If you were offended by the title of this entry, you know where you can cram it.

In the twelve years before the pandemic the Hartford Bridge Club had hosted a one-day, two-session 199er Sectional, usually in October. For at least two of these events I emailed promotional pieces. The last one in 2019 was run by Bill Watson. The club was open in October of 2021 and 2022, but the event was not held.

The ACBL had special rules for Limited Sectional. They were sponsored by the unit, but run by the club. The unit had no financial stake in the outcome.

The most attractive rule was that the club did not need a Tournament Director certified by the ACBL; it club could use its own directors. In late 2022 I researched the feasibility of resuming this activity and proposed to the Planning Committee and the Board of Trustees that the time was right to try it again. I created a spreadsheet (posted here) to demonstrate the profitability of the undertaking under certain assumptions. Although Bill was not interested in resuming his role, the other directors were on board, especially Linda Starr.

However, just as the club was finalizing its plans, the ACBL changed the rules: a TD or an Assistant TD would be required for Limited Sectionals. To become an Assistant TD one must pass an exam that had not yet been written. Peter Marcus, the president of the Connecticut Bridge Association and a qualified TD, assured us that we could hold the event as long as he was “standing by” if needed.

So, in January Donna Feir, the HBC manager, was considering applying for a sanction. On the 15th I sent an email to Linda Starr asking whether the directors had set a date, and, if so, did they want me to send emails¹ promoting it. She answered the next day:

Yes! We have decided.  We’re having a one-day, two-session 0-750 NLM² sectional on March 26. (The flyer is attached.) Who do you send the information to? (Just curious. I’d love to have you send it out to anyone 😁)

The flyer to which she referred can be viewed here. The event actually had two flights: one for players with less than 200 points and one for non-Life Masters with less than 750 points.

I had been thinking about how to approach the emails for this event for a few months. The key aspect, in my opinion, was the color of the masterpoints: silver. When I think of Silver, I think of the fabled steed of the Lone Ranger. So, I decided to make the horses of the LR and his faithful Indian companion Tonto the theme of the first email. You can view it here.

I sent a copy to Linda, whom I considered to be my boss on this project. She responded enthusiastically, “Thanks, Mike! This announcement is great!! It should get plenty of interest.”

Well, she was right about the interest. I sent the email to players in four units: Connecticut Bridge Association (CBA), Rhode Island, Central Massachusetts, and Western Massachusetts. 1,300 were sent; 54 bounced; 770 recipients opened the email a startling 1,794 times. The flyer was opened 90 times.

No one was in any way angry about it, but two people did not like the focus on Tonto. Elaine Reitman wrote this:

Don’t you think that in this day and age when sports teams from schools through NFL Pros are urged to change their team names exploiting Native American stereotypes and the US as well as local governments are expunging the term “squaw” from place names that this is a decidingly jingoist message.  Couldn’t bridge players be encouraged to attend a tournament for their own benefit without bringing midcententury stereotypes into play.  It’s insulting to receive messages using pidgen language and dated images.  

Her reaction frankly surprised me. Did she really feel insulted? I doubted it. Uncomfortable, maybe, about the fact that she was in the same group as someone who used a metaphor that had been a familiar part of the culture for nearly seventy years. I wrote back to her:

Did you think that the Johnny Depp movie was insulting? Jingoist? How so? The LR and Tonto on TV were good friends, and all of the bad guys that I can remember were white men. I used “Tonto” and “Scout” in the headline rather than “I am scouting for” to help people remember that Scout was the name of Tonto’s horse.

It is very hard to get people to read emails in this day and age, and I really care about reviving face-to-face bridge. I would not want to eliminate about half of the possible metaphorical references from my youth.

I am sorry that you did not like my choice of metaphors. I don’t get paid for this. I just do it because I love the game.

She did not reply. I received one other email in the same vein from Butch Norman:

If I am the only one to comment on your use of the pejorative word “Tonto”, then I guess it is my problem. However, if I am not, then you do have a problem that needs to be addressed. The Native American definition of “onto” is “idiot, fool, stupid”. 

I was surprised to learn this. Actually, the Native Americans have a very large number of languages. I didn’t have any idea which one Tonto spoke. here was my response:

One other, so far. I certainly did not intend to insult Native Americans. To me Tonto was a TV character who caught bad guys in the fifties. He talked a little funny, but so did Gabby Hayes and a lot of other sidekicks. Maybe that is problematic, but I don’t see it.

Butch sent this reply:

Thanks for your reply. Please don’t apply to today the standards of what was acceptable in the 1950’s. (Amos ‘n’ Andy comes to mind. I know you to be a better person than that.

I would have been happy to argue with him about Amos Jones, but I had to admit that Andy Brown was a blockhead. What that had to do with Tonto, who, in my opinion in no way conformed to any racial stereotypes, I never did figure out. I just let it go.

The next email that I received was from Bill Segraves, the new webmaster for the CBA. He was not on the mailing list, and so someone must have shown a copy to him. He had a very different concern:

I just saw a copy of the draft advertisement for the 750 sectional and I very strongly advise against it.

I asked my wife, a non-bridge player “how bad is this?” She said “Bad, very bad.  Do you know what Tonto means in Spanish?  It means stupid.” I loved the Lone Ranger when I was a child, but we live in different times.

PS – if this fell into the wrong hands, it would be potentially very damaging publicity for Connecticut bridge.  This is not how we want to make our appearance in the newspapers.

I don’t know why he thought that what he saw was a “draft”.

In the seventh grade at Queen of the Holy Rosary School in Overland Park, KS, I had a class Spanish, but I don’t think that Miss Goldsich ever drilled us on the twelve words in Spanish that mean “stupid”.

I checked my text again to be certain. All of the rest of the email was in English. Of what importance was it to anyone what one of the words meant in Spanish?

I could not let the claim in the PS go unanswered. Did he really think that someone was going to report us to the thought police in the media over this email? I sincerely hoped that they would! If they did, they would be required to let me respond, and I was quite sure that the CBA would come out very well in such an exchange.

The President of the CBA, Peter Marcus, asked me to put the email on hold. It was too late for that, as I explained:

718 people have opened this email. Only two complained. I responded to both of them. Only eight people unsubscribed, a very small number. 32 people clicked on the link to the flyer. The content was approved by Linda Starr, the HBC director who is managing the project. She said that it was “great”.

I think that this is a tempest in a teapot, and everyone I asked at the HBC today agreed with me.

Peter’s response was typical of his bombastic communication style:

So, first, a small story/analogy.  It is customary in the Jewish faith to name a child after an important dead relative.  Sadly, my father’s father died 7 years before I was born, so, in a normal situation, it would have been automatic that I was given his name.  It was a perfectly good name when he “got it” long before, and there was no problem with it at that time.

Yet, I was born in 1955, and my grandfather was Adolf Marcus.  As you can imagine, the number of new “Adolfs” in 1955, particularly in a Jewish home, was pretty small.

The point is, something that was totally normally in 1900 was completely unacceptable in 1955.  Obviously, if my father had named me Adolf he wouldn’t do it to offend anyone or for a bad reason, he would do it to honor his father.  But, motives and intent didn’t matter; it was wrong and no amount of “good intent” could make it right.

I too grew up in the era of The Lone Ranger, watched it as a kid, and, between being desensitized to any bad undertones and living in the society at the time, it became part of my “normal world.”  It was not widely seen as wrong back then, at least to a small child in the early 60s, so it entered my mind and environment as totally normal.

But, we grow up, we advance, we learn from our mistakes.  What was societally acceptable in 1960 or, for that matter, 1860, is seen as wrong in 2023.  Much of this comes from how we grew up and the people around us.  And, while my parents didn’t express any concerns about the stereotypes in The Lone Ranger, they constantly reminded me not to repeat anything that I heard when we visited my mother’s parents, both of whom were of Southern society from the late 1800’s and thought nothing of using “the N word” in every day conversation.  To them, that was normal, what they grew up with, and they wouldn’t understand how anyone could see that as wrong.  But, thankfully, my parents had advanced from that mindset.

Mike has called this “a tempest in a teapot” and that is a fair view in some ways.  But, it is also the view of people who aren’t part of the stereotyping of Tonto, Kemosabe, etc.  People with that background may see it as more than that, as well as others who don’t have that background but understand that there are analogous things that could be said about whatever their ethic, religious, national, or cultural background is that they would find much more than “a tempest in a teapot.”

But, even if that is true, so what?  Are we “proud” that, in less than 12 hours, 2 people expressed complaint and 8 unsubscribed?  What will those numbers be 24 hours from now?  And, even if the protest is miniscule, what happens when this gets more public exposure?  Do we really want to read about this in Bridge Winners, or get a call from ACBL headquarters, let alone if this reached a wider audience?  As unlikely as it is, I really don’t want, as President of the CBA, to be explaining to a Hartford Courant reporter that we just see this as “a tempest in a teapot.”

At the same time Peter sent the following email to the officers of the CBA, with cc’s to Donna, Bill Segraves, and me.

I am sending this to just the CBA Officers and asking for as quick as possible your input/view on what has happened and what we should do.

Attached below is an ad for the March NLM sectional being held at the Hartford Bridge Club.  This is a tournament that was quite successful pre-pandemic and is targeting the very players who seem to have stepped away from face-to-face bridge.  So, we really want this to be a big success and have begun advertising it.  This started with an email to a fairly wide audience (a little over 700 people) who are eligible to play in it and live in the greater CT area.  The contents of the email are below.

When this was brought to my attention, I immediately sent a note and left a phone message asking to hold off on sending this out, but it had already been sent.  We have so far received few comments;  2 people complained, not sure who, and 8 people requests to be unsubscribed from our email distribution, both relatively small numbers.  But, of course, that is in just the last 12 hours during which time most people were probably asleep, so who know what will happen in the next day or two.

A small group of players in the Hartford area saw this and thought it was a very effective ad.  And, in many ways, it is.  So, there was no serious concern raised about it.

But, I did get input from someone and, when I saw it, and then passed it by some other people I respect and they saw it as a very, very serious problem.  While it is true that people of my generation and my ethnic background watched The Lone Ranger and saw nothing bad about it, that was when I was 6 and we lived in a different society.  In reality, this was a very bad show (Tonto is the Spanish word for fool or idiot) and, back then, the respect shown to Native Americans was so non-existent that the TV producers had to hire a Caucasian actor with heavy make-up, since it was just “known” that American society wasn’t ready for an honest depiction of a Native American.  Sadly, that view extended to many other groups seen as “lesser” by mid-20th century America.  But, the fact that it was customary and normal doesn’t mean it isn’t seriously offensive in 2023.

Below is an email I have written to apologize for this ad.  I am asking the officers for quick feedback on two issues

1) The apology itself and any rewording you want to suggest

2) How widely do we disseminate it, to just the people who got the email or to a wider audience, such as the CBA membership and/or the website

As to the 2nd issue, I can make arguments on both sides.  Wider distribution will just put this in front of more eyes who may be offended.  Lesser distribution can look like an attempt to “sweep it under the rug.”  Sadly, by the time we learn which of these is correct, it will be too late to actually do that.

Anyway, please get back to me as soon as you can.  I really would like to address this today, if at all possible before 12:00-1:00 so we can get something out before we start to get more negative feedback.  As I have said to someone, as unlikely as this may be, the last thing we really want is for the President of the CBA to be interviewed by a reporter for the Hartford Courant.

Two things about this are noteworthy: 1) I sent the email to Rhode Island, Central Mass, and Western Mass, not just CT; 2) Peter did not ask the officers whether they thought it was a good idea to send the apology; he just asked them to comment on the wording.

Despite Peter’s claim that it might be considered “sweeping it under the rug”, the three other officers said that the apology should only be sent to the addressees. One proposed a change in the wording. I had a different take.

So, the standard now is “can be offensive”? Who judges that? I am not only offended but insulted by this entire process. Can I veto it?

By the way, the people whom I informed about the two complaints asked me if I told them where to cram it. I did not. I responded politely, as I always do.

If anyone was actually personally offended (as opposed to imagining that others might be offended), which I doubt, I will be happy to apologize to them face-to-face with great sincerity. However, I would insist that they tell me what about this totally innocuous character (other than his name, which in a language not spoken by either major character is one of the twelve words for “stupid”) they find threatening or even discomfiting. I never heard of Tontophobia, and I doubt that more than a minuscule portion of the target audience has. Tonto merchandise and reminiscences are all over the Internet. I have never heard of anyone complaining about them. I can understand, to an extent, Bill Cosby being upset about Andy Brown and Kingfish, but I cannot understand anyone getting upset about Tonto.

I am as woke as anyone. I think that the rest of us owe an unimaginable debt to Native Americans. However, I think that it is a huge mistake to make any more of this. Two complaints out of 719 opens is a very small number. Believe me; I have read every single response to the more than a million emails that I have sent promoting bridge.

I also think that it is a terrible idea to try to rein me in. I have a proven track record over this last decade of grabbing people’s attention and getting them to tournaments.

Frankly, I would welcome any attention drawn by outsiders to the campaign. They would be forced to let me respond, and I would emphasize how hard it is to get people’s attention, how innocuous Tonto’s behavior is, and how important it is to get out our message.

Peter responded in his usual way.

I am sending this to you alone.  If you want me to expand the audience, I will.

1) No, you cannot veto it.  I am sorry if you feel offended by the process.  That was never the intent, but, if it had that effect, I apologize for that.  I am not telling you that you are wrong to be offended, the fact that you feel it is real, just as offense at the email is real.  But, I can be sorry that I had a part in making you feel that way, and I am.

2) Not sure I understand your comment about “…where to cram it.”  I have no doubt that you handled any complaints fairly and professionally.  My primary interest in knowing who they are is, if there is an escalation by them, I would know they were “the original two” and not new concerns.

3)  Actually offended, yes.  Obviously you do not feel that way, nor does Linda, and likely others who helped develop it at HBC.  But, under the heading of who were offended, we have

me

Bill Segraves

Sue Miguel (when I asked for her opinion if this was an issue, since I didn’t want to over-react based on my personal feeling alone, she immediately called me back and screamed “Are you out of your mind!!”)

Gail Marcus (twice CEO of half-billion dollar corporations who has experience with unintended but negative publicity)

I would also note that none of the CBA officers–Phyllis, Deb or Cindy–made even a suggestion that apologizing for this wasn’t necessary. 

You ask what is offensive about this.  I will speak for myself alone.  The first think I thought of, when I learned what Tonto means, is, as I was watching my tv when I was 6 and enjoying The Lone Ranger, what was the little 6 year old in the next apartment, whose parents came from Puerto Rico and spoke fluent Spanish, thinking as he saw a tv character called “Fool.”  Another group of people who lived in America (actually the first who lived in America) being insulted by American society, in this case, the TV industry.  This was what offended me as an individual, and it was a profound sorrow.

As to your record, I have to be one of the most understanding of that since my tenure being involved in these tournaments is the longest.  It is true, you have been outstanding at the technical issues of publicizing tournaments.  But more importantly, your copy, particularly for district emails to open players, is accurate and very effective.  I very much enjoy your humor and think you do an amazing job.  But, no one is perfect and I believe this was a well-intended but real error.  I do not see it as a concern or something for the future.  No one is trying to “…rein you in…” or even suggest that you shouldn’t use your considerable talents in marketing and humor to create bridge notices.  In fact, when someone suggested that, as President of the CBA, I should approve all CBA-related email, I rejected that concept totally.  I have complete trust in what you are doing (as I do with what Bill is doing on the website, Robin on the Kibitzer, etc.) and I have no belief that I need to approve everything or make sure there are no problems.  No one is “sitting over your shoulder.”

On a final note, sorry, but this is what I don’t understand; why is this an issue?  Linda’s email from yesterday (and a follow-up that she sent to me alone that I have chosen not to respond to) basically raise the “pc police run amuk” issue and you refer to yourself as being “as woke” as anyone.  All of these are newly introduced political terms to just feed ridiculous debates.

Even if one person was slightly offended, should we not care?  Is there really an argument being made that there was no way to publicize this tournament other than the Lone Ranger reference, that it was mandatory to use this imagery, and none other?  Why can’t we do a great job and not run the risk of offending someone?  And then, when someone is offended, rather than recognize that and address it, we get mad and raise the ante by suggesting their being offended is wrong and we shouldn’t care.  And, would we really be making this argument if the title of the email were

Imbecile Scout for Silver, Kemosabe

Because that is exactly what it says and I am sure some of the players who got it understand Spanish, let alone have Hispanic heritage.  While not Hispanic, my Grandmother was Spanish and my father’s full name, born in Berlin, was John Theodore Ricardo Roccamora Marcus.  I don’t understand Spanish (my wife does and knew immediately) but I was aghast when I learned what Tonto meant.

Bottom line: this was a good, clever, interesting idea that, in another environment, would have been exactly what it was intended to be without any excess baggage. However, we live where we live, not where we wished we lived, and, in our world, this was a mistake. It has to be recognized as such and, when there is a mistake, you apologize and move on. You don’t dwell on it, but you don’t ignore or defend it either.

I should have insisted on a change to the wording of the apology to make it clear that the decision to send it was not approved by either the Hartford Bridge Club or the Board of Directors of the CBA. I was not impressed by Peter’s attempt to appeal to authority (his wife and Sue Miguel). It was a ridiculous notion that someone writing in English must check every word in a missive against every other language’s use of that combination of letters. It was also totally ridiculous to set the level of judgment as the potential that one person might be offended. I WAS personally offended by the apology. Why was my actual offense ignored in favor of fear of the imagined offense of some vague group?

Peter then sent me one of his shortest emails ever: “When you send out the email, could you add me (or make me a cc) for it, so that I know it has gone out.  In the unlikely event that I hear about this independently, I would like to know if that happens before or after someone sees the follow-up.”

My response was even shorter: “Who said that I was sending out a follow-up?”

He sent me another long email. The important part was “In response to your latest question, ‘Who said I was sending a follow-up?’  the answer is me, President of the CBA.”

Of course, I knew that he was the president. I had attended meetings of the CBA for over ten years. The president presided at those meetings. I never heard of any other president ordering anyone to do anything. Peter had the only copy of the bylaws that anyone knew about, but I seriously doubted that the president had authority to order anything.

I responded simply: “I never agreed to send this, and I am not in charge of communications for the unit. I am absolutely convinced that this is just opening a can of worms for no good reason.”

His next email was another long one. The key paragraph was this: “I do not care what you are convinced of.  I am the President of the CBA and I am instructing you to send this to the same distribution list that you send the Tonto email to.”

I wasn’t impressed. I wrote back: “What gives you the right to order me to do anything? I am convinced that this Is unnecessary and potentially counterproductive. I refuse to do it.”

An email from Cindy Lyall, the treasurer of the CBA and daughter of Rich DeMartino³, put things in a different light: “Hi – just seeing if we have sent out an ‘apology’ yet.  If we have not, and only received 2 ‘complaints’, are we sure it’s necessary?  Don’t want us to exacerbate the ‘situation’ unnecessarily. “

Peter ignored this attempt to cool things down and instead sent the following:

At your convenience, find a dictionary and look up the meaning of the word President.

Since you claimed not to be responsible for communications for the unit, by what authority did you author and send this out?  There never was a vote of the CBA Board not approval from the Officers.  While the tournament may be run at the HBC, it is a unit function, not an HBC function, and the unit has responsibility for the tournament.

However, I have no interest in fighting with you.

You will send out the email apology as I instructed to the entire distribution list, copying me, and you will send me a copy of that distribution list to me as well.  This will go out before 5PM today.

Failing that

1) I will develop a list and send it myself.

2) I will inform D25 that, as President of the CBA, you are no longer on the D25 Executive Committee.

3) I will bring a motion at the CBA meeting on Thursday that you be removed from the CBA Board.

4) As District Tournament Coordinator, I will not sanction the tournament, so there will be no tournament to advertise.  I believe it is not in the interest of the CBA, ACBL or bridge to be associated with a tournament that appears to associate itself with offensive imagery and language and then refuses to correct it. Your call.

I was not afraid of the CBA board. I had a lot more experience working with them than Peter did. I knew how they thought. On the other hand, I did not want to be removed from the Executive Committee, which had become dominated by people who had very different ideas about how to resurrect bridge after the pandemic.

I took a different approach with my next email:

I asked for permission to use the CBA letterhead before the Orange tournament for which I drafted two emails because the CBA’s emails were so meh.

I will be happy to send you a spreadsheet with the names and email addresses of the people to whom I sent the email, but I will not participate in any apology or retraction. If you want to do those other measures, go ahead. I won’t like it, and I think that they are stupid moves. The only things that I live for are my cat, who is dying, my wife, who has a half dozen chronic illnesses, and face-to-face bridge. This does not affect the first two, but I am convinced that it is bad for the last. I also find it unbearably humiliating.

Peter responded with this:

Fine, please send me the distribution list.  Since the email does not come from your account and would be over my name not yours, your intransigence in this matter mystifies me but it is what it is.  Given that, I would welcome you changing your mind and doing the purely mechanical function of sending the email to end this disagreement.  Failing that…

I will inform Carolyn Weiser that you are no longer on the D25 Executive Committee.

You can either send me an email with your resignation from the CBA Board or, on Thursday, I will bring a motion for your removal per the CBA by-laws.

Since you are providing me with the distribution list, I will not do anything to impact the tournament itself.  There is no good reason to harm 50-100 bridge players⁴ because of your position.

It took me a few hours to produce the spreadsheet that I sent to him. In his next email he expressed sympathy for the condition of Bob the cat and asked me if I intended to resign. I ignored the former and answered his question in the negative.

At this point Peter sent a copy of the emails that we had exchanged to all of the members of the CBA board. He included the following text:

I am sorry, this is not a pleasant issue to raise. Over the last few days, I have been dealing with an email, sent out under CBA auspices, advertising the March 26 NLM sectional at the Harford Bridge Club. This has engendered a long series of email back and forth between myself and the other CBA Officers – Phyllis, Cindy and Deb, Mike Wavada and Linda Starr and Bill Segraves. It concerns the advertising copy for this tournament and the issue that I and a number of other people found it inappropriate if not offensive. This email was sent to about 1350 NLMs in CT and surrounding units.

As President, and with the input of the Officers, I generated a follow-up email, apologizing for the content and sent over my name and contact information. Linda and Mike objected and didn’t want me to send it, believing the email was not an issue and that sending an apology would bring more attention to it. I and others felt that this was the kind of issue that, as unlikely as it might be, could explode on social media and other venues and that the best approach was to be forth wright, apologize and move on. As CBA President, I was willing to “take the heat” and did not expect Mike or anyone else involved in its creation to be publicly criticized or humiliated.

Yet, over the past few days, Mike, who had the distribution list that it was sent to, has categorically refused, despite my request and then my instruction as President, to send out the apology.  He has, finally, sent me the distribution list and I have sent out the apologies (you all received one), despite the fact that this caused some havoc with my personal email due to the volume being sent.

While we can disagree on the severity of this issue, I maintain that there is no setting in which offending even a small number of players is good when other imagery and wording could have been used which would offend no one.  I have also been accused of being part of “PC cops run amuk [sp]”, having no authority to make this decision, etc.  I did decide to move forward without the full Board, because of concerns about the timing, but did involve and get at least tacit agreement from the other officers.

Sadly, I cannot accept having Mike Wavada on the Board with his repeated refusals and hostile attitude towards my role as President.  

Therefore, per CBA By-Laws 6.12(b) – Removal –  An At-large representative may be removed by an affirmative vote of the Board of Directors, 

as Mike is one of the 4 at-large representatives, I am requesting a vote on his removal from the CBA Board be held at Thursday’s meeting.

It should be noted that, while there are very specific rules concerning removal of a District Representative Board members, including certified notice 30 days before the Board meeting (ByLaw 6.12(a)), that is not true for at large representatives, who per by-law 6.6(f), “…shall service at the will of the President and the Board of Directors.”

Attached are 8 .pdf files, numbered 0-7, the first (#0) showing the original email advertisement for the tournament that is the subject of concern, and the next 7 being copies of emails (I believe complete showing all correspondence to which I was a party).  In each case, I have put the name of the person sending the email in red, so you can more easily follow the discussions.

Obviously, this is not a pleasant request, as I have know and worked with Mike for many years.  But, given the exchanges over the last few days, I do not see any alternative.

Feel free to call or email as you wish.  My next email will be the ZOOM instructions for the meeting.

The only word that upset me in this email was “finally”. I had set to work on preparing the spreadsheet as soon as I sent the email promising to do so. It involved exporting the “audience” from MailChimp to my PC. I had not done this for several years and never using Chrome, which is the browser I used when working on my free account. Chrome displayed the page in a way that threw me off. It also has a totally different way to handle downloads than Firefox, which I had previously used. I did not dawdle. It took a few hours to figure this out, find the extract file, unzip it, load the file for the subscribers into the spreadsheet program, remove all of the columns except the email addresses, save it as a csv file, and send it to Peter.

Peter did not ask for anyone’s opinion on the matter, but the response was overwhelming. Jan Rosow’s was the first to arrive:

I am against Mike Wavada being removed.  His articles have no malicious intent and are creative with researched pictures.  I am sorry that this is overblown in my opinion. Mike has given countless hours of volunteering and web site creation and it would be a  Major loss not to have him on the Board!  

Someone whom I did not know named Marsha Scherr sent me a very nice email. I have included a photo that she embedded in it:

Hi.  I feel a need to write to you to say I’m sry you got grief from people who, in my opinion, are uninformed about The Lone Ranger, Tonto, and the whole Lone Ranger cult.  Of course I’m talking about anyone over the age of 60.  My friends and I have had an email exchange and we feel similarly.  We were all Lone Ranger fans.  We girls had Lone Ranger lunch boxes, etc.  Girls loved the sexy Lone and appreciated the friendship of Silverheels.  I think all kids understood we were watching 2  friends who trusted one another, who were from different cultures, & worked together to get the bad guys (& I sort of remember the bad guys were white guys).

Silver was a euphemism in the days of Tonto and the Lone.   You made it a meme so kudos to you

PS:  Please add my name to distribution list of CT Bridge

Take care & don’t let the naysayers get to you.

This was followed by supportive emails from Esther Watstein, Deb Noack, and Roger Caplan. Others must have called Peter. This long defense of his conduct was in his inimitable style.

I am sending this directly to the 5 people on the Board who have responded to me directly, copying the other Board members. Obviously, for those who have not responded so far, your views are welcome and appreciated.

Let me make my position very clear.

Mike Wavada is an extremely valuable resource.  As I said in one of my emails, I probably know this better than almost anyone as he has served as the communications chair and webmaster of D25 for many years and we have worked together quite successfully.  I also wrote that I have seen dozens of examples of Mike’s authoring publicity for tournaments that is creative, funny and very effective and I have told him and others that many times.  Someone suggested that, in addition to expressing the CBA’s apology for this email, I should tell Mike that he could not send out any future unit-based communications without my prior approval. I rejected this concept totally.  However, ill-advised I believe the “Tonto” email was, Mike has, as he has said, a long track-record of excellent communications and one email, if it is unfortunate, cannot wipe out a long history of excellence.

I personally feel the “Tonto” ad was a mistake, not intentional and not malicious, but a mistake nonetheless.  I did not come to the decision to act on this view based on my personal opinion; in fact, I asked a number of bridge players their view to see if I was over-reacting and, to a person, was told that this was totally inappropriate.

Someone (apologies, but I believe it was Roger, best wishes to your daughter) commented on his view that this should have gone before the entire Board.  That is certainly a valid view but, in my opinion, not logistically workable until Thursday and taking action that far away would not be effective.  And, I did, and do, believe that action was necessary.  So, I did bring into the discussion the other Officers; none suggested doing nothing and Deb was kind enough to rewrite and significantly improve what I had originally written.  From this, I believe I was acting with the support of the Officers.

As I have said, I do not want to wade into the offensive/woke debate.  I do not believe that this email is about either.  Mike wrote that he would welcome responding to people who were offended.  Personally, my goal is to not offend people who will want a response.  While I do know that people can be offended by anything (a friend told me of neighbors who are offended at one of them flying the American flag from their porch), I think minimizing such offense has to be a reasonable goal of any organization.  It is with this in mind that I believe the “Tonto” email was unnecessary.

For the record, I believe I sent out something like 1300 emails and have so far received a total of 4 responses, two of them thanking me for addressing an offensive email and two of them telling me, in basically so many words, “To get a life.”  I have responded to all, thanking them for taking the time to express themselves.

Anyone involved in media knows that, if you get a small number of replies, there are a lot of people who feel the same way who don’t bother to write, so I am sure there were many people who were not offended and some who were.  However, I believe that, if the imagery were a silver mine, or a silver tea service, or anything else silver, there would have been none offended.  Wouldn’t that be better, particularly when we are working overtime to try to get people back and cannot afford to lose even a small number of players?

But, I do not believe this is now about the “Tonto” ad.  It is about the roles on the CBA Board.  After consultation with the Officers, I wrote to Mike to send out a communication to the members expressing the view of the President and the Officers.  While Mike wrote that he was not the Board Communication Chair, the original email was sent over his name and I did not see any email from Mike to Ken with the proposed copy or Ken’s approval as Communications Chair.

I could understand if I had told Mike to send this out over his name, basically making him publicly apologize for “his mistake.”  But that was never the case, and all he as asked to do was “push the computer button” that would send out the emails.    If Mike has the information of whom he sent email to, and the President asks him to send an email to that audience, particularly after the other Officers have been involved so this is not “a President run amok,” I expect him to do it.  If Mike, or anyone on the Board, has the authority to flatly refuse to do this, then the President is no longer the President.  It is for this reason, not for the original copy, not because Mike (and others) felt it wasn’t offensive, and not because he (and others) expressed their disagreement to me in ways that I found offense (I am a “big boy” [in man ways] and have heard a lot worse things said about me, just ask any ACBL Board of Directors member), that I requested Mike’s removal from the Board.

I have repeatedly written to Mike that I am sorry if he disagrees with what I did.  I have never meant to offend him, impugn his work or anything else.  If Mike will write to the Board that he apologizes for the way he handled this, not the original email but his refusal to send out the communication that I sent him, and accept that I had the right to ask him to send it, then I will withdraw my suggestion that he be removed from the CBA Board.  That will allow us to put this in the rearview mirror and move forward.

The “Push a button” comment was not accurate. Peter was ordering me to use my personal email account to send an email that I was convinced would be both humiliating to me and more likely to be counterproductive than not for reasons that I had already explicated. The idea would not have been as innocuous or anonymous as he depicted:

1. My email address (Mike@Wavada.org) would be listed on each mail. It was probably the most famous email address among bridge players in New England. If I changed the setting for this one message, it would increase the probability of being flagged as spam. I had twice faced dealing with being blacklisted. I took great pains to avoid that possibility.
2. My home address was listed at the bottom of each email.. I doubt that I would have remembered to change it. This would be another red flag.
3. My experience told me that a good number of people would unsubscribe if only because it came so soon after the previous message. I needed to use this account for planned future emails for this event and others.

Linda Starr, who at the time was also on the CBA Board, wrote the following shortly after receiving Peter’s email.

Regarding the Tonto issue itself, you might be interested in some facts. If so, you can check out the Wikipedia entry on Tonto, in which it says: “The radio series identified Tonto as a chief’s son in the Potawatomi nation. The choice to make Tonto a Potawatomi seems to come from station owner George Trendle’s youth in Mullett Lake, Michigan. Located in the northern part of the Midwest, Michigan is the traditional territory of the Potawatomi, and many local institutions use Potawatomi names. Trendle gained the name “Tonto” from the local Potawatomi, who told him it meant “wild one” in their language.” Note that Tonto, whatever it means in Spanish, is not and never was taken from the Spanish language. Wikipedia goes on to say,”in the Spanish dubbed version, the character is called “Toro” (Spanish for “bull”) or “Ponto”. I found this information on several other sites as well, but this was the most concise.

Also, on Britannica, it says, “Tonto was identified in some stories as a member of the Potawatomi tribe and was presented as principled, virtuous, and fiercely loyal. Despite his stunted English, he was also portrayed as both intelligent and wise.” 

So perhaps with a little research and greater early communication with the entire board, we might have simply decided to provide this information to anyone who was offended and let them decide for themselves if Tonto was, in fact, an unflattering and “horribly offensive” representation of Native Americans. 

Beyond those facts, and whatever you choose to believe about the appropriateness of Tonto, I believe the request to remove Mike from the board or of subjecting him to any further repercussions is … honestly, I simply lack appropriate words to respond to this proposal. We all know the tremendous amount of great work Mike has done on a volunteer basis to support and promote bridge in New England for many years. And in this case, as is characteristic of Mike, he simply stood up for what he believed despite enormous pressure. I admire him for it.

PS: Just as I was about to hit Send to this email, I received Peter’s latest email. I do NOT believe Mike owes anyone an apology. This just goes on and on.

Peter must have received negative feedback from others. At this point he decided to resign as president! Here is how he did it.

(I am copying Rich DeMartino since he initially approached me and asked if I would be willing to be put on the nominating slate for CBA President.)

I am sending this to you as the Vice-President.  As of Tuesday, January 31, I will be resigning as President of the CBA.  The way the organization and the Board is responding, not just to the original email, which I agree was well-meant but unfortunate, but then to the response by people like Mr. Wavada and Ms. Starr, is not one that I feel I can properly represent.

Things that need to be done:

1) I am a CT representative to the D25 Executive Committee, and the next week is in two weeks.  Phyllis will need to appoint a replacement (Mike Wavada is the other CT representative).  You need to communicate your choice to Carole Weiser, D25 Secretary.

2) Cornelia Guest resigned as tournament coordinator, send me information about the church for a sectional, and they have written to me.  You need to contact them so they will contact you and not me.  You will also need to appoint a new Unit Tournament Coordinator.

3) You need to inform the ACBL of the change in officers so they will send future emails to the correct individuals.

4) If you wish to have the Board meeting I called for this Thursday, someone will need to set up the ZOOM meeting and send out the invitation information.

I wish you all the best.  I was hoping this would be an enjoyable and beneficial relationship for me and the CBA and a return to the unit that I served for so long.  Sadly, it appears that cannot be the case.

I did not want this outcome. Several of my open projects required assistance from him in his other roles. I had no relationship with the vice-president, Phyllis Hartford. I did not know her very well, but I doubted that she wanted the job under these circumstances.

I received a telephone call from Rich DeMartino. He told me that he thought that this issue had gotten “way out of proportion”, which was in accord with my “tempest in a teapot” comment in the beginning. At his request I sent him this email concerning whether I could continue working with Peter.

I have no objection. I consider Peter one of the most talented and the most generous person that I have ever met. I have worked closely with him on several projects, some of which are still ongoing. It would be a lot easier for me if he agreed to continue and let bygones be bygones.

I am only speaking for myself.

Peter asked to talk to me on the phone about continuing to work together. I said that I really hated to talk on the phone, but I provided my cell number if he thought it was best. Instead he sent this email.

I want to express my concern, sadness and regret at how events have unfolded over the last week. Specifically.

1) I do not and never have blamed you or felt you did something wrong in creating the image and copy of the email notice for the Hartford I/N sectional.  I did, and do, feel that some will find it offensive and do not believe it is effective to advertise a bridge tournament by offending anyone.  

2) While I am new to the CBA, I have worked with you for many years at the district-level and seen your excellence at developing tournament marketing.  Your words and pictures have always been not only effective but creative and funny.  I have repeatedly told you that before many tournaments.

3) Nonetheless, for this latest email, I felt that something more was needed, so I worked with the other CBA officers to develop a follow-up email, which was actually written by Deb Noack, improving on the one I originally wrote.  I believe sending this out had the support of all the Officers and I believe, with the support of the officers, I had every right to expect this email to be sent out on behalf of the CBA.

3) The message did not in any way implicate you nor criticize you or anyone else.  It would have come from the CBA, not your personal account over my signature so, to the extent that there was embarrassment, it would have fallen on me, not anyone else.

4) I asked you, as the expert in using the email system and the originator of the distribution list for the Hartford tournament, to send this subsequent email to the same audience.

5) When you repeatedly refused to do so, I reacted angrily by proposing your removal from the CBA Board.  This was a serious over-reaction and I apologize for doing it and for any negative implications it had.

I hope you will accept this sincere apology and we can move forward collaboratively.

“See” you this Thursday.

My reply was, as usual, much shorter:

There was no need to apologize. I don’t hold anything that you did against you.

You certainly had a right to send the apology. I had reasons for not wanting to send it myself, but I did not express them. I apologize for that. I tried to get the list to you as rapidly as I could, but I had never done that in Chrome (which is what I use for CBA stuff), and I could not find the file that I had exported for almost an hour.  I am also sorry that I did not ask you or someone from the board to review the original email.

Most of all I am sorry that this whole mess caused a battle of wills between two people who need to be on the same side in the fight to prolong the future of face-to-face bridge.  

A lot of people approached me at the club in the ensuing weeks to tell me that they were sorry that I had to endure this. I did not say so, but in fact the only thing that really bothered me was the prospect of being removed from the D25 Executive Committee.

Epilogue: I received one more mild complaint. Lynn Thomas, whom I did not know, wrote me that the email was “very un-PC”. I asked her who would be offended. She replied “the entire Native American community”.

I sent this email to her:

I have researched this and seen absolutely no statistical evidence for your claim. Are Native Americans offended by James Fenimore Cooper’s secondary character of Chingachgook, the Last of the Mohicans? Do you think that it is impossible for a writer to create an inoffensive character of a different race, nationality, or gender? Tonto was beloved by millions of Americans, and merchandise that features him is still all over the Internet.

I think that Tonto’s character stands on its own. He was as close to a flawless individual as I can imagine, and he was portrayed on TV by a Native American, Jay Silverheels. His grammar wasn’t great, but obviously English was not his native tongue. If he is compared to anyone, it should be to the other sidekicks, who were always quirky and sometimes buffoons. My firm opinion is that we should not cancel the character of Tonto.

And his horse, Scout, was just as cool as Silver, and he didn’t rear all the time.

I should have also emphasized that Tonto really rocked those buckskins.

Linda Starr had the last word: “From Monday night’s (actually Tuesday’s, I think) NYT online crossword puzzle. I was so offended, I could barely finish the puzzle. I hope the press doesn’t get hold of this!!!”

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The Limited Sectional that the original email promoted was very successful. You can read about it here.

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1. I maintained a relational database that contained one record for everyone in the ACBL from 2014 on. I also had a free MailChimp account that allowed me to send emails to several thousand people at a time, and I was allowed to use two lists. One list I used several times per week for the Simsbury Bridge Club. The other I used for this project.

2. NLM is short for non-Life Master. The rank of Life Master had several criteria, one was the earning of 75 silver masterpoints. All points at sectional tournaments were silver. Other opportunities for receiving them were rare.

3. Rich DeMartino was a legend in the CT bridge community. He held the highest rank in the ACBL, Grand Life Master, and had won a World Championship. He was District Director of New England for many years. Both Peter and I had worked closely with him and held him in very high regard.

4. The actual attendance, even excluding the considerable number of volunteers from the HBC, was considerably more than the upper limit that Peter mentioned.