1948-1970 Mom and Me

Posted on August 16, 2024 by Mike

This was the most difficult to write of the hundreds of entries in this project. I decided to set an ending date of 1970 because after I left for the army face-to-face contacts with my mom were quite limited. My dad came to see me when I was working at the Hartford, but it was only for a day at the end of a business trip. Mom stayed home. I don’t remember them visiting us at all for the three years we lived in Plymouth. They both came to Detroit once, and they did not like it at all. After my wife Sue and I moved back to Connecticut they visited a handful of times, but, except for the first trip, they spent most of their time with my sister Jamie and her family.

Sue and I visited them in 1973. After that we were too poor and too busy to travel much until I started flying much more in the nineties. I arranged a stop in the Kansas City area whenever it was feasible, which was pretty often. However, the ones when she was still alive were mostly for parties or other celebrations. I remember very little of the conversation. Also, through much of this period she was reluctant to contribute much.

In fact, I reluctantly admit that the sum total of my knowledge about my mother is pitiful. Dolores Ann Cernech was born on October 2, 1925, in Kansas City. Her parents were John and Clara Cernech. My understanding is that Clara was half German and half Polish. Cernech is a Croatian name. John’s mother was at least partly Irish.

Mom grew up in Kansas City, KS. In 1943 she graduated from Bishop Ward High School, which was less than a mile from the Cernech residence at 40 N. Thorpe. Students in her graduating class were asked to specify who their favorite band leader was (!) and what they hoped to become in life. Dolores Ann Cernech answered “Tommy Dorsey” and “Private Secretary”. The latter seemed like a peculiar response in the age of Rosie the Riveter.

I am not sure how she met my dad, who was a year older and went to high school in Atchison, KS, about fifty miles away. My understanding is that they were already acquainted before my dad enlisted in the army in 1942.

I wish that I had learned more about what my mom did in the period between her graduation and Jim Wavada’s discharge from the army in February of 1946. I have a vague recollection that she had worked in a clerical position somewhere, but she must have been communicating with my dad while he was in the army. They were married on September 1, 1947, which was eighteen and a half months after he was discharged from the army. It definitely was not a shotgun wedding. It was officiated in St. Peter’s by my dad’s brother, whom I knew as Fr. Joe. I did not show up until eleven and a half months later.

What transpired in the year and a half between my dad’s discharge and the wedding? Decades later he disclosed two nuggets of information about that period: 1) Mom’s father was against the marriage, but Clara persuaded him that it was for the best; 2) He might have gotten into serious trouble if he did not get married.¹ He also mentioned something about pinball machines, which in those days were common in bars.

Dolores and Jim took up residence in the Cernech’s house in KC KS. I am not sure if John and Clara lived there at the time. It was not a large house, and I know that at some point John, an employee of the Boss Glove Company, was transferred to Grand Island, NE. I have dozens of questions that I should have asked while they were still alive. Did they have a honeymoon? If so, where? Presumably my dad worked at BMA. Did mom work, too, at first? How did they get around? They did not have a car until 1954.

I have no doubt that my mom ran the household’s finances from day one. My dad was nearly incapable of balancing a checkbook. For the most part she was very frugal at least during the time that I lived at home. My dad bought suits and other dress clothes for work. My mom sewed most of her own clothes.

I am equally certain that my mom took on any task that involve any kind of a machine or any tools. My dad had the least mechanical aptitude of anyone whom I have ever encountered. What about yardwork? The house on N. Thorpe had a very small yard. I doubt that the family owned a power mower. So, somebody must have mowed the grass with an old-fashioned push mower. Uncle Rich might have helped, but my money is on mom. I can’t imagine my dad doing it even once.

Life in KC KS 1948-54

The first big event after the marriage was my birth on August 17, 1948. It must have been a horrific shock for her to see my mangled face. I have been told that the physicians performed the first surgery shortly after birth. There were follow-up procedures before I started going to school and another one after I completed the eighth grade.

My parents almost never brought this up. They had obviously discussed the matter and decided that they wanted me not to fret about my appearance. That certainly succeeded. Very few people whom I have met paid as little attention to appearances as I did.

I remember one trip to the shoe store when I was quite young. The salesman talked mom into purchasing arch supports for my very flat feet. I think that that only happened once. After that off-the-rack was good enough. I did not start using arch supports regularly again until I was in my seventies. Those came from Walmart, cost $10, and could be worn with any shoe or none.

I cannot remember my grandparents ever living in the Cernech house with us. Richard Keuchel², Clara’s youngest brother, lived with us. He kept to himself most of the time, but I remember that he occasionally brought me a small present or gave me some coins for baseball cards.

I vaguely remember mom taking me with her on a few shopping trips. Most of the time she probably walked to Central Ave., a lively retail area just a couple of blocks from the house. We might have taken an occasional bus or “street car” (trolley) as well.

The one type of excursion that impressed me the most was trips to the library. I was allowed to pick out my own books in the children’s section. My tastes primarily ran to westerns. I don’t remember her reading these books to me, but she must have, at least at first. I remember also that I had a rather large book that had fables in it. The only one that I recall was about an ant and a fiddle-playing grasshopper.

My recollection, which is probably at least a little off, is that I had the run of the neighborhood by the time that I was four or five. I am pretty certain that I walked to both kindergarten and first grade, and I remember spending a lot of time with my friends in the neighborhood. I don’t think that I was allowed to cross the alley in back of the house by myself, but I remember playing with friends up and down N. Thorpe Street. I also remember our telephone number, FAirfax 9890.

I remember attending several weddings and funerals of mom’s relatives. However, we had no automobile. Maybe those took place after we moved.

Did my mom have any friends? I don’t recall any. She knew everyone on N. Thorpe. She grew up there. Someone told me that she selected one of her classmates from Ward High to be her maid of honor. I have a photo of the wedding, but the people are not identified. I think that the same lady might have been my godmother, but she did not have any role thereafter in my mother’s life.

Maybe looking after me was all that mom could handle. Four instances came to mind that might have made her wonder what she had gotten herself into:

In addition to all of the trips to the hospital, she also arranged sessions for me with a speech therapist. This was apparently in anticipation of difficulties in speaking due to the amount of plastic in my upper lift. I don’t remember ever having trouble articulating, and I did well in the formal presentation required by the therapist.
I related the story here about the rock-thrower whom I beat up in kindergarten. I received no punishment that I remember. Mom and the teacher explained that what I did was wrong, but I don’t remember their reasoning. My reasoning was that “he had it coming.” In westerns this happened to people all the time.
One morning I made a scene at Mass because The Lone Ranger was on television³, and I did not want to miss it. I think that mom had to escort me out of the church on that occasion, but I am only guessing.
The problem that I had with the box of letters in first grade is also documented here. I would really love to know what mom thought when the nun informed her that I seemed incapable of reading and writing.

The only other vivid memory that I have of life on N. Thorpe was of mom painting a fruit tree freehand on one of the walls in the kitchen. Everyone praised it. In retrospect it made me wonder what else she could have accomplished if she were not so devoted to our small family. Unfortunately I inherited my artistic ability from Jim.

There might have been some trips. I think that the two of us took a train trip somewhere in the south. Clara (and maybe John) may have also been along. It seems to me that we spent some time in Hot Springs, AR. I am pretty sure that we also visited mom’s relatives in the Dallas area either on that trip or a separate junket. The mother’s name was Jule Palmer or something like that. Either or both of these might have been after the move, but I don’t think so.

Mom loved animals. I remember a dog named Trixie, which was, I am pretty sure, Mom’s pet before she got married. Trixie must have died before we moved. I have no recollection of her at our new house. I am pretty sure that we also had a pet parakeet named Mickey before we moved. Someone taught him to talk, probably mom.

Prairie Village

I found a set of four photos developed at Katz drugs, which was near our house in PV. They were dated Easter 1955. The other three are also at a train station, and they all include a couple whom I don’t recognize.

In early 1955 the three of us moved to 7717 Maple, Prairie Village, KS, about twenty miles south of the house on N. Thorpe. In addition to setting up a household in a suburban location, mom almost immediately had to deal with my childhood illnesses—chicken pox, measles, and whooping cough—that I contracted one after another. Fortunately, that was pretty much the last time that I was sick until I contracted the Russian Flu during exam week in college.

Evidently mom’s father did not think much of the blue house on Maple St. He called it “a cracker box.” My dad told me much later that my mom uncharacteristically retorted, “Yes, but it’s our cracker box.” Well, theirs and the bank’s.

I remember that mom took me to the doctor to receive the smallpox vaccine. I have always hated the idea of injections, and I dreaded this. I had to return for a second (and maybe a third) vaccine because the first one “didn’t take.” The second one did not either. I never got that little volcano-shaped scar on my arm. For the only time that I can remember mom took me aside and told me in a deadly serious tone that I must NEVER forget what she was about to tell me. If ever there was another outbreak of smallpox, it was critical for me to receive the vaccine again.

I spent no time in the hospital while we were living in Prairie Village, but I spent a lot of time at the doctor’s office. I ran into a shopping cart at the grocery store one day. It did not require stitches, but the mark is still visible just a quarter of an inch from my right eye. I ran into a parked car on the lot of Queen of the Holy Rosary during recess. I dodged the tag, and the nineteen stitches in my mouth were a badge of honor. I got four more stitches when I ran into the barbecue grill in our backyard while catching a popup that my dad threw to me. While returning a punt on the football field my nose got smashed and bent a little. On all of these occasions mom drove me to see Dr. Battey, our family physician. On one of the later occasions he told her that my head was held together by catgut.

I almost forgot one incident. Mom insisted that I take the free swimming lessons offered at the PV public pool. I rode my bike to the pool for the morning lessons. One day a German Shepherd came running out of a house on my left, growled, and chomped me on my leg. Someone called mom, and she came and got me. I don’t know how many stitches were required. The dog did not have rabies or anything else. He just got loose that day.

I hated the swimming lessons because I got so cold that my teeth chattered. Also, that was where I realized my footprints looked like they were made by a duck with toes. However, I later was glad that I learned how to swim.

When my myopia became evident in the third or fourth grade, mom took me to the optometrist. Since then I have seldom been seen without my specs unless I was in water or playing football.

My mom drove me to many activities. While writing this I began to wonder when and how she learned to drive, and how she got her license. Maybe she learned before she got married.

Aside from my tendency to run full-speed into inanimate objects, I did not cause many problems for her. She never helped me with homework, but I didn’t need it until I got to the chain rule in calculus class. She didn’t need to nag me to do it. I got tired every evening and voluntarily went to bed at about the same time. She never had to wake me for school. I was usually awake before she was. I took the bus to school, and I was always ready and waiting for the Bluebird.

What she did help me with were projects. I remember that we had to make a map of a state or country out of papier mache. I picked France. I was making a big mess of it until she stepped in. She also helped out with my years in scouting. She was an excellent den mother for a while; all the guys said so. When I had trouble growing bean plants for the Nature merit badge, she gave me a tip (I don’t remember its nature) that allowed me to succeed. She also made a costume of St. Peter for me for wear for an all-saints version of Halloween.

In retrospect I find it incredible that she was willing to get up to drive me to Queen for the 6am Masses for which I was a server and then pick me up when it was over. She also carted me around to sporting events. I often stayed after school (and therefore missed the bus) for band practice or great books or safety patrol or scouts or the school newspaper or football or basketball. Sometimes I walked home, but at least half of the time I engaged mom’s taxi service.

I do not remember Mom giving me much advice beyond basic Catholic principles. However, I very clearly remember her reaction when I got into a fight with Michael Bortnick. He was my age but considerably bigger. I came into the house crying and told mom that he beat me up, and he was bigger than I was. She merely replied, “Then you should have avoided fighting him.” I remembered that and applied it with great success throughout my remaining life..

As soon as I was old enough I got to play on a team in the local 3&2 baseball program that served as a Little League for Johnson County, KS. The team was sponsored by Sunflower Drugs. I undoubtedly made the team through the intercession of Don Wood’s father. This was the last summer before I got glasses. I was a good fielder and base runner, but I batted .000. I only hit the ball once—on my very last at-bat.

The next summer I did not make the team. I was ready to quit baseball, even though I really wanted to play. I was even more depressed than I was when I missed a catechism question in second grade (described here). I was totally unprepared mentally for failure.

My mom told me that I should not quit; there were plenty of other teams. It was good advice. I somehow learned about the team sponsored by Bauman’s Red Goose Shoes. I had a good time on that team, and I even got quite a few hits.

Mom did not like the idea of me playing football in the seventh and eighth grade, but she allowed me to go out for the team. Even after she had to take me to the doctor after I got clobbered on a punt return, she let me continue. It meant a great deal to me.

I remember that for a short period we (I am not sure if Jamie was involved) spent a few minutes every evening reading the Bible from start to … well, I think that we finished Genesis before the project was abandoned. I would love to have heard that decision being made.

Like millions of other Americans our family owned a nicely bound Bible with those incredibly thin pages. Ours, of course, was the Douay-Rheims version, which is the only English version recognized by the Catholic Church. It had a dozen or so brightly colored illustrations. I don’t know what happened to it.

My mom was friendly with all of the neighbors, but the only ones that she socialized with were the Leahys. I remember that once when I was in second or third grade she was late getting home from somewhere. For perhaps the only time ever I was all alone after the school bus dropped me off. I started crying, and Jean Wallace, the lady with three kids of her own who lived directly across the street, calmed me down.

At some point we procured a phonograph player and a few records, probably 78s, which in those days were made of very brittle shellac. My dad’s favorite song was Eddie Fisher’s version of “Oh, My Papa”. I was playing it one day. When I took it off the turntable, I dropped it, and it broke. I was very upset, but mom consoled me.

The only television shows that I remember my parents watching were Your Hit Parade and Perry Como’s show. As the English say, my mom fancied Perry. We watched a lot of other shows, too, but none of them stand out in reference to my mom.

When she was working, which seemed to be doing all of the time, she often broke into a song. The one that she sang the most was the Andrews Sisters’ version of “Dance with a Dolly”⁴.

Jamie

One day shortly after we moved to PV my parents announced to me that they were “praying” to have another child⁵. I thought that this was a great idea. I would have a baby brother whom I could boss around and eventually teach “the ropes”. Imagine my shock when dad told me that mom had given birth to an girl on January 4, 1956. Did they actually pray for a girl? Why?

Jamie was nothing like me. Her face was decidedly not mangled. By the time that she was a few years old she had blonde hair⁶. Even I thought that she was good looking. Furthermore she avoided crashing into objects much better than I did. Her visits to Dr. Battey’s office were always routine.

I was approximately seven and a half years older than Jamie. I figured that she could figure out pat-a-cake on her own, and so I mostly ignored her. However, we often watched Captain Kangaroo and Romper Room together before I went to school.

The fact that mom had another little one to mind nearly all the time that I was in grade school made it even more remarkable that she was willing to drive me to all my activities. I think that it also explained why she let me roam the neighborhood with no evident supervision. She even let me shoot off firecrackers on the Fourth of July.

Decades later Jamie told me that as she was walking to kindergarten at Tomahawk School some older boys accosted her. I had heard nothing about this, but I was often oblivious. I wonder what I would have done if I knew about this. I would have been in the eighth grade, at least two years older than anyone at Tomahawk.

I remember that I asked mom one year whether I could help with playing Santa Claus on Christmas eve. She let me do it. I don’t remember any details.

Our pets have been discussed in some detail here. My mother’s role was central. My dad had no use for animals. He was obviously either fearful of or disgusted with them to an extent that I never saw in any other person. Mom made sure that they were

Mom handled the tricky situation that begin with the appearance of a dachshund (eventually named Sam by me) with no tags brilliantly. She allowed him to go back to his owners on his own, but for some reason he seemed want to stay at our house. She advertised somewhere that we had him, and eventually someone claimed him. Jamie was crushed, and I was also upset, but mom explained to us that we had no right to take him from the other family.

My grandmother Hazel came to the rescue by giving us her pet dachshund Tippy. However, he seemed to want to spend most of his time with me.

Leawood

At the end of the 1961-62 school year the Wavadas moved south and east a few miles to 8800 Fairway in Leawood. Once again we were in a new parish, Curė of Ars. Jamie started grade school in September at C of A, and I started my freshman year at Rockhurst High School. So, this was a new experience for everyone.

I don’t recall having many conversations with my mom. I cannot remember asking her any probing questions. My recollection is that on most days she worked pretty much from the time that she got up until the supper dishes were in the dishwasher, and all of the food and accoutrements had been put away. The one major incident in my youthful life that she had to deal with was the time in 1964 when she had to accompany me to traffic court. Nothing came of it, but I did grow up a little bit that evening.

My mother was a great cook. We enjoyed delicious meals almost every day except, of course, on Friday. My parents decided that instead of eating out occasionally, we would have steak on Saturday evening. My dad grilled them over charcoal on the patio in good weather. If the weather did not allow that, mom broiled them. My favorite meal, by far, was fried chicken⁷. We had it once a week, usually on Wednesdays.

I was not big on breakfasts. Cereal usually sufficed for me. A special treat was “pigs in the blanket”, which were link sausages baked inside of biscuits that had been folded over them.

My lunches were the envy of everyone in my classes. Usually I had a ham sandwich, an apple or other fruit, a small bag of chips, and a thermos of soup. Most kids had to put up with cheese sandwiches or PB&J with little or no variety. I went to a Catholic school; many of those moms were making at least a half dozen lunches. In high school I usually ate lunch in the cafeteria.

Trips

My dad worked in the sales department at BMA. Every few years my dad and mom would take a business trip together for big meetings. They were generally at a resort or in the vicinity of special events. They were usually gone for the better part of the week. Sometimes they hired someone to take care of Jamie and me. I had very little interaction with these women. I remembered that the suppers that they prepared with uniformly disappointing.

I found four photos that were labeled “Easter 1957” by the company that developed them. At the time I was finishing second grade, and Jamie was a little over one year old. They show my mom and dad stepping onto a train. Based on her outfit, this must have been a business trip on which she joined him. Someone must have taken the photo. I am guessing that it was Clara Cernech. She probably took care of us while they were gone.

My mom did not regale us with tales of these adventures. I remember that she was most impressed by the one in Banff, Canada. I have no recollection of her talking about any of the other places, and I doubt that I pestered her for details.

Details about our family vacation trips have been provided here.The four of us took one big vacation to the east coast while we were living in PV. Mom took over the driving for a part of the trip. That was the only time that I ever saw my dad riding shotgun. Most of her time was spent with Jamie, who was only three or four years old. Our other trips were usually to Minnesota. Mom must have enjoyed the breaks from cooking and cleaning, but she mostly seemed to busy herself with other things.

Health

My mom was in good shape. She did not smoke. She drank very little, and ate mostly fresh foods in moderate amounts. She also exercised. I remember her watching Jack LaLanne and his dogs, Happy and Walter. I never partook of these activities, but I remember being awestruck when Jack nonchalantly did vertical pushups on a step on a ladder.

She also played golf a little. She played with my dad and me a few times, and while I was waiting to get drafted we played as a twosome. I think that she played with other ladies off and on. She was a good athlete, but her golf swing got worse the more that she played. In the end she bounced her torso up and down on every swing. This peculiar motion made it very difficult to hit the ball cleanly. I always suspected that advice from my dad was responsible for the degradation of her game. I don’t know how much (or even if) she played after I entered the army.

She wast 5’7″, which was considered quite tall in the forties. She was skinny enough to be nicknamed bird-legs in high school. She never got fat or even a little pudgy.

I only remember mom being sick a few times, mostly during the Christmas season. Overworking and the pressure probably got to her. She did have a few issues. Her “sinuses” bothered her a lot. She took Dristan tablets for the “sinus headaches”, but they did not help much. I also remember some kind of saltwater purge that she did. When my dad quit smoking many years later this issue disappeared almost immediately.

She also suffered from varicose veins. I don’t know any details. She might have also had diabetes. I know that her mother did. Mom never complained about anything, and she never let any symptoms slow her down.

When she was in middle age she started to have problems with memory and confusion. It was not Alzheimer’s, but the doctors never were able to pinpoint what caused her so much difficulty. My dad said that she asked him one time, “Jim, what did I do wrong to deserve this?” Of course, he had no answer.

When she died in 1998 (described here) my dad did not request an autopsy to determine what the source of her problems was. I rather hoped that he would, because I wanted to do something about it if I inherited it. I am older when I write this than she was when she died. So, I guess that I did not get it.

The biggest regret in my life is that I squandered the opportunity to know this wonderful woman better.

What I inherited from my mom:

Skin color
Hair
Build
Social reticence
Love of music (but different taste)
Work ethic
General demeanor
Aversion to arguments
Early bird.

1. The fact that I asked no more questions is, to me, convincing evidence that I must be somewhere on the autism spectrum. I have never asked people about their lives. Although I have always been good at remembering names, I almost never remember the names of relatives of acquaintances, even if I have seen them many times. For example, I have a great deal of difficulty remembering names of members of Sue’s family. I know my own cousins, but I could not name any of their children. It never really occurred to me that I was excessively solipsistic. I just considered myself less nosy than most. In my defense I always try to think of the potential effect on others before I do something, and I never deliberately do anything that might inflict pain on someone else.

2. Uncle Rich apparently died in 1972. My recollection is that he worked for a company called Gustin Bacon Mfg. that manufactured pipe joints and, for a time, air horns for trains. I have no idea what he did there. I also don’t know if he remained in the house on North Thorpe after the Wavadas moved south in 1955.

3. I don’t know when we purchased the TV, but I was a big fan of the Howdy Doody Show, and I am almost certain that I watched Hopalong Cassidy, which only ran until 1952. I cannot picture our television in the house on N. Thorpe, but we must have had it there.

4. This was a bizarre song: three women fantasizing about dancing with another woman. “All the fellows wishing they were me.”

5. This naturally raises the question of whether my parents employed birth control. The Church has never sanctioned anything besides the “rhythm method” for birth control. If that was what they did, they were certainly good at it. I was conceived a little over two months after their marriage. Jamie was conceived shortly after they moved to a new house with a spare room.

6. It turned quite a bit darker by the time that she went to school.

7. When I started cooking for myself I almost immediately tried to fry chicken. I never got it quite right. It is difficult and time-consuming. The spattering of grease makes a mess. I eventually just gave up. It did not seem to me to be worth the effort.

8. In my dad’s estate I found a used ticket for Super Bowl III and one for the Rose Bowl in 1970 that featured Michigan and Southern Cal.

1948-1979 Catholic Upbringing

Posted on August 1, 2024 by Mike

Catholicism and me. Continue reading →

This is a painting of the Ursulines arrive in New Orleans in 1627. I can testify that heir fashions did not change a whit in the next 335 years.

I have been a Catholic or an ex-Catholic for all but a few days of my life. My parents arranged for me to be baptized as a Catholic as soon as it was possible. My mother and father were Catholics. Every single relative whom I met was Catholic. I attended Mass every Sunday and holy day of obligation for approximately three decades. I went to Catholic schools for twelve years; most of my teachers were Ursuline nuns or Jesuits. I was an altar boy in grade school, and a member of the Sodality in high school. I went to a state university, but I never missed Mass, even when I was out of town on vacation or a debate trip. I never missed Mass when I was in the army, working in Hartford, or living in Plymouth, MI, in the seventies. Catholicism formed me in many ways.

Catechism

Biblical stories were rare in Catholic schools.

Catholicism is fundamentally different from other Christian religions in at least three ways. Catholics are not educated using biblical stories, and they are not encouraged to read the Bible on their own. I never heard about Bible studies until I started associating with Protestants. Young Catholics are taught what to believe using the catechism, a thin book of fundamental questions and correct (or at least authorized) answers about God and humans. Catholic students—at least in those days—spent hours memorizing them and many more hours being drilled about them. The first two pairs in the version that we used were:

“Q: Who made you?” “A: God made me.”
“Q: Why did God make you?” “A: God made me to show forth his goodness and to make me happy with him in heaven.”

There were many more. I remember that Sr. Lucy’s second-grade class had an oral exam that covered eight or ten pages¹ of these questions and answers. Before the test I was quite certain that I had all of the answers memorized, but I totally blanked on one of them. This failure totally crushed my spirit. I might have even cried. Sr.Lucy tried to comfort me, but at that point I was accustomed to academic success and just could not countenance my failure.

The catechism was comprehensive and coherent. It represented what Catholics believed. You could argue about other things, but contradicting anything in the catechism was, literally, heresy. For decades I assumed that other sects also had a fixed set of beliefs. When much later I participated in a group reading religious literature, I was shocked to find that the participants—al members of the same Protestant denomination—did not understand and agree upon the fundamental concepts of faith and hope. These people did not share the same religious beliefs. They just liked their minister and the other members of their flock.

To Catholics faith was agreement with the postulates of the catechism. Hope was confidence in God keeping up His/Her/Their side of the bargain. Love was respect for all of creation.

Seven Sacraments

The second identifying feature of the Catholic religion is its seven sacraments.

Other denominations baptize their members. A Catholic baptism has the primary purpose of providing absolution for “original sin”, a tarnish inherited from Adam and Eve that precludes salvation². That explains why the ceremony is arranged by Catholic families almost immediately after birth, and why the infant has no say in the matter.

We were taught that if someone who had not been baptized—whether a solid citizen or a mass murderer—was about to die, it was your duty to baptize them. A priest was NOT required. The nuns taught us that there were several forms of baptism, some of which did not even require holy water. I remember kids arguing about whether water from the radiator of a car could be used in an emergency. The answer may have involved the percentage of antifreeze.

The sacrament that involves confessionals is called penance³. Few, if any, other denominations have meticulously prescribed methods for forgiveness of the myriad sins committed after baptism has wiped one’s slate (that is how I thought of it) clean. Some protestants (commonly called heathens by Church members) claimed that faith alone was enough, but that has always seemed transparently flawed to me. What’s faith got to do, got to do with it? You sinned; you died without absolution; you go to hell.

Cleansing the slate requires confessing one’s sins to an ordained priest. Catholic priests can withhold absolution if they are skeptical of either the penitent’s “heartfelt contrition” or the expression of a “firm purpose of amendment”. To me it made sense that the well-trained clerics were called on to make these important decisions.

Heathens often want to know what it is like to go to confession. For me the anticipation was worse than the event. No priest ever asked me to provide any sordid details, and certainly none ever withheld absolution. The “penance” prescribed could be anything, but in my experience it usually was a small number of Our Fathers and/or Hail Marys as well as “a good act of contrition”, in a prescribed format. After a few years of Catholic schools I (and everyone else whom I knew) could recite these prayers very rapidly. We used to hold races.

I never confessed any “mortal sins”, offenses that would be serious enough to merit eternal damnation. Should I have confessed my involvement with Sue while her first husband was still alive? I don’t think so. The Catholic Church did not recognize their marriage; why should I? Whether the Church would have condoned the forty years that elapsed before we were wed in a short civil wedding is a moot point. By that time I had fallen by the wayside.

Youngsters were allowed to receive the Eucharist when they reached “the age of reason”, usually in the second or third grade. That does not mean that they understand the concept of transubstantiation on which the sacrament is based. However, they were required to make a good confession before their first communion, and the two requisites for absolution demand the ability to distinguish right from wrong. By second or third grade most Catholic youngsters had a pretty good idea of what was “class participation” and what could get your knuckles rapped.

The Eucharist has always been part of the Mass. In my youth the priest lay the consecrated host on your tongue; he did not hand it to you. The priest drank a little wine, but he did not share it with the communicants.

Before receiving the consecrated host for the first time our class had a dry run. It felt like a piece of paper that wants to adhere to the tongue. It has neither of the taste nor the texture of food. I had a lot of difficulty swallowing the (unconsecrated) host the first time that a nun put one on my tongue. I don’t know why; I never experienced any subsequent difficulty.

You can tell he’s a bishop by his crook and his miter.

I never really understood how confirmation fit into the sacraments⁴. It was supposed to make you stronger. You were allowed to pick a name; I chose Peter. The archbishop came to town. We all lined up, and he went down the line and gave each person a gentle slap on the cheek.

Almost no one has ever received all seven sacraments. One would need to be ordained as a priest (holy orders) and married (matrimony). Since women have never been allowed to be priests, half of the population was immediately excluded. A few widowers have been ordained late in life. I never asked whether priests who disclaimed their vows could be married. A vow is a vow, but there may be some wiggle room that I don’t know about.

Father Brown whipped out his stole and ointment and performed extreme unction on lots of murder victims.

Up to the end of the sixties the seventh sacrament was called extreme unction. “Unction” meant anointing with oil; “extreme” meant that it was reserved for terminal cases. I considered this a great name, but it has undergone several rebrandings in the last few decades. It was called last rites for a while and then the sacrament of the sick. At some point it was renamed anointing the sick.

As I understood it, the oil lubricated the pathway to heaven for someone who was deathly ill. On television it was sometimes used even when the symptoms included the termination of all bodily functions. You can never be too careful. Maybe the living soul was stuck between two non-functioning organs. Why take a chance?

Popes

The papacy is the other unique institution. One person, the Bishop of Rome, is given the lifetime occupation of administering the Church worldwide. It has worked pretty well for 2,000 years or so. In the twentieth century I was about as familiar with the popes as the average Catholic. The popes in the first fifty years of my lifetime—Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, and John Paul II—were well respected by most Catholics. In general they did a good job directing the Church in all areas except one. The elephant in the room will be discussed below.

Several decades after I dropped out of Catholicism I conducted an incredibly detailed study of the papacy—the institution and the individuals. I discovered that the popes were quite diverse. Some were geniuses, some were greedy or vindictive, one was hen-pecked!. A fairly large number of them spent little or no time in Rome. The Holy Ghost, operating through the College of Cardinals (and a number of other diverse electorates), has demonstrated eclectic taste in pontiffs.

The illustrated book that I wrote about the popes is posted here. The story of how it came about is related in this blog entry.

The Calling

The nuns and, to a lesser extent, the Jesuits talked about “the calling”. They uniformly insisted that at some point in their lives an event of some kind occurred that demonstrated to them that their God-ordained destiny was a religious career. None of them described the nature of that event, but each one indicated that anyone who received such a calling understood that God had definitely designated his intention for them.

While I was in grade school and high school I was a devout Catholic and, at the same time, extremely arrogant. I expected to receive the calling from God, probably just after I was an all-America wide receiver at Notre Dame. I listened intently for the call. In my senior year of high school I went on a retreat for several days with the members of the Sodality at Rockhurst. The priest conducting the event emphasized that everyone should listen carefully for his calling. I did, but I heard nothing. I was quite disappointed.

Years later I gave some thoughts as to what the events that so many of my teachers interpreted as a calling could have been. If it was not the usual hormonal firestorm occurring in an unusual setting, I could not hazard a guess. Here’s a clue, however: two of the nuns who were my teachers at Queen of the Holy Rosary were Sr. Ralph and Sr. Kevin. Where did they come up with those names? They are supposed to choose the name of a saint. The following was published by the Houston Chronicle in 2005:

There are two Saint Ralphs in the Catholic hagiography: Ralph of Bourges, a ninth-century French abbot, and Ralph Crockett, a 16th-century English martyr. Compared to Saints Peter and Aquinas, the Ralphs were theological underachievers. Crockett tried to convert England to Catholicism but was hanged, drawn and quartered. Ralph of Bourges’ principal accomplishment seems to be taking part in the Synod of Meaux. Ralph, it appears, is the patron saint of mediocrity.

St. Kevin lived (allegedly for 120 years!) as a hermit in a very small cave in Ireland. This was on Wikipedia:

One of the most widely known poems of the Nobel prizewinner Seamus Heaney, ‘St Kevin and the Blackbird’, relates the story of Kevin holding out his hand with trance-like stillness while a blackbird builds a nest in it, lays eggs, the eggs hatch and the chicks fledge.

No wonder I didn’t hear anything on that retreat.

“Falling Away”

My transition from ardent Catholic to complete skeptic was a fairly sudden one. The events involved were described in this blog entry.

I must emphasize that in the twelve years that I attended Catholic schools I did not witness or even hear any rumors of any kind of questionable conduct from any teachers or administrators. Furthermore, I did not hear of any inappropriate behavior at any parish that I lived in.

One slightly peculiar event occurred in the few months that I was stationed at Seneca Army Depot in 1972. I have described it in this blog entry.

My dad once told me a story that he heard from his brother Joe, the Benedictine priest (introduced here). Evidently, when he was still in Burlington, IA, he approached the prior or the abbot or some other Catholic bigwig to complain about abusive conduct by one of the other priests. The only result was that the offender was moved to another part of the country. My uncle may have made a minor stink about this and/or threatened to make a major stink. In any case he too was transferred. His destination was as remote as is imaginable, Kelly, KS⁴. Imagine a small country town with a pastor who was a Benedictine monk with a masters degree in economics from the University of Chicago.

I cannot register any surprise at the Church’s response to the flood of allegations of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. I can only think of three explanations for such behavior by a clergyman:: mental illness, possession by the devil, or simple unwillingness to resist the temptation. In any case the perp was probably called to account for his deeds. He was undoubtedly asked if he was contrite and whether he would be able to prevent recurrences. He almost certainly answered “yes” to both questions. If the bishop felt that he was sincere, he would have no choice but to provide absolution. The man’s immortal soul was at stake. The actions may have been (usually were) criminal, but they did not put anyone’s soul in jeopardy.

If the bishop was not convinced, then he would be faced with the prospect of choosing between mandating mental health assistance, initiating an exorcism, or calling the cops. All of these options would be considered disastrous by any bishop. Keep in mind that the offender had received a calling to work for the Church. He and the other clergy were the tools that the bishop was asked to deploy in order to provide eternal salvation, In my day the number of vocations was critically low and decreasing. So, why not see if the situation could be salvaged?

I don’t think that it was an official policy. Nevertheless, the bishops made the same decision almost without exception: They quietly tramsferred the perps to a different location. This would solve the problem if the subject was actually willing and able to stop his crimes, or if the new location did not provide the same temptations. This may have occasionally worked, or it may have worked long enough for either the perp to die or become unable to commit the crimes or for the bishop to die or be replaced. The other solutions mentioned above would have certainly removed one of the clergy on whom the bishop depended and generated publicity that would likely reduce vocations in the future.

Altar Boy

I served as an altar boy for two or three years. At Queen there were two Masses every weekday. One was at 6am. The other, which was attended by all of the students. was held at 8:30. The 6 o’clock mass was always a low mass, which meant that only two candles on either side of the tabernacle had to be lit by the senior server, mostly because there was no music. These Masses were also much shorter and required only two servers. Actually one would suffice in a pinch, but two looked more balanced.

Sometimes the 8:30 Masses were high Masses. That required lighting six candle that were much higher on the altar. A device⁶ with a long wick at the end of a brass pole is used both to light and snuff the candles. This was the one thing that required a bit of skill. If a lit wick broke off and landed on the altar cloth, there would be heck to pay.

The Mass always proceeded in the same order. The only variation was for the epistle and gospel readings and the sermon. The first two were determined by the Church’s official calendar. The sermon was determined by the priest. At the daily Mass, low or high, it was generally omitted. It was hard enough to keep hundreds of squirmy youngsters under control even when the nuns required that each leave room for his/her guardian angel on one side.

The rest of the Mass was called the “ordinary”. While I was a server it was all in Latin. To become a server you had to memorize all of the responses. Some of these, like “amen” and “et cum spiritu tuo” were easy, but the ones in the beginning were somewhat challenging. The very first response was “ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam.”⁷ Probably the reason for multiple servers at nearly all Masses was to make sure that at least one was able to say the proper response out loud.

At a high Mass the following were sung by the entire congregation: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei. There were several sets of music for these. Some of them were quite elaborate. There were often hymns at other spots as well. All of these were in blue books that were available in the pews.

The servers were not asked to sing, but each had designated duties. The one on the right rang the bells to wake up parishioners that the important part was coming. The two in the middle handled the cruets that were used in the ablution section The one on the left was called “the dead end” because he (no girls!) had no special responsibilities. When they were not busy, the servers knelt⁸ at the foot of the altar. They got to sit during the epistle, gospel, and sermon. One of the nuns would always be on the lookout for squirming or poor posture.

The priest’s dressing room, called the sacristy was on the left (from the point of view of the congregants) of the altar. Priests wore (at a minimum) a white chasuble and cincture beneath the vestments, which varied in color depending on the type of Mass and the calendar. Green was the most common. The servers’ room was on the right. They wore white short-sleeve surplices over black cassocks. There were about ten of each to choose from, first come first serve. I like to get there early. In the eighth grade I was one of the tallest, and only two or three went down to my ankles. Both the priest and the servers were fully dressed before donning their religious attire.

It was considered an honor to be an altar boy. In retrospect I find it amazing that my mom was willing to drive me to the early service. She was supportive of almost anything that I wanted to undertake.

Mackerel Snappers

Those fish were not “wild caught” within 500 miles of Kansas City.

In the Wavada household meat was NEVER served on Friday. It was likewise absent from my grade and high schools. My recollection is that I had cereal for breakfast and cheese sandwiches for lunch. There was no fresh lobster in the Kansas City area. The only offerings for supper that I remember were spicy boiled shrimp, fried catfish, fish sticks, and tuna and noodle casserole. The last was by far my favorite of those four. However, I don’t think that I complained much. My mother was a very good cook.

Why did we (and nearly every other Catholic family) deliberately refrain from eating meat on Fridays? I don’t think that it was actually decreed by the Church in the way that attending Mass was. That was derived from one of the Ten Commandments. The fasting was just one example of the “offer it up” approach to life that was drummed into us. Whenever you were disappointed, upset, or frustrated, a nun or priest would tell you to offer the situation up to God. Friday was chosen in memory of Good Friday, on which Jesus suffered so much for the rest of us.

Catholics were also encouraged to give up something for Lent, the forty-day period before Easter. Most of the kids whom I knew gave up candy or nothing. Since I did not have a sweet tooth, that would not have been much of a sacrifice for me. I might have tried to do without Coke or potato chips, but I doubt that I had the willpower to endure forty days without them.

Prayers

Praying in the Catholic Church is largely a matter of rote. For example, saying the rosary consisted of saying 53 Hail Marys and a handful of Our Fathers and Glory Bes at a supersonic pace while cogitating about one of three sets of “mysteries”. My family recited the same prayer, which we called “Grace”, before every evening meal. At QHRS my vague recollection was that we all stood up at our desks and recited the same prayer right before lunch. My mother may have made me say it before breakfast. Here is what we said:

Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty through Christ, our Lord. Amen.

I never noticed before that there were two Lords in this prayer. One apparently owns the bounty; the other distributes it. If I had asked about this, I wonder what the nuns would have said.

Here is what I think about prayers with a specific purpose—asking for something, thanking for something, etc. If God is all-powerful, then He/She/They is also omniscient and therefore knows about the situation. Why would God care about whether someone debased himself to obtain something or express an emotion? Surely, if God is ever willing to tamper with nature, the decision would not be induced by nagging. Similarly, why would God care about whether someone was willing to forgo meat on Friday?

To me it is a lot easier to understand why the Church and its clergy would care about enforcing discipline than to think of a reason why an omniscient and omnipotent Being would be impressed by prayers or self-imposed suffering. I remember thinking how strange it was when both Argentina and Great Britain fought over the Falkland Islands. Both countries insisted that God was on their side in the conflict. I wonder if there were many conversions in Argentina from Catholicism to Anglicanism when the Brits prevailed.

Saints and Miracles

A few other religions have saints, dead people who are purportedly now in heaven. In the Roman and Greek Orthodox Churches they are a big deal. Cults that worship saints—especially Mary, Jesus’s mother—have developed over the years. “Queen of the Holy Rosary”, the name of our parish, was an example of the strange twists that the cults can take. Mary had nothing to do with the rosary. It was invented many years later. I don’t know if there is a singular “holy rosary” somewhere, but the only way that Mary is associated with the beads is the fact that the Hail Mary prayer is recited fifty-three times.

As far as I was concerned the popes decided—using a complicated legal process that involved the assessment of miracles and a “devil’s advocate”—who was a saint. Since the pope was infallible, that was it; they were in. Later I learned that during the first few hundred years of Christianity, lists of martyrs and other prominent Christians were created. At some point all of the people on the list were referred to as saints even though the process of getting on one of these lists was much less sophisticated than the rigorous process with which I was familiar.

The medals that I remember were pinned to the visor on the driver’s side.

In my day St. Christopher was one of the most popular of all saints. Many Catholics carried a medal of the saint. It supposedly provided protection against accidents. There were many contradictory stories about St. Christopher, but the evidence that he was a real person (as opposed to a fable or a composite of different people) was scant. In 1970, the year that I graduated from college, the Church removed him from the calendar, but he was still worshiped as a saint in some places. For that matter Charlemagne, who routinely executed thousands of people whom he captured, wass widely considered a saint and venerated as such. Although the emperor was never canonized, his statue was placed prominently in the narthex of St. Peter’s Basilica.

I think that my mom had a St. Christopher medal in her Oldsmobile 88. I could be wrong.

To be confirmed as a saint you had to have several miracles attributed to you. I firmly believed that there were thousands of documented miracles associated with these holy people. I took it as a “given”, not worth thinking about any more.

The nuns and priests that I encountered did not spend a lot of time discussing the saints. The one story that I remember vividly featured St. Dominic Savio and his biographer, Don Bosco. The saint died when he was only fifteen. Evidently he was extremely intelligent and absolutely devoted to becoming a saint. For a while I was inspired by his attitude, but eventually I reverted to my previous philosophy of doing whatever I could get away with.

The champion canonizer has himself been canonized by Pope Francis.

I am not sure which miracles Pope Pius XII (discussed in great detail here) attributed to little Dominic. By 1978, the beginning of the pontificate of Pope John Paul II, advancements in science had made obsolesced the standards of evidence previously used for verification of miracles. J2P2 canonized approximately 480 people, probably more than all of his predecessors combined. What process did he use? He just announced every so often that the list of saints was longer.

Much later I did a little research in the area of hagiography. I concluded that anyone who lived before the Renaissance and is considered a saint should be treated with suspicion. Some almost certainly were fabrications, others were probably composites of two or more stories, and some who were real people were rascals or worse..

Sacred Objects

The *duomo* in Milan is one of the most amazing plzdes that I have seen.

The Catholic Church has for a very long time made use of statues, paintings, and relics. The duomo in Milan has over 3,400 statues, including a very large number on its roof and a very famous one in the church of a flayed St. Bartholomew carrying his own skin. The altar in every church contains a blessed relic—usually a fragment of a bone alleged to be from a saint.

I remember that my class had a raffle of a few such tokens one year. Kids bought raffle tickets. First prize was a statue of Jesus that was perhaps fifteen inches in height. The secondary prizes were far inferior, probably “holy cards” with a picture of a saint or a miracle and some explanatory text on the back. For some reason I really wanted that statue. My only source of income was my allowance, which, if memory serves, was twenty-five cents per week. However, I spent almost nothing. I bought quite a few baseball cards over the years, but otherwise I was miserly.

On the day of the auction I brought all of my money to school and purchased more than half of the total tickets. Sure enough, I won the statue, but I did not win any of the other prizes. In retrospect I should have bought no tickets. After the auction I could have made the winner an offer he/she could not refuse.

I don’t remember what happened to that statue. I don’t think that it survived the move from Prairie Village to Leawood. For the most part my family did not take part in the iconography that was prevalent in Catholic homes in the fifties and sixties. However, I do remember wearing one religious item for quite a few years, a Brown Scapular.

The scapular was composed of two cloth rectangular pieces connect by two straps. One piece went on the front and one on the back. It was inspired by the habit of the Carmelites, which was, or course, much larger. The ones that I saw were woolen. Evidently, that requirement was dropped at some point.

You can’t just buy scapulars. I don’t remember this happening, but at some point the older kids at QHRS must have been “enrolled”. Part of the admonition is “Wear it as a sign of her [i.e., Mary’s] protection and of belonging to the Family of Carmel.” Furthermore, “whoever receives the scapular becomes a member of the order and pledges him/herself to live according to its spirituality in accordance with the characteristics of his/her state in life.”

Although it has never officially been part of the Church’s teaching, the Brown Scapular has for a very long time been linked with the “Sabbatine Privilege”, which promises that the wearer will be released by Our Lady of Mt. Carmel¹⁰ from Purgatory on the first Saturday after death. This was great! Purgatory was the place to which people were sent if they died with venial sins that were not absolved. Every “impure thought” was such a sin. Practically every adolescent who died would be forced to spend time—an hour, a year, a millennium?—roasting in purgatory. If, however, he had the Sabbatine Privilege, his time there would be less than a week. If he got in a car crash after partying hard on a Friday evening, he might go straight to heaven as long as he was still wearing his Brown Scapular. “So long, losers!”

My scapular had several pieces of cloth in each of the two sections. That is all that I remember of it. I don’t remember when I stopped wearing it. I certainly did not wear it in Ann Arbor.

There also was a version of the scapular that was a medal.

Big Events

The two big events on the Church’s calendar were, of course, Christmas and Easter. I remember being surprised that I was chosen for the boy’s choir as an eighth grader. We sang “Oh, Holy Night” at the midnight Mass.

For Easter I was chosen in the eighth grade to serve either at the high Mass on Maundy Thursday or Easter Sunday. I do not remember which.

1. This is almost certainly an exaggeration, but I remember quite clearly that this was a momentous event. Maybe it was preparation for First Communion or Confirmation. The most famous version is the Baltimore Catechism, which has been posted here.

2. In my day babies who died unbaptized supposedly went to a place called Limbo. In 2007 the Church waffled a bit on this and concluded that there is hope that God will do what humans were unable to do, namely baptize them himself. Don’t try to visualize this.

3. For some reason it seems to be called “Penance and Reconciliation” in 2024.

4. I wonder if it was added later to bring the list to seven. Most religious lists seem to have three or seven items. I might be on to something. The Encyclopedia Britannica The number of sacraments also varied in the early church, sometimes including as many as 10 or 12. In the sixteenth century the Council of Trent specified the list that we learned.

5. My experiences with Fr. Joe after he was sent to Kelly are posted here.

6. I expected to discover a Latin name for the pole, but it is merely called a candle lighter.

7. I discovered in my Latin class that some heathens might have been able to read this, but they would not have understood us when we said it. They had a markedly different way of pronouncing some letters. They rendered Caesar’s famous dictum “Veni; Vidi; Vici” as “WAY knee WEE dee WEE kee”.

8. What a wonderful thing it was to still have cartilage!

9.In my day the three sets were the Joyful Mysteries, the Sorrowful Mysteries, and the Glorious Mysteries. They told the story of Mary and Jesus in chronological order. Each had ten “decades”, one for each group of ten beads. I had never heard of the Luminous Mysteries, which are apparently prayed on Thursdays. All of these have been explained in detail on the Internet here.

10. I am 99 percent certain that “Our Lady of Mt. Carmel” is the same as Mary, the mother of Jesus. For some reason she has dozens of titles, each of which emphasizes something different about her. Incidentally, the Church has never officially preached that Mary shows up and checks for slightly charred scapulars every Saturday. However, it dies claim that Mary never died. She was “assumed” into heaven. If an archeologist ever makes a case that Mary’s tomb has been found, all Catholics must immediately denounce him/her/them as a heretic.

1966-2024 Bleeding Maize and Blue

Posted on January 28, 2024 by Mike

Michigan football and me. Continue reading →

I undertook this entry to explain what it was like to be a die-hard fan of a football team for fifty-eight years. I supposed that this might be of passing interest to some people (outside of New England, where no one gives a fig about college football), but, in fact I undertook it mostly to see if I could figure out to my own satisfaction why I have cared so much about an institution with no intrinsic value. Furthermore, over the years it has changed so dramatically. The only constants were the huge stadium, the winged helmets, and the school colors—maize and blue (mostly blue).

Before attending U-M: When I was still in grade school (not before—my family did not have a television set) my dad and I often watched professional football games on our black and white television set. This was remarkable for two reasons: 1) my dad seldom watched anything on television; 2) it was one of the few things that we did together. I distinctly remember that a white football was used for night games. Also, until the rule was changed, a runner was not considered “down” until his forward progress was completely stopped.

I knew Otto as #14, but in the days before face guards he must have been #60.

My dad was a fan of the Chicago Bears. My recollection was that his favorite player was Ralph Guglielmi, but he never played for the Bears. I must be wrong. My favorite team was the Cleveland Browns. In the early days my favorite player was #14,Otto Graham. Later, of course, I lionized the incomparable #32, Jim Brown.

Before I went to Rockhurst my dad also took me to one game in Atchison, KS. It involved my dad’s Alma Mater, Maur Hill. I don’t remember the opponent or result. However, Maur Hill was 2-6 in both 1960 and 1961, and so they probably lost.

The Dallas Texans moved to Kansas City in 1963, my sophomore year at Rockhurst, and were rechristened the Chiefs. Through his company, Business Men’s Assurance (BMA), my dad had two season tickets. He went to all the home games, and sometimes he brought me with him to the games at Municipal Stadium. I became a fan of Lenny Dawson¹, Curtis McClinton², Fred Arbanas³, the one-eyed tight end, and the rest of the players. I remained a big fan of the Chiefs while I was in the army and for a decade or so after that.

While I was in High School I attended every football home game. So did all of my friends and most of the other guys. My attitude was really more of a “be true to your school” thing than an appreciation of the game at the high school level. In fact, we all attended all of the basketball games as well. The guys at Rockhurst were proud that they were able to go to one of the very best schools in the area, and they supported all of the teams.

Before arriving in Ann Arbor I did not yet hate Woody or the color scarlet.

Undergrad at U-M:While I lived in Kansas City I did not follow college football very closely. Only three major colleges in Kansas and Missouri had football teams, and one of those—Kansas State—was perennially a doormat. I knew very little about Michigan football. I knew about the intense rivalry between Ohio State and Michigan. I had heard the song, “We don’t give a damn for the whole state of Michigan.” I had read about a few Michigan greats such as Tom Harmon and Germany Schulz. I knew that Michigan had the largest stadium in the country and usually won the Little Brown Jug. Woody Hayes (but not his counterpart Bump Elliott) was already famous.

The student section started on the 50-yard line and went around to the middle of the end zone.

However, it was not until I actually started living at U-M that I came to appreciate the importance of football at the university. Cazzie Russell had led the Wolverines to three consecutive Big Ten titles and to final four appearances in 1964 and 1965. Nevertheless, in the fall of 1966 when I arrived at my dorm absolutely no one talked about basketball even though the previous year’s football team had been a horrendous disappointment. The 1964 team had won the Big Ten and clobbered Oregon in the Rose Bowl. The 1965 team finished only 4-6 despite outscoring the opponents 185-161. Nevertheless, like nearly everyone else in Allen Rumsey House, I purchased season tickets in the student section of Michigan Stadium (no one ever called it The Big House) for a very low price and never gave a thought to going to basketball games.

I followed the marching band up

to the stadium for almost every home football game⁴ during the four football season in which I lived in the dorm. I have recounted in some detail those experiences in the 1966 season here. The last two games of my senior year were ones for the ages. On November 27, 1969, Ohio State was 8-0 and widely considered the best collegiate team of all time. They were riding a twenty-two game winning streak.. Michigan was 7-2, but one of its losses was out of the conference. Since this was the last game of the season, if U-M won, they would be tied with OSU for the the Big Ten championship. The league’s rules dictated that if there was a tie, U-M would go to the Rose Bowl because OSU had been there more recently. Michigan, a huge underdog, won the game 24-12. Wikipedia devoted a very long entry to this historic game. It is posted here.

I knew two of the stars of that game fairly well. They were both sophomores who had spent their freshman year living on the second floor of A-R. At the time I was the president of the house and had some interactions with both Thom Darden, a defensive back who was an All-Pro with the Cleveland Browns, and Bill⁵ Taylor, who scored the most famous touchdown in that game.

Michigan had hired a new coach, Bo Schembechler, for the 1969 season. He had a heart attack just before the Rose Bowl⁶, and so he was unable to coach. The team lost to the University of Southern California 10-3. In retrospect it is hard to believe that one of the most famous Michigan teams of all time did not score a touchdown in its last six quarter.

1970-1973: During the next four years it was somewhat difficult for me to follow the team too closely. In 1970 I was at my parent’s house in Leawood, KS, for the first three games, all of which were won by the Wolverines. For the remaining games I was at Fort Polk, LA (introduced here), for basic training. I learned the scores of the games, but there was no television available, and so I missed the second game of the “Ten Year War” between Schembechler’s troops and those of Woody Hayes. OSU won in Columbus 20-9. The two teams again tied for the Big 10 title, but OSU went to the Rose Bowl because of the “no repeat” rule. In those days Big 10 teams were not allowed to participate in other bowls.

In 1971 I was in the army at Sandia Base, NM (introduced here). The barracks had only one television, and none of the soldiers could afford to purchase one for their rooms. Michigan was 10-0 going into the OSU game in Ann Arbor, where they won a squeaker 10-7. I am pretty sure that I watched that one in the MP Company’s Rec Room. That team lost to Stanford in the Rose Bowl 13-12. Michigan was heavily favored and held the lead, but the team was done in by a fake punt by Stanford on a fourth and ten and a last second field goal. I must have watched that game in Leawood. A few days later I flew to upstate New York to finish my military career at Seneca Army Depot (described here).

In 1972 I was working as an actuarial student at the Hartford Life Insurance Company (introduced here). I watched the team on television whenever they appeared. I remember going to Jan Pollnow’s house for one of the regular-season games. I do not remember which one it was, but it was definitely not the season-ender (better known as The Game) at Ohio State. I am certain of that because Michigan won all of its first ten games, but they lost that one 14-11. This was a heart-breaker. Michigan had a first down at the OSU one-yard line and could not punch it in. The two teams tied for the conference championship, but OSU went to Pasadena, and U-M stayed home.

This man deserved to play inn the Rose Bowl.

In 1973 I was still at the Hartford. Once again the Wolverines won their first ten games. The Big Ten by then was known as the Big Two and the Little Eight. “The Game” was held in Ann Arbor. At the end of the third quarter the score was 10-0 in favor of OSU, but U-M tied it with a touchdown and a field goal. I am pretty sure that I watched that sister-kisser by myself in my apartment in East Hartford. I had a Zenith color portable with rabbit ears. The reception from the two ABC stations (New Haven and Springfield) was not great.

U-M’s quarterback, Dennis Franklin⁸, broke his collarbone in the fourth quarter. This was a decisive factor in the vote that sent the Buckeyes back to California. In two years U-M had lost only one game, but it did not get to go to a bowl game.

By this time Bo Schembechler had installed an option offense that emphasized running. For quite a few years U-M’s quarterbacks were better known for running and blocking than for throwing the pigskin.

Back in Ann Arbor for 1974-1976: In 1974 Sue and I moved to Plymouth, MI, and I enrolled at U-M as a graduate student in the speech department. I bought a season ticket in the student section. A few details about my personal involvement with the team during those years have been posted here.

A little more should be written about the 1974 season. The Wolverines breezed through the first ten games. They even had a 10-3 lead at halftime of The Game. However, OSU kicked three field goals and Mike Lantry⁹, who had earlier kicked a 37-yard field goal, pushed a shorter one very slightly to the left as time ran out. The miss cost U-M the conference championship and a berth in the the Rose Bowl.

Dennis Franklin, who lost only two games in his entire career as starting quarterback at U-M, never got to play in a Rose Bowl, or any other bowl for that matter. That was simply a travesty.

Detroit 1976-1979: For the next three football seasons Sue and I lived and worked in Detroit. I watched every game that was shown on television, but my memories are not too distinct.

The 1976 team lost a conference game at Purdue when the kicker, Bob Wood, missed an attempted 37-yard field goal at the end of the game. It was the first conference loss to one of the Little Eight since my senior year seven years earlier.

However, this team pummeled Ohio State in Columbus two weeks later to win the conference championship and qualify for the Rose Bowl. They lost that game to USC (whom else?).

The story the next year was eerily similar. The Wolverines were shut out in the Little Brown Jug game, but they defeated Ohio State in Ann Arbor. They then lost to Washington in the Rose Bowl 27-20.

It sounds like a broken record, but the 1978 team led by Rick Leach¹⁰, Harlan Huckleby¹¹, and a very stout defense, somehow lost to Michigan State before beating the Buckeyes again in the last game of the Ten Year War. USC then defeated the Wolverines in the Rose Bowl again thanks to a “Phantom Touchdown” awarded to Charles White¹² by a Big 10 ref.

I have two very vivid memory of this period of Michigan football. I remember that I was on a debate trip for Wayne State. For some reason one Saturday afternoon I was absolved of the responsibility of judging for one round. I found a television set and watched Michigan beat up on one of the Little Eight.

The other memory, of course, was the dramatic touchdown pass from John Wangler to freshman Anthony Carter on the last play of the Indiana game in 1979. The game, which was crucial for Michigan’s title hopes, was not televised. But the film was shown on all the highlight shows.

It was a period of frustration. It appeared that Bo’s coaching style could easily produce very good teams. They were always in the top ten and often the top five/. However, they were never good enough to win the last game of the year. Nevertheless the players were heroes to me and to all of the other die-hard fans.

I later read Bo Schembechler’s autobiography, Bo, co-written by Mitch Albom. In its pages he speculated that he might have driven the guys too hard on their trips to Pasadena. They did little besides practice. Most Michigan fans just thought that the team needed a passing game.

Michigan Replay: Most U-M football games were not telecast in the Detroit area while we lived there. However, every Sunday evening Bo Schembechler appeared on a half-hour interview show with Jim Brandstatter¹³, who had been an offensive tackle on some of his very early teams. Sue and I watched these programs every week. When we moved to Enfield, one of the few things that we missed about the Motor City was watching Michigan Replay on channel 4.

I recently discovered that the Michigan Replay shows have been archived by the university and posted on the Internet here. I recently watched the show about the 1980 version of The Game in which neither side scored a touchdown. The first thing that I noticed was that Brandstatter just dwarfed Schembechler, who was himself a lineman in college. The second thing that caught my eye was Bo’s outfit. He was decked out in plaid pants and a grey sports jacket with a Rose Bowl pin. It was 1980, but Bo;s wardrobe was still in the seventies. I wondered if his wife saw this outfit before he left the house.

On the show Bo was charming and gracious. He always credited the players. What was so attractive about his approach on the show was how clear it was that everyone on the team gave 100 percent, and Bo loved them for it even when they failed. When Brandstatter heaped praise on the team’s defense, Bo insisted that the offense, which did not score a touchdown, did its part by running twice as many plays as the Buckeyes. His slogan—”Those who stay will be champions”—never rang truer.

Bo v. the world as seen from Enfield 1980-1989: The Wolverines finally found a passing game, or rather a receiving game, in #1, Anthony Carter¹⁴, who was by almost any measure the most amazing player in the history of college football. He was named a consensus first-team All-American three years running. During those three years Michigan was definitely a running team. In the first two Butch Woolfolk¹⁵ rushed for more than 1,000 yards. In 1981 he set the single-season U-M record with a total of 1,459 yards.

Nevertheless, the “go to guy” was Carter. He was always the first read on a pass attempt and the last read on most. The two quarterbacks who passed to him, John Wangler¹⁶ and Steve Smith¹⁷, are remembered mostly as footnotes in tales of Carter’s heroics.

The 1980 season was the most memorable one for me. Bo’s coaching staff had been depleted in the off-season. He had to hire many new coaches, including Gary Moeller, Lloyd Carr, and Jack Harbaugh¹⁷. The team had a very shaky start. It barely beat Northwestern in the opener and the lost two non-conference games. The fans were dejected, but the team—especially the defense—seemed to get better with each game. The three games before The Game were all shutouts, and the Wolverines racked up 86 point. The 9-3 win in Columbus was ugly, but the victory over Washington in the Rose Bowl was absolutely beautiful.

I have several vivid memories of the period. Most of them are disappointments. I can picture in my mind Cris Carter¹⁸ making a fabulous catch for a touchdown. My recollection is that it won the game for the Buckeyes, but this was not the case. Jim Harbaugh, my favorite Wolverine of all time, rewrite the record book in that game and threw a 77-yard touchdown pass shortly after Carter’s reception had brought the Buckeyes back to within a field goal.

The 1986 team fumbled away the Little Brown Jug that had been on display in the Michigan Union since 1977 and also lost decisively in the Rose Bowl. I do not remember either of those. I do remember that Jim Harbaugh guaranteed that U-M would beat OSU. They did, but only because of a missed field goal. I remember many field goals missed at crucial times, but this was the only one by an opponent that I can recall.

Michigan won the jug back in 1987, but that team won only seven other games. They did beat Alabama in the Hall of Fame Bowl.

Bo’s penultimate team might have been his best job as a coach. Without any great stars it lost its first two games and tied Iowa at Kinnick Stadium. It then won four straight decisively, edged Ohio State in Columbus, and then won the Rose Bowl by upsetting Southern Cal 22-14.

The first game of Bo’s last year was the worst. Rocket Ismail zoomed for two touchdowns on kick returns, and #1 Notre Dame defeated #2 U-M in Ann Arbor but won the remainder of its regular-season games. In the Rose Bowl the Wolverines lost to USC by a touchdown. Bo was incensed by a holding call on a fake punt that had gained twenty-four yards. After the game he resigned as head coach and took a job as president of the Detroit Tigers. He was fired from that job in 1992.

Bo had had heart problems for a long time before he died in 2006. His legacy was smudged by his son Matt’s claim that Bo knew about sexual shenanigans by long-time university doctor Robert Anderson.

Gary Moeller years 1990-94: I think that it was during Moeller’s five-year tenure at U-M that I stopped watching U-M games. His first team lost a close game to Notre Dame and two regular-season games. However, they closed out the season with five wins (tied for first in the Big 10) and handily defeated Ole Miss in the Gator Bowl. The team had developed a passing attack with Elvis Grbac¹⁹ and Desmond Howard²⁰.

The next year the team lost to Florida State, but won its other ten regular-season games. The highlight was a completely horizontal 25-yard touchdown reception by Heisman-winner Howard on a 4th down against Notre Dame. However, the Wolverines were humiliated in the Rose Bowl by Washington.

The team had three ties but no losses in Grbac’s last year. It went to the Rose Bowl again and this time defeated Washington. Tyrone Wheatley was the star

Todd Collins took over at quarterback in 1993. The team lost four regular-season games, but they closed out the season with a 28-0 mauling of OSU and and equally decisive bowl victory over NC State.

Ty Law, one of the greatest defensive backs ever, could not prevent the miracle.

1994 was the last year in which I watched Michigan football live. The disastrous game at home against Colorado was followed by losses to Penn State, Wisconsin, and OSU.

I remember storming out of the house at the end of the OSU game. I went for a long walk, and I was still upset when I returned. The team’s victory over Colorado State in the bowl game did little to mollify me. The stress of these games was becoming too much for me.

Gary Moeller was allowed to resign after being arrested in May of 1995 for drunk and disorderly conduct at Excalibur, a restaurant in Detroit. He served as an assistant coach in the NFL until 2002. He died in 2022.

Lloyd Carr with four-year starter Chad Henne.

Lloyd Carr’s years 1995-2007: Lloyd Carr was named interim head coach after Moeller’s untimely exit. It was made official after the team won eight out of the first ten games. I expected U-M to lose the finale against #2 OSU, and I did not get to see the 31-23 upset in which Tim Biakabutuka rushed for an astounding 313 yards. That team ended the season at the Alamo Bowl, where lost to Texas A&M. The 1996 team also beat OSU and lost its bowl game.

During Carr’s thirteen years as U-M’s football coach I was extremely busy at work. If I was not traveling on a given Saturday, I was certainly in the office from dawn to dusk. I had a small TV on which I occasionally watched football, but I don’t think that I ever watched a Michigan game. I did not even check the scores until I was sure that the game was over. I told people that my favorite weekend was U-M’s bye week.

The 1997 team featured perhaps the greatest defensive back of all time, Charles Woodson, who had been a freshman phenom in 1995 and a consensus All-American in 1996. He was also used—to great effect—as a kick returner and wide receiver. The team won all of its games, but in The Game it needed a tremendous effort from the defense and special teams to overcome a moribund offense. It faced a very good Washington State team in the Rose Bowl.

I watched the game with my friend Tom Corcoran. Woodson was Superman without the cape, but the rest of the team struggled. With a 21-16 lead U-M had the ball with 7:25 to play. Michigan got two first downs passing (once to Woodson) before Wazoo took over on its own seven yard line with sixteen seconds to play. After a hook and lateral play and the most egregious example of offensive pass interference that I have ever seen WSU moved the ball to the Michigan twenty-six. The clock ran out as the WSU quarterback tried to spike the ball. They should have had a play ready to run. I remember telling Tom that I could not believe that this was what I was hoping for. I never wanted to go through anything so nerve-wracking again.

So, U-M was named national champion by the Associated Press, but the coaches voted for Nebraska, which was also undefeated.

The next three years were bizarre. Michigan turned into “quarterback U”. Tom Brady²⁴ and Drew Henson²⁵ battled for the starting job for two years. Brady eventually prevailed. Henson started for U-M in his junior year, which was typified by a 54-51 loss to Northwestern that must have made Bo rip his hair out (if he had any left). Nevertheless, those three teams won bowl games over Arkansas, Alabama, and Auburn.

The last seven years of Carr’s coaching career were drearily predictable. There were only two quarterbacks. U-M beat OSU in 2004, John Navarrre’s senior year. Henne lost four times in The Game. They were all good teams, but …

I watched onlyone game. I was visiting my dad in Overland Park, KS, the weekend in 2004 when U-M played San Diego State (coached by Brady Hoke) in Ann Arbor. U-M, which had lost to Notre Dame the previous week, were behind at the half. The on-the-field female correspondent stuck a microphone in Coach Carr’s face and asked him what he expected in the second half. He said, “I expect a comeback.” U-M did win, but it was really ugly.

The worst and best games were in the last year, 2007. The loss to Appalachian State in Ann Arbor was, at the time, the low point of Michigan Football in my lifetime. The victory over Florida (coached by Urban Meyer and led by Tim Tebow) in the Capital One Bowl was a pleasant surprise. U-M had four turnovers, but Henne passed for 373 yards and was named MVP.

Coach Carr was living in Ann Arbor in 2024.

Rich Rodriguez and Brady Hoke 2008-2014: I felt strongly that after Carr retired U-M should have hired Jim Harbaugh. After a long career as a quarterback in the NFL he had coached the Raiders’ quarterbacks for two years and then transformed a horrible University of San Diego team into conference champions in only two years. Stanford hired him in 2007, but I suspected that he would have accepted any reasonable offer from U-M. Instead someone decided to pay West Virginia University $2.5 million to allow its coach, Rich Rodriguez, to forsake the Mountaineers and come to Ann Arbor.

I saw two of the games of the Richrod/Hoke era in person. Sue and I were in Ann Arbor in 2008 for the team’s home debut against Miami University. It was a horrendous game. I suspected that Miami would have won if its quarterback had not been injured.

It took a couple of years, but Rodriguez was able to field a pretty good offense built around Denard Robinson. The big problem was on defense. Richrod hired Greg Robinson to coach the defense, and the results were absolutely pathetic. U-M fans were not accustomed to teams running up the score on them, but it became commonplace.

The other game that I viewed in person was in Hoke’s regime, but it was also horrendous. It was a night game played at Rentschler Field in East Hartford in 2013. More than half the fans were wearing Michigan’s colors. It was very close up to the end. Michigan ended up with a 21-14 victory.

That game increased my appreciation of the alcohol-free atmosphere of Michigan Stadium. Some UConn fans were really obnoxious. However, the team’s play did not impress me at all.

Michigan somehow beat OSU in Brady Hoke’s first appearance in 2011. That team also defeated Virginia Tech 23-20 in the Orange Bowl. However, it was downhill from there. The 2014 team’s record was 5-7, which caused Hoke to be fired. The Athletic Director who had hired him, Dave Brandon, resigned.

Jim Harbaugh pre-Pandemic 2015-19: My career as a cowboy coder had just ended when Jim Harbaugh’s stint as U-M’s head coach began. He brought “an enthusiasm unknown to mankind” and a basket of new ideas. He took all of the players to Rome as part of Spring practice. He conducted coaching clinics in the southeastern U.S. These radical approaches to the job and the fact that he almost always spoke his mind engendered a lot of enmity against him in the community of coaches.

The 2015 team was much improved. After losing to Utah on the road to open the season the Wolverines won nine of the next ten games. The only blemish was a loss to MSU in Ann Arbor that was reminiscent of Keystone Kops, On the last play of the game the snap to the punter went astray leading to a 27-23 victory for Sparty. In The Game at the end of the season the team was clobbered by OSU, but the Wolverines delivered an even worse thrashing to the Florida Gators in the Capital One Bowl.

Harbaugh with Wilton Speight, who lost an entire season to a back injury.

The next four years were more of the same—one or two stumbles early, lots of very promising victories, and a blowout loss in The Game. In these years, however, the bowl games were also losses. Fans were becoming upset with Harbaugh, but those OSU teams were extremely good. Their teams were loaded with five-star recruits, and U-M’s quarterback always seemed to get hurt near the end of the season.

MGoBlog and BPONE: MGoBlog was founded by Brian Cook in 2004. I must have discovered the website that covered all of Michigan’s sports shortly after that because I am pretty sure that my dad told me that he was impressed by how much I knew about the U-M football team even before he moved to Enfield in 2005. The emphasis of the blogs was on football, of course. The most amazing aspect was that someone (Brian at first, later Seth Fisher) charted and analyzed every play of every U-M football game.

Brian and Seth also appear on the Michigan Insider radio show that was hosted weekly by Sam Webb on WTKA and was streamed on MGoBlog.com. Craig Ross, a lawyer who was born a year or two before I was, also appeared on the show. Ross was a super-fan of all of the U-M sports.

Top row: Sam and Seth. Bottom row: Craig and Brian.

I have spent an inordinate number of happy hours reading and listening to these guys and the other members of the MGoBlog crew. I especially appreciated the analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of U-M’s opponents that was provided by Alex Drain.

Brian, who was a very talented writer, often bared his soul about sports and his personal life. He invented the acronym BPONE, which stood for Bottomless Pit of Negative Expectations. It described a state of mind when one can no longer appreciate the positive aspects of viewing sports because he/she (hardly ever she) is convinced that they will be overwhelmed by negative aspect in the end. BPONE is precisely the reason that I gave up watching the Wolverines on television. Once you have seen Colorado’s “Miracle at Michigan” or the bungled punt attempts against MSU and Appy State it was difficult to keep them out of your mind.

Harbaugh’s glory years 2021-23: I should pass over without mentioning the monumentally stupid college football season of 2020. U-M won two of the six games in which it was able to field a team of players who did not have Covid-19. I blame Trump, who insisted that all the teams should play during the second wave of the most infectious disease anyone had seen.

Aidan Hutchinson was the best defensive player since Woodson.

In preparation for the 2021 season Harbaugh had dramatically reshuffled his assistant coaches. The primary goals were to design offenses and defenses that would be effective against the ones used by Ohio State. The players recruited for these new schemes were big, tough, and smart. Harbaugh promised that he would beat Ohio State or die trying.

Expectations for the 2021 season were not high in Ann Arbor, but there were some scraps of good news. Aidan Hutchinson³⁰, the All-American defensive end, returned. Cade McNamara and five-star freshman J.J. McCarthy seemed promising as quarterbacks.

In fact, this was a very good team. It lost a heart-breaker to MSU in the middle of the season when Kenneth Walker III ran for 197 yards and five touchdowns, but the Wolverines still entered the Ohio State game with a surprising 10-1 record. The team played an inspired game and defeated the Buckeyes by a score of 42-27. They then annihilated Iowa in the conference championship 42-3. They were ceded #3 in U-M’s first appearance in the College Football Playoff. The team was outclassed by eventual champion, Georgia, 34-11. Nevertheless, this was was the most accomplished Michigan team since the 1997-98 team that was named national champion by the AP.

When Corum got hurt, Edwards stepped up.

Even Brian Cook was optimistic about the 2022 team. Hutchinson was gone, but this team had two legitimate quarterbacks, two outstanding running backs, Blake Corum and Donovan Edwards, outstanding receivers, and the best offensive line in the country. The questions were on defense were quickly answered. The team breezed through its first ten games. A stubborn Illinois defense nearly engineered an upset in Ann Arbor, but the team was still undefeated and ranked #3 for The The Wolverines prevailed in Columbus for the first time since 2000 by a score of 45-23. They then sleepwalked past Purdue in the Big Ten championship and entered the CFP ceded #2.

Sherrone Moore (left) and Jesse Minter were probably the best offensive and defensive coordinators in college football.

Their opponent in the semifinal was Texas Christian. Michigan was favored by almost everyone, but J.J. McCarthy had a terrible game, and Blake Corum had been severely injured late in the season. The defense also had trouble stopping TCU’s attack; it did not help that two or McCarthy’s early passes were intercepted and returned for touchdowns. In the end the Horned Frogs won 51-45. Perhaps it was just as well that U-M lost that game. Georgia overwhelmed TCU in the final.

The 2023 team had one goal: to win the national championship. Almost all of the important players and coaching staff returned. The team was ranked #2 behind Georgia for nearly the entire season in both polls.

Two silly “scandals” were distractions. Because of allegations of recruiting violations in the Covid-19 year³¹ Harbaugh did not attend the first three games, which were blowouts of non-conference teams. Because of bizarre behavior of a low-level analyst with the unlikely name of Connor Stalions. He apparently bought tickets for people for games of prospective U-M opponents. Some of them allegedly took videos of the signs used to signal plays³² to the field. The Big Ten’s investigation resulted in the firing of one coach and the requirement that Harbaugh not be on the field for the team’s last three regular season games.

Corum was the star in overtime, but everyone contributed.

Those three very important games—were overseen by the Offensive Coordinator, Sherrone Moore. The results were decisive victories over Penn State, Maryland, and Ohio State. Michigan then shut out Iowa in the last conference championship game ever. After Seth Fisher analyzed each play of U-M’s semifinal overtime triumph over Alabama in the Rose Bowl he called it the greatest of Michigan’s 1,004 victories. The victory over Washington in the final game was less dramatic but equally satisfying.

In the end Michigan was the unanimous choice as #1, and the NCAA said that they had won the title fairly.

Denouement: Nick Saban, the long-time extremely successful coach at Alabama retired. Harbaugh resigned after agreeing to become the head coach for the Chargers, one of his old teams. Sherrone Moore was named U-M’s head coach. McCarthy, Corum, and quite a few others went pro. Some of the coaches accompanied Harbaugh to wherever the Chargers play these days.

In February of 2024 I watched the entire Rose Bowl game v. Alabama. I could not have watched it live. There were too many times in which Michigan committed unbelievable blunders that threatened to blow the game open. The FIRST PLAY was an interception that was overruled! BPONE would have overcome me. At least one vital organ would have failed.

How will Michigan do in the future? I sincerely doubt that the heroics of team #144 will ever be matched by any Michigan team in the future. College football has changed so drastically in the early twenties, and most of those changes do not bode well for the Wolverines.

I am quite happy that I got to experience this event even though I refused to make the kind of emotional investment in the team that others did. Their reward was no doubt greater.

1. Len Dawson, a Purdue graduate, led the Chiefs to victory in Super Bowl IV. He died in 2022.

2. Curtis McClinton, who went to the University of Kansas, was the AFL’s Rookie of the Year in 1962. He played nine years for the Chiefs. He was still alive and living in KC in 2024.

3. Fred Arbanas was a graduate of Michigan State. In January of 1965 he was assaulted in KC and lost vision in one eye. He nevertheless was an All-Star for the Chiefs for several years after that. He died in 2021.

4. The only one that I missed was one of the greatest U-M games of all time, the 1969 Ohio State game. I opted to attend a debate tournament in Chicago instead. This was one of the poorest choices that I ever made. I even gave away my ticket, which was on the 50-yard line halfway up.

5. I never heard anyone call him “Billy” in the year that he lived in A-R. He was generally known as BT, just as Darden was commonly called TD.

6. This game was attended by my parents while I watched on TV in Leawood! I was on my holiday break from classes.

7. Michigan easily won all ten games before the OSU game. The combined scores of it first three home games was 140-0.

8. Dennis Franklin had a cup of coffee with the New York Lions. He lived in Santa Monica, CA, in 2024.

9. Mike Lantry was my age. If he had gone to U-M after high school, he would have played when I was an undergrad. Instead he went to Vietnam. Although he held many records for kicking when he graduated, and he was a first team All-American, he is best remembered for three crucial kicks that he missed in the 1973 and 1974 OSU games. In 2024 he was living in Florida.

10. Rick Leach was still alive in 2024. His professional career was as a baseball player, mostly riding the pine with the Detroit Tigers.

11. Harlan Huckleby played six years for the Green Bay Packers. He was still alive in 2024.

12. Charles White played for the Cleveland Browns and the Los Angeles Rams. He led the NFL in rushing in 1987. He died in 2023.

13. Jim Brandstatter was in the same class as TD and BT. He tried out for the NFL but never played. He had a very long career in broadcasting. He was still alive in 2024.

14. Anthony Carter’s official height was 5’11”, and his weight was 168 lbs. I was two inches taller and 23 lbs. lighter when I entered the army. So, I was much skinnier than Carter. However, compared to nearly all football players, Carter was a midget. He set an incredible number of records. You can find them on his Wikipedia page, which is posted here. Carter was still alive in 2024.

15. Butch Woolfolk was a track star as well as one of the all-time great running backs at U-M. He also had an outstanding professional career. He was still alive in 2024.

16. John Wangler had to fight for the quarterback job his entire career at U-M, and he did not make the grade in the NFL. Nevertheless he will always be remembered for that pass in the Indiana game and his victories in The Game and the Rose Bowl. He was still alive in 2024.

16. Steve Smith started at quarterback for U-M for three years. He played for a couple of years in Canada. He was still alive in 2024.

17. Jack Harbaugh was the head coach at Western Michigan and then Western Kentucky, where his team won the Division I-AA national championship in 2002. The most important aspect of his career at U-M was probably the introduction of his son Jim to the nicest football town and best program in the country. Jim hired him as an assistant coach in 2023 (at the age of 84), and he was on the sideline coaching away when the Wolverines finally won it all in 2024.

18. Cris Carter was a phenomenal receiver, perhaps the best ever, but he had difficulty staying out of trouble. He was suspended for his senior year (1988) at OSU and then had a long and checkered NFL career. The high spots were lofty enough to get him into the Hall of Fame. Since his retirement after the 2002 season he has had had a few jobs in sports broadcasting.

19. Elvis Grbac had a reasonably successful, at least in financial terms, eight-year career in the NFL. He retired to become athletic director of his old high school in Cleveland. Believe it or not, he had a brother named Englebert.

20. Desmond Howard, who went to the same high school as Grbac, had a very successful NFL career and an even more successful career as an analyst at ESPN. I sat next to him on an airplane once during the early days of his career there.

21. I was astounded to learn that in 2023 Tyrone Wheatley had been hired as the head football coach at Wayne State in Detroit. He had a long and successful NFL career with the Giants and Raiders.

22. Todd Collins was never a big star at U-M, but his NFL career, which started in 1995 lasted until 2010, although on two different occasions he took a few years off. He was never a starter, but he evidently was widely considered a reliable backup.

23. Charles Woodson was just as good in the NFL as he had been in college. He played from 1998 to 2015, an astonishingly long career for a defensive back. The greatest interception of all time can be viewed here. In 2024 Woodson worked as an analyst for Fox.

24. Tom Brady became the greatest quarterback of all time in the NFL.

25. Drew Henson dropped out of school after his junior season and signed a contract with the New York Yankees. He bounced around in the minors before and played only eight games with the Yankees before retiring in 2004. He then tried the NFL, where he saw very limited action over a five year career. He was still alive in 2024, apparently working for a company that advised players on economic matters.

26. John Navarre was drafted by the NFL, but he played in only two games. In 2024 he lived in Elmhurst, IL.

27. Chad Henne played fifteen years in the NFL, mostly as a backup quarterback. His last few years were with the Chiefs. He retired in 2023.

28. This is my favorite figure of speech. It is called preterition.

29. Thankfully Walker played only one season for MSU. He was drafted by the Seahawks.

30. In 2024 Aidan Hutchinson was the cornerstone of the rebuilt Detroit Lions.

31. Brian Cook and the other MGoBloggers call this incident “hamburgergate”.

32. I was shocked to learn that it was illegal to go to other teams’ games to scout. I also assumed that everyone tried to “steal” signals and that teams took measures to make this nearly impossible. The NFL has installed technology that allows the coaches to talk to the players on the field. College coaches refuse to consider this arrangement.

2008-2019 Bridge Partners at Tournaments Part 2

Posted on November 22, 2023 by Mike

Occasional partners at tournaments. Continue reading →

One of the very first tournaments that I ever attended was in the Fiesta Regional in Waterbury, CT, in the summer of 2007. I was planning to play with Dick Benedict (introduced here) in the Bracketed Swiss on Labor Day. On one of the weekend days I drove to the Holiday Inn that hosted the tournament by myself in hope of picking up a partner for both sessions of pairs. The person at the Partnership Desk was Carol Schaper (introduced here), whom I knew from the Simsbury Bridge Club (SBC).

Carol matched me up with John Morrin to play in the 299er game in the morning. Dick dropped by the 299er room and said that he was glad that John and I had met. We played pretty well, but we failed to win any points because of a defensive lapse. One of us held the ace in a side suit and the other held the king. We both avoided the suit, and the opponents made a contract that they should not have.

I have played against John many times at the Hartford Bridge Club (HBC), at which he still was playing regularly in 2023, but that long-ago game in Waterbury was the only time that we have played as partners.

In the afternoon session in Waterbury I played with Mort Friedman in an event that I had no business playing, the Open Pairs. He was 26 years older than I was and as gregarious as I was introverted. He had come to the tournament from the Albany area. He knew all of our opponents, and he introduced me to them as a “new player”.

Mort thought at the end of the round that we might have placed, but he was overly optimistic. I probably made some simple errors that he did not pick up on.

At the time Mort published a bridge column called “Bridging the Gap”. He emailed it to me for several years, and I occasionally asked him questions about it. He always responded.

Mort died in 2011. His obituary can be found here.

I evidently received my first (fractional) gold points at the Waterbury tournament. Dick, Virginia Labbadia, Donald Fosberg (of whom I have no memory whatever) and I finished third in the bottom bracket of the Round Robin on Labor Day.

I was scheduled to play with Dick Benedict at an afternoon session of the sectional tournament at the Ukrainian National Home on Wethersfield Ave. in Hartford. Our signals got crossed, and, with just a few minutes before game time I discovered that he was not going to come. Lou Brown, who was president of the HBC at the time, also needed a partner. So, although he had much more experience than I did, we formed a one-time partnership.

I remember two things about the session. At one point we played against Mary Witt and Linda Starr. At the time they were both redheads. I question whether that was allowed by the ACBL. A few hands later Lou, as declarer, failed to follow suit even though I had warned him with the question “No hearts?.” He was very embarrassed by his mistake, which prevented us from placing in the event.

I have two other vivid memories of Dr. Brown. He occasionally played at the SBC with his wife Trudi. Quite often he was verbally abusive to her. I took Trudi aside and offered to talk to him about his behavior, which was clearly against the ACBL’s Zero Tolerance policy. She told me not to because, “For me it is like water off of a duck.”

I was present when Trudi got the gold points that she needed to become a Life Master. Lou and Trudi were paired with Merrill Stein and Gary Cohen. I don’t remember who our teammates were, but my partner was Michael Dworetsky. Merrill had bid 7NT on a hand. Michael was on lead on the first trick. For some reason he chose to lead “fourth best” from a spade suit headed by the king. It was a terrible choice that allowed Gary to take all thirteen tricks and win the match. If he had selected any other suit, he would have eventually won that king, and we would have won the event.

Lou and Trudi moved to Delray Beach, FL. They are both still active in the ACBL.

I am pretty sure that in the first event that I ever won I was playing with Dan Finn. Dan was an actuary who lived in the Baltimore area but spent a lot of time working in Connecticut. He played with Tom Gerchman at the HBC on Thursday evenings. He also played with John Morrin at the limited game (that I called 0-Finn) at the HBC on Wednesday evenings.

Dan and I played as partners with Tom Gerchman and his (only?) friend, Terry Fair, an actuary from the Philadelphia area, as teammates. The tournament was a sectional in District 3, probably in northern New Jersey.

We were playing in a B-C Swiss. Everything seemed to go our way. In the final round we played the only other team that was in contention. Our opponents made enough mistakes that I was certain that we had won. When Tom asked us whether we thought that we had done well enough, I asked him, “How many times did you revoke?”

He acted as if he did not understand the question. Dan intervened: “He wants to know how many times you revoked.” Gerchman muttered, “Uh, none.”

I said, “Then I think that we are OK.” I was right. We won the event.

On the way home I wanted to stop and get some real food. We were a long way from Enfield, and it was late. Gerch insisted on stopping at Dunkin Donuts.

Occasionally filling out a card at the Partnership Desk at a tournament brought a very pleasant surprise. Such was the case at the Masters Regional in Mansfield, MA, in 2013 when Ausra Geaski showed up without a partner. I was acquainted with her in three ways: 1) she was president of the district; 2) she arranged for me to become the district’s webmaster; 3) she was Bunny Kliman’s partner at the HBC and regionals and had a lot more points than I did. I don’t think that she was thrilled with the prospect, but she agreed to play with me in the open pairs.

I remember one hand from the round. We missed a slam in a notrump contract because one of us had a six-card diamond suit. It occurred to me that we should have used 2NT as a transfer to diamonds rather than signing off in 3NT. When partner accepted the diamond suit we could have found the slam.

The other thing that I remember was that Carole Weinstein was one of our opponents. She talked with Ausra about helping with the hospitality at the 2014 Fall NABC that was going to be held in Providence.

Ausra still played regularly at the HBC in 2023. She also played at a few sectionals, but she was hobbled by bad knees that she got replaced in October.

This is Paula. I could not find a photo of Marcia.

I came to know Marcia West, who lived in Charlestown, RI, from her association with Paul Pearson. She had taken a bridge class that Paul taught somewhere in Rhode Island. I don’t remember when I played with Marcia, but it must have been at a sectional in Johnston, RI. She did not often venture far from home for tournaments.

I don’t think that we did very well on that occasion, but Steve Smith and I teamed up with Marcia and Paula Najarian in an epic Round Robin at the first regional tournament ever held at the Crowne Plaza in Warwick, RI. I have recounted my heroic dummy play here.

I have been friends with Marcia and Paula for many years. Marcia was a nurse in real life; Paula taught math in high school. They both are still playing pretty regularly in 2023. Marcia played with my wife Sue at a sectional in Johnston, RI.

I am sure that I played with Vince D’Souza at a Unit 126 (Connecticut) sectional, but I cannot remember when or where. We were undoubtedly matched up by whoever was manning the partnership desk. I am even more certain that we did not do very well, but don’t ask me why.

Perhaps Vince remembers. In 2023 he contacted me about the lessons for beginners being offered by the HBC to beginning players. He wanted to purchase them for one of his sons or grandsons. He seemed to remember me better than I remembered him.

The LinkedIn page that is posted here is probably Vince’s. I was somewhat surprised to see that Vince was still a member of the ACBL in 2023. He played in the fall sectional in Orange, CT, but he did not earn any masterpoints.

I was assigned to play with Joe DaCosta at a regional tournament. I am not sure which one or when it occurred. I remember that he was expecting his partner to show up, but for some reason he suspected that he/she might not show up, and so he lined me up as a substitute. I had no choice; no one else was available..

We agreed to play his convention card, which included the Flannery convention, in which the 2♦ bid is used for hands with 11-15 high-card points, four spades and five or more hearts. Such hands are difficult to describe in most systems.

I played this convention every week with Peter Katz, and I had played it a few times with others. Joe asked me if I was familiar with it and knew the responses. I assured him that I did.

At the very first table Joe opened 2♦. I quickly responded 2♥, which indicated a hand with three hearts that had no chance of taking ten tricks even if opener had a maximum. I had an honor card or two, but I could have had absolutely nothing. To my surprise Joe bid 3♥. I quickly passed, and he went down by one trick.

Joe’s explanation was that he was afraid that I might have had more strength than I showed. I resolved then and there never to play with him again. I did not need a partner who did not trust me when I said that I knew something.

There are no DaCostas in my database and only one Da Costa, Laura from Clovis, CA. So, our game must have been before I started maintaining my database of ACBL members in 2014.

As was our custom, my wife Sue and I drove up to the hotel in the morning of one of the days of the regional tournament in Nashua, NH. She had made arrangements to play with Judy Cavagnaro, one of her partners from Connecticut, but, as usual, she was late. We arrived just a minute or two before play started, and the car was nearly out of gas. My original plan was to see if anyone at the Partnership Desk was looking for a partner, but I abandoned that idea, dropped Sue off at the door to the hotel, filled up the car’s tank with regular, and went to McDonald’s to buy my traditional sausage biscuit with egg.

I later discovered that one other person was looking for a partner for the Open Pairs. His name was Doug Clark, and he was from the Albany area. We met and went over his convention card together. I was astounded to discover that in the “Opening Preempts” section no boxes were checked, and he had written in “Not used”. I honestly felt like I was going into battle with a broken sword.

Somehow we won some points in that session, but I resolved never to play with him again. He was still an ACBL member in 2023, but he has not won any points all year. At some point he moved to Ponte Vedra Beach, FL.

At the same tournament I had arranged to play in the Round Robin with Tony Norris on Sunday. Our teammates were my old friends, Bob and Shirley Derrah from Springield MA.

Tony’s convention card had one peculiar item on it. I remember that I messed it up at one point in one match, but we were on the same page in the rest of our matches.

Our foursome were one of the lowest seeded teams in bracket #1, but in the end we came out tied for first place with a team from Maine. We were all very happy with the result. Someone took our photo. It wasn’t Sue. She had driven home earlier. The Derrahs brought me back to Enfield.

I played with Tony again in Nashua in an Open Pairs game. We won only a half of a masterpoint. The last tournament that he played in was a sectional in Williston, VT, in September of 2018. He was still a member of the ACBL in 2023, but he had not won any masterpoints all year. This was surprising to me because Tony liked to play online.

I met Andre Wiejacki (vee eh YAH skee but compressed into three syllables) at the qualifying tournament for Flight C of the North American Pairs in Sturbridge, MA. I was playing with Steve Smith; Andre was playing with Ron Briggs. They finished second, and we finished third. The winning pair was disqualified, and so all four of us got to to to the finals at the Spring NABC in Reno.

I have often said that everyone in bridge has an interesting backstory. Andre’s is one of the most impressive. He was born in Poland when it was still a satellite of the Soviet Union. He somehow escaped to France where he changed his first name to Andre and learned about computers. At some point after that he immigrated to the U.S.

I played a few times at tournaments with Andre. He was good at playing the cards, but his bidding could be erratic. I liked playing with him, and he definitely liked playing with me. The last time that I heard from him he had moved to the NYC area because the job prospects were better.

In 2023 Andre was still an ACBL member, and he has moved back to Chelsea, MA. He had not played at any tournaments since Covid-19 struck, and he has earned only a handful of masterpoints in 2023.

Andre is still “open to work”. If you are looking for a “scrum master”, his LinkedIn page is here.

I remember that an opponent in one of the matches that Andre exhibited was Sarah Widhu of Nashua NH. After one of Andre’s strange bids, I explained to him how we could have reached the right contract.

We lost the match, and the margin was totally attributable to this one hand. I was impressed that Sarah noticed that everything rode on that one hand.

I only played with Sarah once, and we did not do too well. I suspect that if we had played together more, we would have started to click.

Sarah was one of the most active members of the bridge community in New Hampshire during the period that I became involved with the district. I am pretty sure that she was on the B’s Needs committee, and she was definitely the tournament manager for the Nashua tournament at least once. I designed a successful email campaign for her.

Sarah still played regularly in 2023. She might have still been running the club in Nashua as well, but she did not participate in the administration of the district or its functions.

Bridge was definitely only the second-favorite card game of Ron Agel. He was first and foremost a poker player. I played with him for two sessions of an Open Pairs game at a regional tournament in Massachusetts I think that it was at some point in 2014.

At the time Ron only had about half as many masterpoints as I did, but he acquitted himself pretty well. We did not win anything, but I remember one hand that we played against an expert pair, Bill Braucher and Rick Binder, who were playing a strong club system. I had made a lead-directing bid of one of their artificial bids. Ron was not familiar with the concept, and took it as takeout. We ended up in a horrible contract that the opponents quickly doubled. Oh, well, a zero is a zero.

My recollection is that Ron had a home on the cape and another one in Florida. He was still a member of the ACBL in 2023. He had about thirteen points for the year, but he had not attended a regional tournament in New England since 2018.

I have played against Alan Godes many times, including two occasions since the reopening. He and his wife, Charlotte Bailey, have long resided in Needham, MA, but for years they have traveled around the country to play in bridge tournaments.

I don’t really remember the event in which Alan and I played together. He was pleasant enough, but I did not enjoy the occasion. I have often had opportunities to play with him again, but I have been reluctant to take advantage of them. I proudly accept the title of geezer, but Alan was in Junior High when I was born, and his game has not changed much in the decade or so that I have known him.

Both Alan and Charlotte were in attendance at the last D25 tournament of 2023, the regional in Marlborough, MA. Alan played with Adi Chehna, and Charlotte played with a pro, Adam Grossack. They finished third in bracket 1 of the Thursday-Friday KO.

I only played with Bill Gay once, but I have fairly clear memories of the occasion. It occurred at the regional tournament in Nashua, NH, where I was often in need of a partner. Bill and I were matched up by the Partnership Desk and we had agreed upon a convention card. We went over to the table at which the directors were selling entries for the Open Pairs game. In front of us were Marcia West and Paula Najarian. The four of us decided to play in a bracketed team game instead.

Our foursome did not win the event, but we had one surprising victory. Bill and I were playing against Christina Parker, and her sister who was visiting from (I seem to remember) St. Louis. Their teammates were Stewart Rubenstein (Christina’s husband and regular partner) and someone whom I don’t remember. We were big underdogs in the match, but somehow we pulled off a victory. Bill asked me, “Do you know how good that team is?” I told him that I did. I had played against Stewart and Christina often with little success.

Bill has not been to a district tournament since 2018, but he was still a member of the ACBL in 2023, and he earned more than eighty masterpoints through the end of October.

Michelle Blanchard, who is from the Worcester area, is still quite active in tournament bridge in 2023. Eric Vogel and I teamed up with her and Carol Seager in the Gala Regional in the autumn of 2023. That experience, which was not altogether pleasant, has been described here.

I am pretty sure that Michelle and I played as teammates in a sectional tournament in Watertown, MA. We seemed to play pretty well together. I never have done well in any events in Watertown, and so I am sure that we did not come close to winning. If the opportunity presented itself, I would be happy to play opposite her again.

I played with Linda Ahrens in a pairs event held in Hyannis, MA. I remember very little about our actual game together, but I have a fairly vivid recollection of some of the ancillary details.

In the first place I remember that Linda played the Mexican 2♦ convention to handle the hand with balanced distribution and 18-19 high-card points. Most people open balanced hand with 15-17 points with 1NT and those with 20-21 points with 2NT. So, this is used for the ones in between. I have never played it elsewhere before or since.

At the time Linda and her husband Joe Brouillard had a home in Rhode Island and another on the Cape near Hyannis. Before the tournament I drove to Warwick, RI, to play at a club there with Linda. We did not win, but we also did not encounter any major disagreements.

I had the distinction of saying that my partner was the only person who walked from her house to the game in Hyannis. I also was the only person who was brought a home-made sandwich by his partner’s husband during the lunch break. In other ways, unfortunately, my game with Linda was not too memorable.

I took this photo of Linda and Dan. after their victory.

In February of 2017 I was working at the Partnership Desk at the regional tournament in Cromwell, CT. Linda Ahrens had filled out a card indicating that she was looking for a partner for the Mid-Flight Pairs. event.

On the morning of the event Dan Jablonski, a very good player, came to the desk and said that he needed a partner. I matched Dan up with Linda, and they ended up winning the event!

Linda was on the committee that I chaired that awarded the Larry Weiss award to Bob Bertoni in 2018. The details are in Bob’s section of this entry (here).

Paul Lord was from Montreal, but for several years he came down to New England because of his job, which I think involved insurancee. I played as his partner more than once and communicated with him now and then. I have not seen him in quite a few years. However, he was still a member of the ACBL in 2023, had amassed over 3,000 masterpoints, and appeared to be playing regularly.

The last time that I saw Paul he was grumbling about a partner whom he had picked up at a tournament’s Partnership Desk: “He doesn’t know how to defend a hand.”

Diane Storey was a teammate of mine in a knockout. Our team was eliminated in the first round of the Knockout Regional in Cromwell. I have a vague recollection that my partner had been Gary Cohen (introduced here). Diane was probably playing with a guy named Marvin who worked in NYC.

Players who lost in the KO usually played in the Single-session Swiss¹, an event that offered only red points. Our partners from the KO wanted to skip the Swiss and go home early. Diane and I were greedy about the chance of winning some points and paired up. The Partnership Desk assigned us to play with a very nice experienced player and a guy with much less experience. I don’t remember either name. My recollection is that we won only one match. The experienced player apologized for his partner’s shenanigans.

I never played as Diane’s partner after that, but I played against her and Marvin often at sectionals. I remember a very bizarre hand from one of those events. I was playing with Peter Katz at a tournament in Hamden, CT. We were playing the Flannery convention, in which 2♦ is used to show a hand with 11-15 high-card points, four spades, and five or more hearts. I have posted a write-up of this hand here. It is the hand that starts after the horizontal line. Diane was LHO. Marvin was RHO.

In 2023 Diane was still a member of the ACBL, but she had not earned any masterpoints all year. Her address on the roster was Vero Beach, FL.

I am pretty sure that we played against the Palmer team in the semifinals. I know all of the people on Don Caplin’s team, and I don’t remember playing them.

Playing with Estelle Margolin from Rego Park, NY, was a real treat for me. She had a lot more points than I did when the Partnership Desk informed my teammates from the HBC, Sally Kirtley and Jeanne Striefler, that she was the only person who was available to play with us in a compact knockout event in Cromwell in 2015.

I was delighted to discover that I had long ago written up and posted details of this event here. It is a pretty long article; just search for “Estelle”.

Estelle was still playing in 2023. She had amassed over 5,600 masterpoints and was a Diamond Life Master.

I must have played as the partner of Esther Watstein at a sectional tournament, but I do not remember the occasion. I do remember playing against her a few times.

I have had many contacts with Esther on the Board of Directors of the Connecticut Bridge Association (CBA). She served two terms as president. I was just a representative or an at-large member. Esther is still active as a member of the CBA’s Communications Committee. She also still plays regularly at sectional events, but since the Pandemic I don’t think that she has played outside of the state.

Greg Winkler was from Australia. He lived in Centerville, MA, which is very close to Hyannis, the site of the Senior Regional. The partnership person for the event was one of my regular partners, Ginny Iannini. Greg needed just a few points to make Life Master. I remember him as a very good card player who needed to learn more about bidding. He agreed with this assessment.

I think that I must have played with him more than once. I remember playing in a team event in which our teammates were Charlie Curley and Gene Flynn. I don’t remember how we did.

My other recollection is that after playing in afternoon session in Mansfield, MA, Greg wanted to play in the evening side game. Evidently he just needed a fraction of a point to attain Life Master status. I had to pass; Because I was very tired, I would have made a poor partner anyway. He played with Marcia West and got the points that he needed.

The next year at the tournament in Hyannis I was scheduled to play with Greg a third time. He had been on a vacation, but he promised me that he would be able to play that day. When he had not arrived, I tried to call him, but I got no answer. Ginny was able to find a partner for me, as is explained in the next section.

After this I had no further contact with Greg.

Greg was extremely sociable. He called all the women “love” and al the guys “mate”. I remember that at one tournament someone fell or suffered some other kind of accident. Greg rushed to his/her aid. I did not; I figured that I would likely be in the way of people who knew what they were doing..

I was surprised to discover that in 2023 Greg had almost as many masterpoints as I did, and he earned a lot more throughout the year. Since he has not been at tournaments, he must have been playing online. Although he has almost the same number of points as I had at the time, he was only a Silver Life Master in late 2023. He probably failed to meet the number of gold points required for subsequent ranks.

On the morning that Greg Winkler stood me up in Hyannis (described above) Lynda Flanger of Mayfield, NY, was looking for a partner in the A/X Swiss. She must have already had teammates. I was the only person available.

We had a pretty enjoyable round playing together, but at that point I would have been a lot more comfortable playing in the Open Swiss that was being held at the same time in the Cape Cod Sectional that was going on at the same time in the same hotel.

Lynda died in September of 2022. Her obituary has been posted here. She was still an active member of the ACBL at the time of her death. Despite what the obituary said, she was actually a Sapphire Life Master with over 4,600 masterpoints.

I don’t remember exactly where I met Charlie Curley. I played against him several times when his regular partner was Mike Colburn an actuary who lived in Simsbury, CT.² They were the top qualifying team for the North American Pairs (NAP) in both 2010 and 2011. They also were the other pair in the epic five-person team that I successfully captained in the sectional in Auburn, MA, that was described here.

I invited Charlie to play on our team in the Mini-Spingold event in Washington, DC, that I described here. At that tournament I somehow lost my red and blue Barça hat. When Charlie and his wife took a vacation to Barcelona, he bought a replacement for me and gave it to me at a subsequent tournament. I was suitably touched.

Charlie won a few D25 tournaments. When I wrote him to request a photo of him with or without his partner, he advised me to just use a photo of Cary Grant. By the way, he also insisted on being called Handsome Charlie Curley.

I only played with Charlie once. It was at a sectional in Auburn, MA. Charlie told me that he had read many of Marty Bergen’s books and pamphlets and suggested that we should just go by his approach. That was OK with me, although it was the only time that I have ever played “Serious 3NT”.

Our round was scuttled by one unfortunate hand. I opened 1♣. Charlie responded 2♥. I interpreted this as a jump-shift, which we were playing as weak (except for Bergen raises). Charlie thought that he was making a standard 2/1 response. Evidently the Bergen books that he had read did not cover this situation.

Charlie owned his own business. During much of our association he was going through the agony of trying to sell it. I commiserated with him. At that point I had already given up on selling TSI (described here). I am pretty sure that in the end, however, Charlie was able to close his deal.

Charlie was still active in the ACBL in 2023. He was closing in on Gold Life Master. However, he has not attended any D25 tournaments since 2018.

I met Tucker Merritt at the HBC, where he was a regular in the Tuesday evening game when I started playing there in 2008. I never played with him at the HBC, but for some reason Tom Gerchman set me up to play with Tucker in a team game in a sectional somewhere in District 3 while he played with Dan Finn or Terry Fair—I don’t remember which.

As usual, we had to meet very early in the morning at the office in Avon where Tom worked. I had to park my car in the open-air garage that was beneath the building. While we were driving to the tournament on the parkway named after one of Tucker’s ancestors I had to memorize Tucker’s convention card, which included a few things that I had never played. I seem to recollect that we played transfer overcalls for 1NT openers.

I think that we held our own in the event, which was a Swiss, perhaps limited to a certain number of points. I am not sure whether we did well enough to place in the overalls. I don’t remember any specifics of this adventure.

I never had a chance to play with Tucker again. He died in 2019. His obituary can be found here.

The partnership coordinator for one of the sectionals in Watertown set me up to play with Lucia Enica (loo CHEE ah) in the Open Pairs game on a Saturday. I corresponded with her by email to establish a convention card with which we both felt comfortable. She convinced me to play a practice game on Bridge Base Online. I was not at all familiar with the interface, and I found the entire experience unnerving. To me it was not bridge. I resolved never to do it again.³

We did not do too well in the event either. My only recollection of it was when I led the ace of a side suit and then the queen. Lucia did not understand that this sequence guaranteed that I also had the king, and she trumped it. She claimed that I was wrong about this, but I could not understand how she could think that I was so silly as to lead the ace from an AQ holding.

Lucia and I never played together as a pair, but we did team up at an equally unsatisfactory attempt to qualify for the Grand National Teams (GNT). My partner was Paul Burnham (introduced here). Hers was Lou DiOrio.

Lucia, who was a psychiatric nurse, was still very active in bridge in 2023, but she had moved to Washington, DC.

I played one session at a regional tournament with a novice player from Rhode Island named Bea Martini. It was probably at the pro-am game that was held in Warwick one year. I remember only that she was rather new to the game.

Bea was still a member of the ACBL in 2023. She amassed a few masterpoints in 2023, but she had not attended any D25 events since 2019. She also did not attend the NABC in Providence in the summer of 2022 even though she lived in East Providence.

I have known Mike Winterfield longer than any of my other partners. He was my first boss at my first job at the Hartford Life in 1972, as described here.

I have seen Mike at the HBC many times and played against him more than a few times. I am pretty sure that my wife Sue played as his partner a few times as well.

When he first started attending games at the club he often played with his wife Jane. She had health problems, an they had relationship problems. They eventually divorced, and she moved away. She died in 2016. I could not find an obituary.

My game with Mike was on a Saturday evening in a pro-am event in the regional tournament in Cromwell, CT, in February of 2016.

We did quite well in the event, finishing in sixth place (out of forty-eight pairs) with a 56.88 percent game, which was good enough for 1.99 masterpoints. I had a good time playing with him and thought that he had quite a bit of potential.

In 2023 Mike mostly played with Barbara Edelstein, who has been his partner for more than five years.

James (really Sun-Ming) Lee has played fairly regularly at the HBC for many years and was still playing pretty often in 2023 when I wrote this. In all of that time he has never really had a regular partner. Since the reopening he has played mostly with Y.C. Hsu.

I only played with him once. It was at the regional tournament in Cromwell. We both needed a partner, and so we paired up. I think that we played in a Mid-Flight pairs game. We did about average.

James has always had a reckless style of play. He loves to play in notrump contracts. He also has shown a propensity for underleading aces on defense.

His most recognizable feature was his posture at the table. He commonly rested his scorecard on his lap and crossed his legs at the knee. When he made any kind of a movement the scorecard would fall on the floor. After several years he had more or less perfected this so that it only happened once or twice per session.

I thoroughly enjoyed teaming up with Brenda Harvey at many tournaments, mostly regionals. My fondest memory is the evening when she, her partner Robert Klopp, and I and my partner, Dick Benedict, celebrated at a restaurant in or near Nashua, NH, the day that she made Life Master.

I also enjoyed the one time that I played with her at a sectional in Hamden, but I don’t remember any details of the occasion.

Brenda moved to St. Augustine, FL. In 2023 she was still a member of the ACBL and played quite a bit.

I knew Pat Nye before I played with her in a game at the Cape. I think that we may have been teammates.

Before the round I disclosed to Pat that I regularly made OBAR BIDS (an acronym for “opponents bid and raise: balance in the direct seat”). I told her that if the opponents bid and raise a major suit, I would bid almost any five-card suit to prevent them from playing in an eight-card fit at the two level. However, when I did it, she raised my bid, and I went down. After the hand, she said, “Well, you warned me.”

In 2023 Pat was still a member of the ACBL, but she had not played in any tournaments since the reopening. On the other hand, the only tournaments that she attended before Covid-19 were on the Cape, and D25 has not sponsored any of those in the last two years.

I played against Tink Tysor, a former IBMer from New Hampshire. I knew how he played, and I thought that our styles would be quite compatible.

We finally played together in an Open Pairs game a year or so before the Pandemic. The result was a disaster, If we were not last, we were certainly close to that.

Tink was still a very active player in 2023.

I knew Sally Kirtley quite well from both the SBC and the HBC. She often played in both clubs with Jerry Hirsch (introduced here) as a partner. When her mother was still alive she also played with her. When Helen Pawlowski retired as Tournament Manager for D25, Sally replaced her.

Sally also has served as a director for both the HBC and the SBC since Covid-19 caused the mass shutdown. I have worked fairly closely with her at the SBC, and we were also (at least in theory) both members of the D25 Tournament Scheduling Committee.

I think that Sally and I played together once or twice before the reopening. We definitely have played twice at regional tournaments in 2022 and 2023. We did not do well in the Open Pairs. Part of the problem was that, as Tournament Manager, she was distracted by administrative aspects of the tournament.

Sally was an attorney, and she was still practicing in the same law firm as her husband, George Bickford, who has shown up for bridge in at least one emergency.

Paul Pearson, more than anyone else, helped me get started with bridge in the twenty-first century. That story has been posted here. I often communicated with him via email when I encountered difficulties, especially in the area of competitive bidding. Paul understood the Law of Total Tricks (LAW) quite well, and he directed me to sources that explained its complexity. This knowledge stood me in very good stead against players at the lower levels.

After that I played against him and his primary partner, Laurie Robbins, many times, but I don’t think that I ever played with Paul at either the SBC or the HBC. Our first pairing was in a Swiss event at a sectional tournament in Hamden. Our teammates were two people from the HBC, Joan Brault (introduced here) and Michele (mee KAY lay or Mike) Raviele. I think that we had a pretty good result, but Paul did not like the way that Mike bid one hand.

Our greatest success, however, was at the Ocean State Regional in Warwick, RI, in 2015. We played in the ABC Pairs and finished fifth out of thirty-eight pairs and won both the B and C flights. The reason that the results sheet at right says that it was “Based on 67 Tables” was because there were an additional 38 tables in the Gold Rush.

We hoped to defend our crowns in the same event in 2016, but I had a commitment to play in a two-day knockout that started on the previous day. Paul died of cancer in December of 2016. Shortly thereafter Paul’s wife Sue contacted me about donating Paul’s bridge books. I kept a few and gave the rest of them to the HBC.

Paul had been a programmer longer than I had. In his day they coded in assembler. He also had a great interest in orienteering. Paul died in 2016. His obituary can be found here.

I played one two-session game with Geoff Phipps, a Platinum Life Master, in Honolulu after Ann Hudson had said that she did not want to play with me any more. It was only a little short of a miracle that he was available. He probably would not have agreed to play with me if I was not already familiar with a large set of conventions that Geoff and Randy Johnson used.

My game with Geoff has been described in some detail here. What I did not know at the time was that a photographer was taking photos of the playing area and that one of those photos would be used on the cover of a book by Bill Treble. I was front and center, but Geoff was not included.

Geoff lived most of his life in New Hampshire, but he moved to Bluffton, SC, at some point. Nevertheless he returned for the 2023 edition of the Granite State Getaway in Nashua.

Sabrina approved this photo of herself and Darryl Legassie.

Bridge in New England has a diverse population. There are two exceptions, however. The first is that old people are disproportionately represented. The second is the shocking lack of representation of Black people. Sabrina Miles was unquestionably the most successful Black bridge player in New England during my association with the game.

I played with her for only one two-session game at a district tournament in (I think) Warwick. We had planned to spend a half hour going over our card before the game, but she got involved in a conversation with someone. I remember that we had a very bad score in the first session. Although I had thought that the second was just as bad, we actually did much better.

Sabrina won several regional events. She did not like the photo that I had used of her and asked me to take another. I agreed, and from that point forward I used that photo. She was the only person who made such a request.

Sabrina lived in Mansfield, MA. She served as the partnership person at tournaments held there several times. She set me up for very pleasant games with the next two entries.

Sabrina was still an active participant in D25 events in 2023.

I enjoyed the preparation session with Ru Terajewicz as much as I did the round. The things that she insisted that we go over before the first session were very well chosen. I already knew how (at least in New England) the best players bid with a six-card major in the fourth seat. Ru, who was (and still is in 2023) an accomplished teacher explained how to handle a seven-card suit in that situation.

That didn’t come up during the round. We both played well enough to score well, but it was not our day.

Although Ru moved to Ponte Vedra, FL, she has remained very active in bridge in 2023. However, we have not seen her in New England.

The other fine player that Sabrina set me up with in Mansfield was Darryl Legassie, who had been Sabrina’s steady partner for several years. Darryl and I also played in the Open Pairs, but we seemed to click better than Ru and I had.

When the last card was played we finished sixth out of seventy-three pairs and first in Flight B. This was a really great result for two guys who had never really met before.

Darryl’s email address started with lorddarryl and in the “Prefix” field on his record on the ACBL I did not check his entry in Burke’s Peerage, but Darryl assured me that I need not use his chosen title when addressing him.

Darryl was still an active player in 2023, but he had not appeared in any regional tournaments in D25.

The only Grand Life Master with whom I have played was Mark Aquino. He was also elected Regional Director of Region 2 during the Pandemic. That meant that he was the only person representing D24 (NYC and Long Island) and D25 on the ACBL board.

Mark (right) won his first NABC championship with Shome Mukherjee.

Prior to that I worked with him closely when he was the head of the B’s Needs Committee, President of the New England Bridge Conference (NEBC), and then District Director. Mark was a consummate politician who knew how to work a room. This was quite rare in a bridge player. He also won the Individual tournament in Newton twice.

I have twice played with Mark. The first time was when he invited me to play in the evening side game at a regional tournament. I remember two hands. On one of them I made a lead-directing bid on a hand that the opponents had been bidding. Mark correctly deduced what I had and bid 3NT. The problem was that if the opponent on his left did not lead hearts, the suit that they had been bidding, he only had eight tricks. On the opening lead he chose a different suit. Mark, however, threw him in a little later, and he succumbed to the temptation and led hearts.

I do not remember the outcome of the other hand, but in that case Mark doubled for a lead. I complied, but he mildly chastised me for not leading the top of my KQJ sequence in a different suit.

Our score for the session was a little over 60 percent, which was good enough for second place.

My memorable round with Mark in Honolulu has been described here.

Bob Bertoni was known as the Grand Poobah of New England Bridge. He served as VP and then President of the NEBC. At the same time he was President of the Eastern Massachusetts Bridge Association (EMBA). He then ran for District Director against the incumbent, Mark Aquino, and won. He held that position and was running for Regional Director when he died in 2021. His obituary has been posted here.

I may have met Bob in 1977 when I was coaching debate at the University of Michigan. Don Huprich, Stewart Mandel, and I made an epic journey to New England (described here) to participate in the tournament at Boston College and two other colleges. At the time Bob was attending BC on a debate scholarship. Bob’s coach, Tuna Snider, threw a party for some of the people at the tournament. We were invited, and we attended. We met some of the BC debaters; we might have met Bob, who was almost certainly in attendance.

Bob asked me to play with him three times. The first occasion was in the Open Pairs at a District 3 regional tournament in Danbury, CT. Bob was there to negotiate with the D3 officials concerning how much they would pay to District 25 to be able to use the Crowne Plaza hotel there for this tournament. He resolved the issue.

We finished above average in the bridge game. We might have won a point or two.

Our second game was when Bob was campaigning for District Director. He came down to Orange for a sectional and attend the U126 board meeting. We played in the Sunday Swiss together. I have forgotten who our teammates were. We played OK, but I think that our teammates let us down.

The last time that I played with Bob was at an EMBA sectional. Somehow he found himself without a partner. So, he asked me to drive to Watertown to play with him. I was more than happy to do so. We finished near the middle.

In 2018 I had the honor of chairing the committee to elect the winner of the Larry Weiss award. A detailed explanation of the criteria of the award has been posted here. Bob was the winner. In 2022 I talked the Executive Committee into retiring the award and presenting a new trophy called the Weiss-Bertoni award. As the most recent winner of the Larry Weiss award, I also chaired that committee. The details are posted here.

Bob was closely involved in the early years of my career as webmaster, database manager, and email manager for D25. That period is explored here.

I really miss Bob Bertoni. District 25 really needed his leadership after the reopening.

1. I took the name of this widely disparaged event as my nom de plume for the “View from B-low” columns that I wrote about my exploits in District 25 tournaments and elsewhere. They were posted on NEBridge.org. I have created an index for the ones that were still available in 2023 here.

2. Mike joined the HBC in 2010. He may have played at the club a few times, but I never saw him. He dropped his membership the next year. He never came to a game at the SBC. In 2023 he was still an active member of the ACBL, but he had not won any masterpoints in years. In fact, he would still be eligible for Flight C of the NAP. I seriously doubt that anyone has ever competed in the NABC finals of that event three times.

3. For the most part I have kept to this plan through 2023. I played online with Ken Leopold and Eric Vogel a few times in preparation for the online qualifying for the GNT. I played with my wife Sue a couple of times during the Pandemic. Other than that I only have signed on anonymously to BBO to play a few hands against the robots before games at the HBC.

2013-2019 Members of the Simsbury Bridge Club Part 2

Posted on December 12, 2021 by Mike

David and Sally run the SBC Continue reading →

This entry describes workings of the Simsbury Bridge Club between 2013 and 2019. It also lists players who first played at the club in those years who were not my partners. The experiences with my partners for that period are enumerated here. The lists are probably incomplete because the results sheets for 2011 and 2012 are apparently lost.

The following people were playing at the SBC in 2013. Some may have begun in 2011 or 2012 or even earlier. Sally Kirtley was the director, and David Rock was the manager.

Elisabeth Barnicoat played with Carolyn Newell a few times. Carolyn also played with Sue Wavada at least once. I occasionally saw both Elisabeth and Carolyn at the Hartford Bridge Club (HBC) as I left after an open game in the morning. They were entering the building for a limited game in the afternoon.
Pat Carey played with Jan Rosow. Over the years she has played at the SBC with Jan and a few others. She did not play at the SBC in 2021, but she sent me an email indicating her intention to return in 2022.
Med and Kathy Colket always played together. They only played once a month or so, but they continued to play at the SBC through 2021. They were pretty good players, but their bidding techniques needed a little modernizing. I think that they both went to Cornell at the same time that I was an undergrad at Michigan. Med also has a PhD from Princeton. His LinkedIn page is here. They played together at a few tournaments and did quite well. Med came up with the idea of registering vaccinated players for the reboot of the SBC in 2021, as described here. Kathy has also played pretty often at the HBC.
Patty Connolly played with Louise Jackubosky. I remember Louise clearly, but not Patty. I am pretty sure that Louise is the sister of Aldona Siuta, a regular player at the HBC. Louise has not played at the SBC in a few years.
Karen Emott played with Margie Garilli quite a few times. I know who Karen is, but I can’t remember much more than her name.
Carol Foley and Denyse LeMare paid the SBC a visit one Wednesday evening. They were en route from their homes in New Jersey to a bridge tournament somewhere and stayed overnight at the Hampton Inn in Enfield. They played Precision, but on the hand that we played against them they did not get to use any of the gadgets. I overheard one of them remark that there must be a better way to drive back to Enfield than the way that they came. I assured them that there were several, but they were all rather complicated. I advised them to follow my car back to Enfield, which they did successfully. I have never seen them since.
Kammy and Vj Goel played together several times at the SBC. Vj died in 2017. His obituary is here.
I think that 2013 is the year that I asked Ken Leopold to play with me, but our longstanding partnership might have begun in 2012. He had previously played with a couple of other people. Much more about the adventures Ken and I shared are provided here.
Karen Harrison played at the SBC with Linda Dragat. I don’t remember either of them at the SBC, but I distinctly remember Karen’s cringe-worthy stories at the Life Master party that she shared with Nancy Narwold in 2012. Karen now lives in Florida. I have played against Linda many times at the HBC, where she is still an active member in 2021.
James Lee played with Donna Lyons. James had the very peculiar habit of balancing his scoresheet and pencil on his lap. Since he crossed or uncrossed his legs at least once per minute, the scoresheet and pencil were constantly falling from their perch. I found this amusing, but some people were annoyed. He also liked to underlead aces just because no one expected it. I played with him in one pairs event at the regional tournament in Cromwell when my partner had canceled at the last minute. James never seemed to have a steady partner that I remember. He had been to Tanzania and shared some of his photos with me before our Africa trip in 2015. Our trip is documented here. I don’t know where James is in 2021.
Debbie Ouellette (ooh LETT) almost always played with David Rock. She got a lot better over the years. She and David ran the partnership desk at the regional tournament in Cromwell for many years. They got married in 2020. Sue and I were invited, but we could not attend because of the pandemic. At the time there was no vaccination, and the treatment modalities were mostly guesswork.
Toby Schuman sometimes played with her husband Art both at the SBC and in special events at the HBC. Sue Rudd told me that Toby was an excellent athlete. She was also a much better bridge player than her husband.
Lea Selig played at the SBC on one occasion with Sheila Mark. I don’t remember Sheila at all. Lea is a regular at the HBC. She often plays with Jeanne Striefler or Aldona Siuta. Lea is a good bridge player, but I would never play with her. She is very tough on her partners.
Mike Winterfield played with my wife Sue. Mike was my first boss back in 1972 at the Hartford Life. Those days are described here. He also participated on our departmental sports teams, the Mean Reserves, as recounted here. I also played with Mike at least once at the Pro-Am event of the regional tournament in Cromwell. We did pretty well. Mike got divorced from his wife Jane at some point. He is a rather active member of the HBC.
In her SBC debut Mike’s wife Jane Winterfield played with Clara Horn. She also played with Mike a few times at the SBC and the HBC. Hers is a sad story. She had physical problems that culminated with her death. I could not find an obituary.
I have no recollection of the following players:
- I don’t remember Edie Sherman at all.
- Robert Van Gorder played once with Jerry Hudson. I recall nothing about him.
- Phyllis Vignone played with Carolyn Newell. I do not remember Phyllis.

The following people began playing at the SBC in 2014.

Dan and Becky Koepf played together a few times. I knew Dan pretty well from the years that I played on Tuesday evenings at the HBC. Dan often played in those games with Dave Landsberg. I asked the two of them to play with Jerry Hirsch and me in the Flight C qualifying tournament for the Grand National Teams. We did exceptionally well when one takes into account that neither pair had any experience in the event whatever. My partnership with Dave is documented here.
Reba Stock played with Alden. They both played in 2020 as well.
Stan Stolarz, a resident of Southwick, MA, is still a fairly active member of the club in 2021.
Fred Striefler is a physicist and a very smart guy. He is also Jeanne’s husband. He plays with us at the SBC when we need someone to fill in. Jeanne is much more serious about bridge than Fred.
Maureen Walsh mostly played with Jan Rosow. Moe’s Life Master party at the SBC in 2019 set a modern day attendance record. Jan and Moe still come to the SBC about once per month.
I have no recollection of the following players.
- Sue Shipley played with Ida.
- Andrea Saxon (Ron’s wife) played w/ Ellen Dworetsky.

The following people began playing at the SBC in 2015.

Al Carpenter played with a number of people at the SBC. I think that he found our game through an unsanctioned daytime game at Eno Hall. He was a big boisterous guy with a hearing problem that seemed to cause him to talk a bit too loud. I think that he worked for Enterprise Rent-a-Car. His last partner was Rollin Shank. I don’t know why Al stopped coming to our games.
Yan Drabek and Allison Ryan came down from Massachusetts to qualify to play in the NAP. I have subsequently had many email exchanges with Yan, who manages the website for Unit 196 (Western Mass). I once arranged for her to meet bridge expert Harold Feldheim at a CBA sectional tournament. She was interested in taking some lessons from Harold. I played with Allison once. I think that it might have been at the SBC.
I was surprised to see that Betty Kerber once played at the SBC with Pat Carey. Her regular partner at the HBC and at tournaments was Don Muller, but she has also played with other people.
Aaron Leopold is one of Ken’s sons. He has played at the HBC with his dad a few times. He is an officer in the Army. I think that he flies helicopters.
Lori Leopold is Ken’s wife. I don’t know why she has let me play with Ken every week for so many years. She was a very important figure in the renaissance of the SBC in 2019, as described here.
Everyone was a little shocked when top players Alan Rothenberg and Geof Brod came to the SBC for an NAP qualifying game. To no one’s surprise they finished first and earned their Q’s.
Rollin Shank played with Robert Webber in his first appearance at the SBC. I don’t remember Robert, who never returned, but Rollin played fairly regularly, mostly with Al Carpenter, for several years. After that he often teamed up with Tina Yablonski at the HBC and at local tournaments.
Ronit Shoham has played fairly regularly at the SBC, mostly with Lori. They still play together pretty often, both at the SBC and the HBC. Ronit is famous for paying her table fees with $2 bills. If she arrived at the game at 6:29, she was early. She insisted that Israelis were always late.
I don’t remember the occasion, but Felix Springer first played at the SBC in 2015. I have played with him many time and played on teams with him even more often. Those experiences are described here. In 2021 he is the president of the HBC. So, in a way he is my boss.

I am positive that I did not take this photo of Moe Walsh and Jan Rosow. Do you know why?

The following people began playing at the SBC in 2016.

I did not realize that Frankie Brown (a woman) had ever played at the SBC, but she is listed on one of the results sheet in 2016. She has been a member of the HBC for a long time, but I have not seen her in 2021.
Nancy Calderbank played at least once with Sue Wavada. In 2021 she still plays often at the HBC and once a month at the SBC with Xenia Coulter.
Debbie Katz played with Lori at the SBC. Debbie was a regular at the HBC and at local tournaments before the pandemic, but I have not seen her in 2021.
It must have been a special occasion when Dave Landsberg played with Felix at the SBC. He must have had a long drive from and to his house in Higganum. Dave was one of the best people whom I ever met. More details about our relationship are collected here.
Joe and Rachel Peled first played together at the SBC in 2016. They came back a few times after that, but mostly they played at the HBC and at tournaments. I have seen Rachel at the HBC in 2021. I heard that Joe had physical difficulties that restricted his play to online.
Chuck Pickens played with Diann Wienke fairly often before the pandemic. I even played one night with Chuck when Diann and Ken were not available. I have not seen either of them in 2021.
Trevor Reeves made his debut at the SBC with Felix. I have played with him quite a few times at the HBC and at tournaments. The details are here.
Norm Rosow played with his wife Jan at the SBC a few times. I have seen him once or twice at the HBC in 2021.
I do not remember the following players who played at least once at the SBC in 2016.
- Betty Friedman played with Ken.
- Bruce Meade played with Rollin.

The following people began playing at the SBC in 2017. The list is almost certainly not complete.

Richard McClure played with Allison Ryan. I know him from tournaments.
Helene and Hank Thompson were regulars at the SBC in the early months of 2017.
Kathy Fahey played with Sue Wavada in 2017, and they have kept in touch since then. They have played online at the HBC games in 2021.
Ginny Basch played with Sue Wavada in 2017. I don’t think that she came to the SBC again, but they have enjoyed many breakfasts together since then at a “greasy spoon” in Somers, CT.
Lesley Myers played with Jeanne Striefler. Lesley is one of the best players at the HBC. I played with her there once. She was the only person who noticed the flesh-covered golf ball on my left elbow, as I recounted here.
Brittany Stahely played with Lori Leopold. I don’t remember Brittany.

2018 began with a bang. On January 31 the SBC held a party to celebrate Moe Walsh’s achievement of the rank of Life Master. The Youth Room was wall-to-wall bridge players. We had nine tables, and for the first time in many years we were able to play a Mitchell². Here are the people who came to our Wednesday evening game for the first time that night.

Two top players from the HBC, Tom Joyce and Y.L. Shiue, joined our group for the first time. Before I really knew him I once sat beside Tom on a long Continental flight from Houston.
Gay Godfrey played with Ida that night and on quite a few subsequent occasions in 2018.
Sue Wavada talked one of her HBC partners, Marianne Hope, into sitting across from her.
John Calderbank, with whom I have played quite often, played with his wife Nancy. In 2021 John is very active in the management of the HBC and also, with Nancy, runs a bridge game in Glastonbury.
Marie Abate played with Ron Talbot. Marie still plays regularly at the HBC. Ron, a former president of the HBC, has moved to Naples, FL
Tina Yablonski played with Rollin Shank that tournaments and at tournaments. Tina and her husband went on a few trips with the Strieflers. Tina was a member of the HBC’s Planning Committee on which I served before the pandemic.

Unfortunately, the rest of the year did not yield anything like that. No new players came during the rest of the winter or the spring. The summer was disrupted somewhat by remodeling of the basement of Eno Hall. We were able to play, but the game was sometimes moved to rooms that were not nearly as nice for bridge as the Youth Room. A few new players came in the late summer and fall. Here is the list:

On August 1 Linda Starr, whom I first met at the Tuesday night games at the HBC ten years earlier, brought Gordon Kreh to play at the SBC. Linda was (and is) a fine player who later became a director and communication specialist for the HBC. Gordon, like so many others, picked up the fundamentals of bridge decades earlier, but he was having difficulty adjusting to the new conventions and the more aggressive approach to bidding. They did pretty well at the SBC for the rest of the year.
Three weeks later Joe Brouillard and his wife Linda Ahrens played in the Wednesday evening game and took home all the marbles. I played once with Linda in the Senior Regional in Hyannis, MA. Our game was not that memorable, but I recall that she actually walked to the tournament that day, and Joe brought us both lunch. We also played together once in a club game in Warwick, RI. Joe is also a good friend. Not only has he served for years as the District 25’s treasurer—in which role he was instrumental in rescuing the NEBC from years of dwindling assets, but he also served as chairman of both the 2014 and 2022 NABC tournaments in Providence. I have also played against both of them many times at regional and sectional tournaments.
On October 3 Jessica Koob played with Jeanne. She did not return, and I don’t remember her at all.

By the spring of 2019 the club was a shadow of its former self. We often seemed to face the prospect of the dreaded two-and-a half-table game with the five-board sitout. I remember several two-table games that we scored using IMPs¹, a format that I actually enjoyed. At least once I drove out to Simsbury, and there were not enough people for even that kind of play, and once we were locked out of the building. Some games were canceled because of lack of interest just before Wednesday.

As far as I can tell, only one new player appeared at the SBC during the first part of 2019. On May 1, 2019 Mike Carmiggelt played with Jeanne. Mike played with Linda Starr for years on Tuesday nights at the HBC. During the pandemic he contacted me by telephone (!) to suggest that we have an informal game in Eno Hall, which was still closed at the time. In 2021 his is still a familiar face at the tables at the HBC, but I have not seen him at Eno.

The club was on life support by May of 2019. Dave Rock had moved to West Brookfield, MA, which was more than an hour away from Eno Hall. He and his partner Debbie Ouelette were obviously not willing to make that drive for a two-table game. Sally Kirtley wanted to keep the club going, but she now had weighty responsibilities in her new position as the district’s tournament manager. The SBC was badly in need of new blood and resuscitation.

Fortunately, that is exactly what happened, as is described here.

1. IMP is an acronym for International Match Point, a way of scoring commonly used in team games. It is described in some detail here.

2. In a Mitchell movement each pair is assigned a permanent designation as East-West or North-South. The latter stay at the same table throughout the session, and the East-West pairs move. It requires a certain number of tables for a reasonable game. The other common movement at club games is a Howell. Most pairs in a Howell play North-South in some rounds and East-West in others. Almost everyone moves after each round. The objective is to allow each pair to play against as many pairs as possible.

Wavablog

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Tag Archives: Hartford Life

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2008-2019 Bridge Partners at Tournaments Part 2

2013-2019 Members of the Simsbury Bridge Club Part 2