridge.org/pages/481/. You can review the criteria there.
I have posted the text of all of the nominations on my website. You can view them through the alphabetical index at http://wavada.org/BAN001.php. When you get to that page click on the button at the bottom labeled “Generate HTML”. A list of the nominees, their units, ranks, and current masterpoints will appear. Beneath each nominee is a list of the people who nominated him/her. To read the text of the nominations just click on the underlined name of the nominee.
I did not edit the nominations except to leave out “thank you” and similar messages. I copied and pasted (as text) all of the messages. So, every message is in one uniform font without bolding, colors, emojis, or other flourishes.
The next step is to record your reactions and send them to me. You can specify that you want the message to be anonymous if you like. Otherwise, I will attribute it to the sender. I will either add the reactions to the bottom of the appropriate document or create a new document for reactions. I have not decided which to do. In either case you will be allowed to read them through the above link on my web site.
After everyone has a chance to digest the nominations and reactions, we will have a preliminary vote. In 2018 everyone was allowed to select three nominees whom they would be comfortable with as the winner. The people who appeared on at least five of these nine lists were considered finalists. The final voting was to select one of the finalists as the winner. Unless someone has a better idea, we will probably do it the same way this time.
Dan Morgenstern has agreed to be on the “subcommittee” that selects and purchases the physical award. If you have strong feelings about it (I don’t), you can contact him directly at dmdockayak@aol.com.
Please let me know that you received this email. I will send it again later in the week to anyone who doesn’t respond.
Dan Morgenstern.
Discussion phase: On March 30 I sent an email to begin the “discussion phase”:
The nominating process for the Weiss-Bertoni award has ended. Before taking votes I want to solicit information and opinions from the committee members. I know a dozen or so nominees very well and another dozen or so well enough so to greet at a tournament. The people whom I know well live fairly close to me or have served with me on committees, boards, or projects. I would like to know what committee members with different backgrounds and locations think. I am also eager to share some of the “insider” experiences that I have had.
To that end I would like the other members of the committee to—if they want to—send me their anecdotes, thoughts, and feelings about any of the nominees that they know fairly well. I will create a pdf file for each nominee who receives comments from members and post them on the list. Each comment will be attributed to the sender unless it was specified that it was to be considered anonymous. For each nominee the word “Comments” will appear in red beneath the list of nominators if any comments have been received and posted. Clicking on “Comments” will produce a pdf file with all the comments for that nominee. I should have this portion of the web page working by Monday, April 3.
We can then start voting when everyone has had a chance to comment and digest the comments of others. I think that we should be able to do so near the end of April. It’s been five years since the last award; we should take as much time as we need.
Please let me know when you receive this message. I am sending the emails one at a time to try to avoid spam filters.
I was disappointed with the response to the request for additional comments. Perhaps it was a surprise to people that there were so many nominations to read. I read them all. Almost all of them were very short. Hardly anyone listed any details. I added my own comments to quite a few, but only one or two other people on the committee expressed their opinions.
This was, I suspect, another unexpected result of the pandemic. People had not been playing in very many different places. So, they were unfamiliar with the people who were working hard in other parts of New England. I know that I was.
Voting: The first round of voting began on May 1;
The participation in the “discussion phase” by the members of the Weiss-Bertoni committee was somewhat disappointing to me. The discussion phase in 2018 was more lively. Several committee members this time said that they were not very familiar with any of the nominees. Perhaps this is symptomatic of the isolation imposed over the previous three years.
It is May now, and we should start voting. Please send me a list of up to three of the nominees. They should be people whom you would be most comfortable with as the first recipient of the Weiss-Bertoni award. The criteria have been posted at https://nebridge.org/pages/481/. The list of nominees, including descriptions by the nominators and comments by committee member is stall available at http://wavada.org/BAN001.php. A few additional comments were added over this last weekend.
Please try to send your list to me this week, if possible. I will tabulate all of the votes and come up with a short list of finalists. I still expect to present the award at the Board of Delegates meeting in June.
The following people received at least one vote in the first round of voting: Karen Barrett, Joe Brouillard, Lois DeBlois, Yan Drabek, Donna Feir, Bob Gaudet, Kim Gilman, Tim Hill, David Metcalf, Sue Miguel, Ed Rothman, Bob Sagor, and Caroly Weiser. Sue Miguel and Joe Brouillard received more votes than the others.
This email for the final vote was sent on May 9:
Thank you very much for participating in the process of selecting the first winner of the Weiss-Bertoni award. Thirteen nominees received at least one vote in the elimination round. Two candidates received more than the others. So, the final choice is between Joe Brouillard and Sue Miguel. Please send me your choice of one or the other.
If you wish to review the nomination materials or comments, they are still available at http://wavada.org/BAN001.php.
The final vote was very close. It was 4-4 as I awaited the final vote, which finally arrived on May 18.
The new trophy: My original idea was to procure a tray that resembled the original Larry Weiss trophy as closely as possible. It was round and silver-plated. There was enough space on it for the name of the award, a phrase that described it, and twenty-four name-date combinations. If we gave it out every year, I would be 98 when it was full, and no one would ask me about it.
I spent many hours on the Internet looking for such a thing. I was pretty sure that the original, which was in my possession for an entire year, was at least eighteen inches in diameter. I found nothing that exceeded sixteen inches, and those trays all had ornamentation on them that would have greatly reduced the available space.
I asked for some time at the Executive Committee meeting. Of course, I was last on the agenda. I asked for a budget and/or help in choosing the new trophy. People were very eager to end the meeting. In the chaos of the last few seconds Sue Miguel, Peter Marcus, and (I could be wrong about her) Carolyn Weiser agreed to “take it offline”, which I interpreted to mean that they would form a subcommittee and take care of it.
I asked for a volunteer from the awards committee to join them, and Dan Morgenstern said that he would. I did not forget about the trophy, but I stopped researching. I received the following email from Dan on April 8:
I am out of the country until 4/25…I won’t be able to comment .
Also, none of the folks who volunteered to come up with a gift have been in touch…I am thinking a small individual plaque rather than an engraved plate.
Hope you are well!
This was what he wrote when he returned on April 28:
I have been away in the South Pacific for the past month, little or no internet.
Anyway,sorry about the slow response.
I haven’t heard from Peter Marcus ( I think he was going to lead the trophy choice team).
If we chose individual plaques, I would think they would be the same from year to year…no decisions needed.
I am a bit surprised at the lack of comments, other than yours…you might think the nominators would want to post…
I know most of the top players, other than Mark Aquino, I don’t know that most of them have done much to popularize bridge. I will look more closely at the list…
I resumed my research. I discovered that, depending on what we wanted, we could spend less than $100 or more than $1,000. I needed a budget. I wrote this email to Curtis on April 25:
As I mentioned before, I have little confidence that the subcommittee that volunteered at the end of the last EC meeting is doing anything to procure the physical Weiss-Bertoni award. Can you tell me what I need to do to get a budget for purchasing the trophy?
Here is what he replied:
Curtis Barton.
We’ll discuss it at he next EC meeting (Saturday PM). If you have an idea what a suitable trophy would cost, that would help.
When I told him that we were in the process of voting, and I intended to award the trophy at the Board of Delegates meeting on the morning after the EC meeting, he told me just to get what I thought was appropriate.
I then asked Sue to help me with the project. She spent even more time on the Internet. As I did, she gave up on getting an appropriate tray. She did, however find a trophy with places for attaching a pretty large number of small engravings for winners and one big one for the name of the trophy. I liked it, and she negotiated a very reasonable price of about $150 including the shipping and engraving costs.
The vendor was Crown Awards. All of the engraving was done perfectly, and Sue assembled everything. I thought that it was very classy.
Presentation: The Board of Delegates met on June 25. Between twenty and thirty people were assembled. As always, I was last on the agenda. I made the presentation from my seat in which I was surrounded by the only other participants from Connecticut—Paul Burnham, Peter, and Sue.
I described the process that I used to select the nine committee members. I told everyone how pleased I was with the enthusiastic response to the solicitation for nominations. I held up the trophy for everyone to see. I told them that Sue had done most of the work in acquiring it. I said that if they liked it, they should compliment her. If not, they should keep their opinions to themselves. Then I read the name on the trophy: “Joe Brouillard”.
Joe was clearly stunned, but he wasn’t speechless. He gave a short acceptance speech. I was so happy for him.
General announcements: I had scheduled an email to go our to all active members of D25 at 10:30 while Sue and I were battling the traffic back to Enfield. It was short enough to post here:
Three members of the awards committee told me that they had enjoyed the experience and liked the trophy.
I also asked the webmaster to post a blurb that I wrote about it, and he did.
The extensive preparations for the NABC in Providence are described here. Friday July 15: If there is no traffic, the drive from Enfield to Providence takes a little less than two hours. I packed up enough clothes for ten days … Continue reading →
The extensive preparations for the NABC in Providence are described here.
My bridge schedule for the Providence NABC.
Friday July 15: If there is no traffic, the drive from Enfield to Providence takes a little less than two hours. I packed up enough clothes for ten days and left the house at about 7:15. The trip got off to a terrible start. As usual, I stopped at McDonald’s in West Stafford for a sausage biscuit with egg and a large black coffee. The biscuit reminded me of a brick that had been sawed horizontally. The coffee was a couple of degrees above room temperature when it was handed to me, and it did not taste right. I cannot describe the taste, but it was definitely wrong.
The first 99.99 percent of the drive was otherwise blessedly uneventful. I had driven this route a few weeks earlier for the walk-through that has been described here. I remembered that the Rhode Island Convention Center (RICC) was very close to Route 146. The only tricky part was finding the correct entrance to the garage that was attached via a corridor on the fourth level to the third floor of the RICC. I had a distinct recollection that the right entrance was the first on the right. Therefore, I pulled in there and attempted to enter. The unmanned gate would not let me in. Evidently this was now designated as the entrance for monthly parkers. I tried to back up, but a jeep had pulled in behind me. He was understandably upset at me.
Eventually, I was able to back up and return to the street, but in the process the left side of my car scraped against something. The plastic cover for my left side-view mirror also came halfway off. I tried to push this mishap out of my mind completely until the first day of bridge was over, but it was not easy.
I found the correct entrance and drove up to the east side of the third level and parked near the stairs and elevator. It did not seem possible to get to the east side of the fourth level of the garage from where I had entered. I tried to reattach the cover to the mirror, but I did not have much success. I then climbed the stairs to the fourth level and walked across the sky bridge to the entrance to the RICC.
At the entrance to the third floor two people were checking for vaccination status. Players with an orange wristband could just walk in. Otherwise, players needed to show a vaccination card or the equivalent proof on a smartphone. Upon doing so they were presented with a stylish piece of bright orange plastic to wear on the wrist. When the band had been locked, it was very difficult to undo. I just kept mine on for all ten days that I was in Rhode Island. Then I cut it off with scissors. I don’t know what the people checking for vaccinations did if a person would not or could not show proof.
Very few people wore masks. I resolved to wear an N95 mask and to keep my distance from everyone, even teammates and partners, whenever possible. The fact that I was not staying in a hotel associated with the tournament gave me some optimism. The BA.5 variant had recently become dominant in both Europe and the Americas. Vaccines made it less lethal, but they did little or nothing to prevent transmission. Good masks worked, and the ones that I brought with me were the best available to the general public.
Donna and MW in 2019.
For the first two days I was scheduled to play with Donna Lyons, a long-time friend whom I had hardly seen since we had won the Mid-Flight Pairs at the Ocean State Regional in Warwick in 2019. Donna and her husband Bob lived in Granby in the summer and in Naples, FL, in the winter.
Donna was not at the tournament yet when I arrived. So, I went to the welcome desk and received my SWAG bag. It contained the restaurant guide and a gift. I don’t even remember what the latter was. I then went to the volunteers desk to talk with Linda Ahrens about my assignments. When I left I thought that I was clear about when I needed to show up.
Joe and Linda circa 2016.
Linda provided me with a stack of scrip for my entry fees1, and Joe Brouillard, the co-chair of the tournament, provided an exit card to pay for my parking.
I picked up a copy of the Daily Bulletin to see what had happened in the GNT championship. Most of New England’s representatives, including Felix Springer and Trevor Reeves, were still in contention.
I went to the partnership area and looked for a likely partner for Sunday. The only person available was Phyllis Bloom with 800 masterpoints. I called her five times, but the line was always busy.
Soon thereafter Donna appeared. We were scheduled to play in the Open Pairs on Friday and the Bracketed 0-3,000 Swiss on Saturday. Before the morning session we went over the convention card that we had used in 2019. If we made any adjustments, they were not significant. Our morning session was disappointing. We only scored a little more than 43 percent.
I don’t remember what Donna did for lunch. I bought a Diet Coke and a bag of nuts from a vending machine. I did this every day that I was playing so that I would not get sleepy in the afternoon. This also helped me avoid the COVID trap of the lunch area.
Our afternoon session was much better. We scored above 53 percent, which earned us 1.48 red points for finishing third in B in our section. If we had done that well in the morning, I would have been quite pleased.
That direct route across eastern CT was stressful.
Donna was commuting from Granby, even though she lived considerably farther away than I did. So, she was facing roughly five hours of driving both days. I advised her not to take the two-lane route back to Connecticut, despite the insistent advice from Google Maps. Instead I told her that driving on Route 146 and the Mass Pike was much less stressful, only slightly longer, and less subject to delays from construction and slow vehicles.
Right mirror for comparison
Left mirror after fixing.
After saying goodbye to Donna I went back to the garage to inspect the damage on my car. This time I was able to reattach the cover much more securely. I later tried to rig up a little more protection for the electronics by covering it with a plastic bag, but I failed to devise a way of keeping it attached. In the end I convinced myself that this arrangement was good enough to last through the rest of the trip.2
At some point on Friday Mike Heider and Jim Osofsky, my teammates for Saturday and Sunday invited me to have dinner with them on Saturday night at their favorite restaurant in Providence, Pane e Vino. I told them that I had already committed to attending the VIP reception on Saturday evening.
I then exited the garage. I had been led to expect that the entire parking charge would be covered by the exit ticket that Joe had given me. However, I was still charged $15. Evidently Joe gave me the wrong ticket.
I found my way from the RICC to the Hampton Inn in Warwick without any problem. I have stayed at dozens of Hampton Inns around the country, and it had never taken more than five minutes to check in to any of them. This time, however, only one person was on duty at the reception desk. A handful of people surrounded the desk offering advice to a woman who was trying to check in. She demanded to see the manager about whatever was impeding the process. The clerk abandoned her station for at least five minutes in order to summon him.
She returned with the unwanted news that the manager was on his “lunch break” at 6:30 in the evening. Eventually he did appear, and he succeeded at calming everyone down. All the people around the desk—except for me—went over to the lounge/breakfast area to wait for the room to be ready.
My room was very close to the entrance on the left.
I was impatient, no doubt, but there was no good reason to be. I had nothing planned for the evening. The clerk had no problems in finding a room for me. I had to provide my credit card, of course, but then she quickly handed over my key. My room was on the ground floor.
When I reached the hallway I was shocked to see trash piled there. I had never experienced anything like this before at a Hampton Inn. At least the pile did not impede my path to the room.
The room itself was fine, but it had one very peculiar trait. There was no closet! I looked everywhere that I could imagine. I mean, how do you hide a closet in a hotel room? I must have been mistaken, but I accounted in my head for every square foot of space, and there did not seem to be any place it might be.3 Because I was only staying two nights, this anomaly was of small consequence to me.
I had no trouble deciding where to eat. The hotel was within a mile of the KFC, and I had had more pleasant experiences dealing with the store than I had with the many other franchises that I had patronized over the years. This occasion was no exception. My four-piece meal was ready very quickly; it was hot and delicious.
About a week earlier I had misplaced my American Express card that awarded frequent-flyer miles on Delta. I hardly ever used that card, but it bothered me that it was missing. While I was at the KFC I noticed that it was hidden behind another card in my wallet.
I received a text from Phyllis Bloom. She was happy to play with Mike, Jim, and me on Sunday. So, my “dance card” was now completely filled for the tournament.
The book that I brought with me to Rhode Island was Newcastle Upon Tyne: Mapping the City. It was written by Mike Barke, a Professor of Geography from Newcastle. I had the pleasure of meeting him and his wife Vivienne on the European River Cruise that I took in May of 2022. That adventure is related here.
The book is a history of the Tyneside area from Roman days up to the present with maps of various types used as signposts. I really enjoyed learning about the development of the area not only because it was Mike and Vivienne’s stomping grounds, but also because it helped me to understand better what the characters on the television show Vera were dealing with. On this trip to Rhode Island I also discovered that the huge book could serve as an excellent mousepad when I was using my computer while in bed.
Saturday, July 16: My standard operating procedure at Hampton Inns had long been to hit the breakfast room early. I arrived at 6:15 and was surprised to see that it was already rather crowded. There were quite a few children dining with their parents. Most of the people wore shorts. One kid walked up to the orange juice dispenser and filled a gallon jug. I thought that this was somewhat outrageous, but no one said anything about it.
In addition to the families quite a few uniformed airline employees were among the early diners. This was not a surprise. The Hampton Inn is very close to the airport.
The drive from Warwick to the RICC was very easy. I worried about the left mirror, but the cover stayed on, and it seemed to function as well as ever.
I asked at the Partnership Desk if they needed me to help, but Jan Smola and Carol Seager said that they had it under control.
Mike and Jim.
Donna and I played in the 0-3,000 Bracketed Round Robin. Our teammates were Jim Osofsky and Mike Heider. We found ourselves in the top bracket. We were in contention until the last two matches. In one of those rounds Donna timidly passed my 5♥ bid, and we missed a slam that would have really helped us. So, we finished well out of the overalls and were awarded only .69 “pity points”.
Donna needed to rush home at the end of the last match. I said goodbye to her and thanked her for playing with me. I then walked over to Joe’s desk and asked him for directions to the WaterFire event.4 While I was standing there I was surprised to see a distraught Donna walking toward me. She said that she could not find the key fob for her car. She said that she had looked all through her purse several times.
Donna and I searched around the areas in which she had been. There was no sign of the missing fob. Upon Joe’s advice she went to the facility’s security desk on the ground floor and asked the man there. No one had turned in anything resembling a key fob.
She then went back to her car because she said that there was an emergency method of gaining entry and operating the car. She was pretty sure that her husband could talk her through it over the phone.
So, I went out on foot on my own looking for the VIP reception for the WaterFire. I went the wrong way several times5. I finally found the viewing area, but I saw nothing that looked like a reception. At about 7:00 it occurred to me that the WaterFire event always took place in the dark, and the sun would not be setting in Providence for nearly two hours. I decided that it was not worth the wait. I drove back to the Hampton Inn.
I was able to exit the garage without paying. Joe had given me enough tickets for the remainder of my days. Since I was not planning on coming to the tournament on Tuesday, I gave one of the tickets to Donna.
I was shocked by two things at the hotel. The pile of rubbish had grown considerably larger, and no one had cleaned my room. Since I was leaving in the morning, these developments hardly mattered to me, but my overall impression was that this must surely be the worst Hampton Inn in the country.
Because I had again skipped lunch, for supper I treated myself to a small Ultimate Bertucci pizza. It was absolutely delicious. I ordered takeout and ate it in my room.
Sunday July 17: As I made my way to the hotel’s breakfast area I could hardly believe how big the rubbish pile in the hallway had become. It was piled high with pizza boxes. I could barely get past it. I doubt that someone with a wheelchair could have done so.
Never on Sunday?
I was equally surprised that the breakfast area was closed. Evidently breakfast was no longer served on Sunday, or perhaps it was open much later than usual. I was not certain whether this was “the new normal” or just another indication of this hotel’s mismanagement.
I checked out, got into my car, and drove into Providence. I did not record in my notes what I ate that morning, but I think that it was part of the hospitality—a muffin or something like that—that the tournament provided. I picked up a Daily Bulletin and discovered that all three of the remaining GNT teams from New England had lost in the semifinals.
Mike and Jim told me that they had postponed their supper at Pane e Vino until Sunday. They asked me whether I wanted to join them. I happily agreed.
I met up with Phyllis Bloom, who was, as I suspected, Ken Bloom’s wife. We spent some time going over our card, which was rather simple. We were playing with Jim and Mike in the Mid-Flight Swiss teams. We were done in on the very last hand. Phyllis played 6♠. At the other table our counterparts bid the grand slam. Both went down one. Mike led the ♣, which enabled the declarer to finesse the 10.
So, we earned only .78 more red points. I had a good time playing with Phyllis. We did as well as a new partnership could expect. However, I think that she was a little frustrated with her mistakes.
After Phyllis left, II walked with Jim and Mike to their hotel, which was called The Graduate. We took the elevator up to their suite. Mike seemed to be a little embarrassed that some clothes were strewn about. Please!
At some point Mike also realized that he had lost his convention card. Presumably it was somewhere in the playing area of the RICC.
We picked up Jim’s car from the hotel’s parking garage and drove to the restaurant. Mike continually criticized the route that Jim took, and Jim repeatedly reminded us that Mike drove like an old woman. They do this sort of thing all the time. For years I thought that they were actually arguing, but, in fact, they almost never argued. Jim just talked all of the time, and Mike occasionally broke his vow of silence and vocalized his opinions, some of which contradicted Jim’s. However, it never went past that. Each has a lot of respect for the other, and they have been playing together for at least a decade that I know of.
The restaurant scared me. It was crowded, and no one—not even the staff—was wearing a mask. I kept mine on until we reached the booth, and I put it back on before walking to the door at the end.
I ordered the fettucine alla Bolognese and a glass of Barbera. After consulting with the waitress, Mike selected lasagna. Jim had the same veal dish that he always ordered there. The titles of all of the dishes were in Italian on the menu, but the descriptions were in English. I found it peculiar that our waitress was unfamiliar with the titles of the dishes.
I ate everything that I ordered, but the Bolognese was a little too rich for my taste. When Jim asked me if I would order it again if I ate there, I had to answer in the negative. Nevertheless, I had a good time with these guys. They are a lot more fun away from the table, but that is not uncommon for bridge players.
Randy Johnson.
So, we drove back to The Graduate. I went down the elevator to walk to the RICC garage. In the lobby of the hotel I ran into Randy Johnson. I talked with him for a minute. I asked him if his wife Ann (Hudson), one of my former partners, was also in attendance. He claimed that she was too busy working at home.
I walked over to the garage, found my car, and drove to the Crowne Plaza in Warwick, which, like the RICC, is in spitting distance of I-95.
Over the next week I often saw this logo.
I walked from the hotel’s huge parking lot to the revolving door. at the main entrance. To my surprise a young man and woman were greeting people as they entered. Neither of them wore masks. They were from the annual gathering of the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference, which was held throughout that week in the Crowne Plaza. I wore my mask whenever I was in or near the hotel.
I checked in in a minute or two. The hotel employees also had no masks.
I went back to KFC for supper. It was as good as the first time.
When I checked my email I found one from Monday’s partner Paul Burnham. He reported that he had just arrived in Providence. I also received the following missive from Donna:
First of all, the key fob business was somewhat of a mess and more than somewhat had me spinning. When I got to the garage, my car would not open when I touched the handles, as usually it does. Of course, I tried and tried, tried the lift back, nothing. So, I searched in my bags for the fob, which I knew I had, but I could not find it. Panic began to set in. After too much wasted time running from the bridge info table who sent me to security who sent me back to the info table who sent me to another security man, I went back to the garage to see if I had dropped the key fob. I could not find it, so I emptied my bags again in the dark corner where I had parked, thinking it had to be there. No fob. I dug and dug, freaking out more and finally found it zipped in another pocket. But the car still would not open. Dead. I called Bob, and [after he calmed me down] he talked me through taking the fob apart to find some hidden skinny key. It was so dark in the garage where I was that I was near tears running over to some sunlight, worried that I would be sleeping over on 4 East. I did get the fob apart, got back to the car to try the hidden key, and, for some reason, once I had the fob apart, all the lights went on and the car just opened. Then I worried that all batteries had died, but Bob kept telling me to start the car and it would be fine. It was. But then …this story has a better ending…I was still so rattled [77-year-old women should not navigate Providence traffic when they are rattled] that of course I kept missing turns directed by my robot-voice navigator who was trying to get me home. I missed route 6 back to 84, and I ended up on 146 north driving home by the MassPike. This route was an infinitely better route, as you suggested. I am sure I lost another three years of heart life, but at least I was not stuck in the garage overnight.
The nicest part of the fiasco was that your kind gift of the validation card worked like a charm, and it was great to have that bonus in all of the mess.
Monday July 18: My room on the third floor of the Crowne Plaza was very nice. The bathroom had two sinks! It was a good thing, too. The stopper on the main sink did not work. So, I shaved at the one on the end.
I have walked there, but I drove every day on this trip.
I drove to McDonald’s for my usual sausage biscuit with egg, a breakfast that I consumed six of the seven mornings of my stay at the Crowne Plaza, which does not offer free breakfasts. I ate the sandwick on the car while I drove on I-95.
I worked at the Partnership Desk on Monday morning. While I was there I espied Mike Heider’s missing convention card lying on the table. I took it over to Joe and left it with him. When I spotted Mike later that day I told him that I had found it and let him know where it was.
I assisted a few people looking for partners in understanding how the cards were displayed: teams on one board and pairs games on the other. Each board was sorted by day of the event. Usually that was all that was needed. A player would find someone of about his/her level and call them.
One fellow did not have a phone. I offered to let him use mine, but he had no idea how to use a smartphone. I had to dial the number for him. This process was repeated a few times.
Judy Hyde.
Perhaps twenty-five minutes before 10:00, the starting time for all the games, Paul arrived at the Partnership Desk. To my surprise the ponytail for which he was renowned had disappeared. Shortly thereafter we saw Judy Hyde, with whom I have often been a partner or teammate and even more often an opponent. We talked for a bit, and both Paul and I came away certain that she had agreed to play in the Bracketed Round Robin Teams with us. Then she vanished to find her partner. We never saw her again.
At 9:59 Paul and I walked over to the Open Pairs game and registered. It was a nightmare. We were East-West in the morning, and we were between Robert Todd and his partner, who played a customized Big Club system, and a pair that played a Polish Club. The senior member of both of these pairs delivered a lengthy pre-alert speech explaining the unusual conventions that they used.
Thirteen rounds of listening to both of these dissertations would certainly have been enough to drive anyone to distraction. However, we had the completely unique distinction of playing North-South for the thirteen rounds in the afternoon session seated between the same two pairs. By the time that the last round had ended we could recite either speech with no pauses.
Paul played badly throughout, and I was worse. Our scores reflected it. Fortunately, he got to play with a different partner, his college roommate, Rob Stillman, on Tuesday. I, on the other hand, had already been planning on taking that day off.
The most amazing thing about our second session was that a guy with whom I had talked at The Graduate on the previous day came late to our table. On one of the two hands that we played against him he took at least—this is no exaggeration—five minutes to decide on a single play on defense. On every other trick he played in tempo. I suspect that he was astral traveling.
To add insult to injury Tom Gerchman came up to complain to me after the round was over that he was unable to obtain a parking pass. I simply said in a Chico voice “That’s not my chob.”
I picked up some tacos at the Taco Bell that was across the street from McDonald’s on Bald Hill Rd. in Warwick and consumed them in my room at the Crowne Plaza. Life is definitely romantic and exciting at bridge tournaments.
I was only slightly surprised to find that my room had not been made. Apparently that was the new normal, at least at chain hotels in Warwick.
I called Abhi Dutta and confirmed with him that Paul and I would team up with him and a young man named Jaan Srimurthy in the Bracketed Swiss on Wednesday.
Tuesday July 19: In 2019 I took a day off at the NABC in Honolulu, but that was only because my partner, Ann Hudson, refused to play with me any more.6 The idea of a voluntary respite was a new one.
The award was presented by Mark Aquino, the Regional Director.
I read the Daily Bulletin on the ACBL website. The first thing that I noticed was that Sue Miguel had been presented with a Special Goodwill award for her outstanding work with the Intermediate/Novice program in District 25 and at the two NABCs in Providence.
So, evidently I had missed another meeting of the Goodwill Committee. I have tried to attend them several times, but I have never succeeded.
I also searched the Bulletin for information about the number of COVID-19 cases that had been reported thus far, but the only reference was to the ACBL’s mask (not required) and vaccination (required) policies.
I went to IHOP and treated myself to a ham and Swiss-cheese omelette with pancakes. They were as good as I remembered. I was disappointed that the restaurant no longer played oldies on the intercom system.
Two very old ladies7 sat across the aisle from me. I could not avoid listening to much of their conversation. One of them was treating the other to breakfast because it was her birthday. I was tempted to wish her a happy birthday, but I did not want to disturb their illusion of a private conversation.
After breakfast I called the front desk to ask about the housekeeping regimen. They told me that they would bring me more linens. That afternoon a large bag appeared in my room. It contained towels.
On the way back to the hotel I stopped at Barnes & Noble and bought a copy of Interlibrary Loan, Gene Wolfe’s last book. It was a sequel to A Borrowed Man, which I had read a few years earlier. I only vaguely remembered the plot.
I then walked around the exterior of the hotel and then took advantage of the beautiful weather to read my new book while I sat on a bench for a half hour or so. Occasionally an employee would come out to smoke, but they stayed far enough away that it did not bother me. As I came back inside I saw Sally Kirtley and Helen Pawlowski. They were on site to check out the hotel for the regional tournament scheduled for the week before Labor Day. It would be held in the Crowne Plaza.
Helen asked me what I was doing there. I told her that I was staying at the Crowne Plaza and that I gave myself the day off after four days of frustration. She replied, “That makes sense.”
I then went up to my room and took a nap in my unmade bed. After I woke up I talked with Sue on the phone. I told her about how terrible the previous day had been.
Of course, I actually walked straight from the hotel’s door across the parking lot and field to the intersection of East Ave. and Greenwich Ave.
In the afternoon I walked to the Stop and Shop. The walk there was fairly easy. The only challenge was to cross East Ave., a major highway. There was a button to initiate the pedestrian crossing lights, but it only worked for the main part of the street. Crossing the entrance and exit required alertness and quickness.
At the grocery store I purchased a large roast beef grinder and four two-liter bottles of caffeine-free Diet Coke using my GO rewards card to qualify for the $4 price on the colas. The walk back was not quite as easy. I had brought a tote bag to carry the Cokes in, but I had to change it from one hand to the other several times. Eight liters weighs 17.6 pounds, and the burden was mostly borne by my fingers. I should have brought two bags; that would have been considerably easier.
When I got back to the hotel I slept for another hour. Then I ate half of the grinder and drank a considerable amount of Diet Coke for lunch/supper.
In the evening I read some more and fooled around with my laptop computer.
My plans for the last three days were still up in the air. I was scheduled to play with Sohail Hasan, but we did not have teammates lined up.
The report of the last five days of the tournament is a little more upbeat. It can be found here.
1. The fine printing on the bottom of each voucher clearly stated that only one could be used per entry, but I later realized that the directors did not enforce this limitation. They accepted as many vouchers as each person presented. I played in eighteen sessions at the tournament, but I spent very little cash on entry fees.
2. As of November 2022 I still had done nothing about the mirror. It has functioned admirably.
3. My inability to find things is legendary. It almost caused me to flunk first grade. That story was told here.
4. WaterFire was a spectacular event that was held periodically in Providence. It is difficult to describes. People rode in boats, and they used torches to light larger torches that are permanently in the water. I watched the event in October, 2014. On that occasion it was becoming dark by the time that the afternoon session ended, and volunteers had been stationed along the route from the RICC to the viewing area so that all the bridge players could find the event.
5. Towns and cities in New England felt under no obligation to provide street signs that identified every street at every intersection. I have complained about this since I first came to the area in 1972.
6. The adventures at that tournament and the week afterwards that we spent in Maui are documented here. Ann and I remained good friends, and I have played with her several times subsequently. She even volunteered to pick us up at the airport after we returned from Hawaii.
7. I long ago realized that women my age are very old.
