2005-2011 Jim Wavada’s Time in Enfield

Posted on November 19, 2021 by Mike

Jim Wavada living in New England? Continue reading →

Documentation: I found very few notes about the events described in this entry. Sue supplied a few details as well as a book of photos that she had made for my dad. I know from a note on the back of one photo that the move occurred in October of 2005, when my dad was eighty-one years old. It just occurred to me that the transition occurred around what would have been my mom’s eightieth birthday on October 2. That probably also weighed on dad’s mind as he contemplated his future. Most of the following is therefore based on my memory, which may, of course, be faulty.

I should mention in passing that during the entire period our house in Enfield was such a gigantic mess that we never invited any friends over for any purpose.

The problem: In 2005 my dad was diagnosed with macular degeneration. Since he had already lost the vision in one eye to a detached retina, his vision was quite poor at this time. He still had a car and a driver’s license, but there was no way that he could drive. His doctor had prescribe the recently authorized periodic injections that arrested but did not usually reverse the degeneration. He also certified that dad was legally blind, which was useful for tax purposes. There was virtually no public transportation in the area in which he lived, suburban Johnson County, KS. If he stayed there, he would need to depend on his friends or expensive taxis.

Six years earlier my sister Jamie had cut off contact with my dad, or maybe vice-versa. I could see no reason to involve her in the problems.

I discussed the situation with my wife Sue. She agreed that he should come to Connecticut and live near us. He could live in an apartment for a while. If and when we added on to the house (that project was described here), he could come live with us. I talked with dad on the phone about moving to Connecticut. He was surprised but pleased.

Planning the move: In 2005 I was extremely busy with several monstrous projects at TSI. At the time Sue was no longer working at TSI’s office (explained here). She spent quite a bit of time with her father-in-law, Chick Comparetto. Sue helped dad pick out an apartment. I cannot remember whether he came out to Connecticut. She might have just described the choices to him over the phone. At the time Enfield had a few rather large apartment complexes and a greater number of smaller ones. If the search was expanded to the neighboring towns of Suffield, Longmeadow, Somers, and East Windsor, the selection would be much larger.

Fox Hill was an easy drive from our house.

I was not involved in this process. I am pretty sure that dad ruled out Bigelow Commons because he could not abide the notion of living in what was formerly a carpet factory. Instead he chose Fox Hill, which was near the corner of Elm St. and Elm St.¹

My dad wanted me to come to Kansas City and drive his Ford Taurus back to Connecticut. He knew that my Saturn was pretty old, and he wanted to give me the Taurus, but I did not want it. At the time the Saturn suited my purposes. When I eventually abandoned the Saturn I wanted to pick out my own car. Furthermore, I could not afford to spend several days getting the car to Enfield. So, on my advice he sold it. I don’t know the details.

In addition to his vision problems, my dad also had mobility issues. He had had one hip replaced, and the doctor advised him that the other hip was nearly as bad. After the surgery and therapy he could walk well enough. He could even ascend and descend stairs, but he went slowly and he need a railing.

I certainly don’t remember the chandelier.

Living at Fox Hill: Someone helped my dad pack up his belongings at his apartment. He engaged movers to take them to Connecticut. He flew to Bradley by himself. Sue picked him up at the airport.

The movers did not arrive on time. So, my dad and Sue spent an entire day sitting in an empty apartment. I am not sure where he stayed that night. There are several hotels in Enfield.

My dad’s apartment was on the first floor. Since there were no elevators, he would not accept a second-floor unit.

The apartment was not fancy. It had a bedroom, a living room, and a small kitchen. I seem to remember a picture window, too. It was at least two or three steps down from his place in Overland Park.

Sue took these two photos on the day that dad’s furnishings were due to arrive.

I had not considered it beforehand, but my dad would obviously need to do laundry. He occasionally brought a load over to our house, and one of use ran them through our washer and dryer. Most of the time he did his own laundry. He mixed everything together in one laundry bag. The closest laundry room was in the basement of another building. He had to walk there, throw his bag down to the bottom of the staircase, walk down the stairs, open the door, and go inside. The hard part was returning. He had to drag his laundry bag up the stairs.

What did he do with the pants and shirts that needed to be hung? He had them dry-cleaned. Either Sue or I took him to the cleaners, probably E-Jay’s on Hazard Ave. It was about the same distance from Fox Hill as our house was, and we drove by it almost no matter where we were going.

The machines in the laundry room at Fox Hill did not accept coins. They accepted only debit cards issued by the office at Fox Hill, which was quite a distance from my dad’s apartment. So, Sue and I would often stop by the office so that he could pay his rent or boost the balance in his laundry account.

Dad stayed at Fox Hill for more than a year, but a little later he felt that the place was becoming dangerous, and he was no longer comfortable living there. He witnessed some mild violence, and he told me that he was sure that there were drug transactions going on. I don’t know if he was right, but he definitely wanted out. I remember that he wrote a letter complaining about an incident that he witnessed and posted it on a website set up for that purpose. Soon after it was posted, several letters praising Fox Hill appeared. It appeared to me that they had all been written by the same person.

Sue once again helped dad find an apartment. I know that they drove to a house in Suffield that was renting a few rooms. He did not like it, but he did like Bigelow Commons when he finally visited it. I took him there to see it before he signed the lease. He asked me what I thought of it. I told him that if this was the same price as Fox Hill, I could not believe that he ever chose Fox Hill. He assured me that it was the same price.

I don’t know what was involved in transporting his belongings to his new apartment.

Living at Bigelow Commons: Dad’s apartment was on the second floor of the southernmost building at Bigelow Commons. There was an elevator just inside the door, and his room was close to both the elevator and the laundry room. He bought a small cart that he could put his laundry in. This was a far superior approach to what he went through at Fox Hill. He also located a dry cleaner that was within a few blocks of Bigelow.

The main reason that Bigelow was not able to charge more was probably because of its location in the middle of Thompsonville. The surrounding neighborhood could be a little rough, but the compound itself seemed plenty safe. If I lived there, I would be worried about my car being broken into or stolen. The parking lot was much more easily accessible than at Fox Hill. That was not a concern for my dad, of course. He did not have a car.

The biggest problem that my dad had at Bigelow was dealing with the windows, which were old and heavy. I could push them up and pull them down without much problem, but that was fifteen years ago. I wonder if I could still deal with them as easily in 2023 at the age of seventy-five..

Dad much preferred the atmosphere and the people at Bigelow. I don’t remember him complaining about anyone there, even the management..

Getting around Enfield: My dad was reasonably independent. I visited him once or twice a week when I was in town. We sometimes ate breakfast at his favorite place, the Farmer’s Daughter Cafe on Mountain Road in West Suffield. It was located in a small strip mall more than twenty minutes from our house. Sue sometimes joined us or took him there when I was out of town.

On most Wednesdays we would eat lunch together at Friendly’s near the Enfield Square mall. We both always ordered the same thing. He had the Senior Turkey Club Super-Melt and coffee. I had the Reuben Super-Melt and a glass of Diet Coke. The waitresses all knew us and treated us like royalty. They especially loved my dad, who insisted on paying and was a big tipper.

I always drove both of us from Friendly’s to Bigelow, but sometimes when I went to pick him up he was already at the mall. He had gone there to walk from one end to the other. He was very proud of being able to do this. He often told me that he thought that he “had a stride.”

How did he get to the mall? Enfield had a free bus service for seniors called Dial-a-Ride. He would call in to make an appointment. The bus would pick him up at the parking lot near his door and take him to the doctor’s office or any other location in Enfield.

It was a terrific service for seniors, and my dad definitely appreciated it. When you called for an appointment, you could specify the time and destination, but you could not specify the driver. My dad did not appreciate one of the bus drivers, who insisted on proselytizing his right-wing political views willy nilly to all the passengers. My dad complained about this guy almost every time that we were together.

Trying to read: After he retired my dad enjoyed four pastimes above others—golf, travel, reading, and writing. He played a lot of golf in the early years with my mom or with some friends. His hip and vision problems eliminated his favorite form of exercise, and I could not name what was second.

When mom was alive they traveled some together, but after her condition deteriorated it was difficult. After she died my dad took two big trips, one to France with a group of strangers who were part of a Catholic group and one to Ireland with Cadie Mapes, his granddaughter. I don’t know how much he enjoyed either trip. What he could get out of them was severely limited by his poor vision and his mobility issues. I know only that he loved the side trip to Normandy and had trouble getting along with Cadie in Ireland. The only trips that he made when he was living in Enfield were when dad and I attended two funerals in Trenton, MO. They have been described here.

He was able to write three books after he retired, and he was a voracious reader while he still had one good eye. The one thing that he really wanted while he was in Enfield was to be able to read books, magazines, newspapers, and the labels on items at stores. A fair amount of the time that we were together were attempts to help in this regard.

I had heard somewhere about machines that helped people with poor vision by projecting on a computer screen a greatly magnified version of something printed using closed-circuit television. We made an appointment to see one of these machines at a store in, if I remember correctly, Cheshire, CT, which was a drive of over an hour from Enfield.

For some reason we had to wait for fifteen or twenty minutes before someone could help us. There was little to do while we waited. The store had some magnifying glasses and a hand-held electronic magnifier, but that was all except for the CCTV machines.

Finally someone was available to demonstrate how the system worked to my dad. He (or maybe it was a she) sat my dad in front of the machine and asked him to look at the screen. Meanwhile he had to manipulate the magazine, which was a few inches under the camera. My dad had been trying to do this for less than five minutes when he became physically ill. The combination of the reading and the maneuvering of the text for some reason made him nauseous.

The salesperson and I had to help him to another chair away from the machine. It took him more than fifteen minutes to regain his equilibrium. The salesperson insisted that he would get used to it, but there was no sale on that day. Dad later purchased one of those hand-held magnifiers. He brought it with him to stores

On the way back to Enfield my dad confided to me that he had never vomited in his life. What? He was in the army in the Pacific. He must have gotten some bad food or bad hooch, right? And he worked in advertising for decades. He must have had one too many at least once, right?

No, I believe him. He was a unique person. He also told me that he had never had a dream, or at least he had never awakened remembering his dream. That may have been true when he told me, but I am almost certain that he had a real doozy later.

I knew how important newspapers and magazines were to my dad. I contacted an agency that provided special radios that had someone reading articles and stories from newspapers all day long. I got one for him, and he used it for a while. I also purchased some audio books for him and kindle books that he played on his computer. I remember that I came up with a trick on Kindle that worked until they upgraded the software. I complained about it, but whoever I dealt with insisted that the feature that I employed was unintentional and would not be added back. I don’t remember the details.

Writing was another story. He had never learned to type. So, even when his vision was not too bad, he struggled with typing on a computer. I adjusted the font size of his screen so that when he wrote something it was very large. However, he was also not adept at moving the cursor around on the screen. There really was no way for him to write much or to edit what he had written on the computer. Mostly he just sent me emails. He was definitely frustrated by this.

Errands: I don’t think that I ever took my dad to see any of his doctors. He generally took the Dial-a-Ride bus or asked Sue to take him. However, I often brought him to other places. Our first stop was usually the ATM at Webster Bank to withdraw cash. This was the only use that he made of his debit card. He had plenty of spending money. He had a good pension from BMA in addition to Social Security and interest on bonds. His expenses were low, and he had excellent health insurance to supplement Medicare. When he died in 2011 I discovered that his financial situation was better than I had guessed.

If I came to see him in the morning, which I did every Sunday, I stopped at McDonald’s and picked up a sausage biscuit with egg sandwich and a senior coffee for him.

We almost always stopped at Stop and Shop. He liked the salad bar there. Although he seldom consumed anything that was green besides string beans, he filled up a large container with fruit. He always paid cash, and he never bothered with coins. When he got back to the apartment he put all the change in a big bowl.

Another common stop was CVS to pick up extra-strength Tylenol for his arthritis. I tried to convince him that Tylenol had only one active ingredient, acetaminophen, which could be purchased much more cheaply under the store’s label. He would have none of it. He was loyal to brands that worked for him. I am like that to some extent, but when it comes to drugs that must list all of the active ingredients, I go for the cheap ones that do not waste money on advertising. Especially if there is only one ingredient.

My dad printed out emails that were sent to him because it was too difficult for him to read them on the screen. I set it up for them to be printed using a very large font. Consequently he went through quite a bit of ink for his HP inkjet printer. The ink cartridges for these printers were nearly as expensive as the computers themselves. I discovered a place on the Internet where one could purchase ink for the cartridges. It was possible—but not easy—to refill empty cartridges. I did this for him for a few months. Eventually it upset him to see me spending time doing this, and he asked me to just buy him new cartridges.

After his Kansas driver’s license expired he needed to obtain an official Connecticut ID. I think that Sue helped him with this. It involved as much rigamarole as obtaining a driver’s license, maybe more.

I took dad to church every Sunday. When he lived at Fox Hill, although other churches were closer, he went to Holy Family church² on the south side of town.

After he moved to Bigelow Commons he went to St. Adalbert’s, which was just a few blocks away from his apartment. Quite a few steps led from the sidewalk to the church. After a while he needed to use the elevator.

I would let him off, do something for a half hour or so, and then drive back to the church to pick him up. He never tried to persuade me to join him.

Every so often my dad sent me a list of groceries to order for delivery to his apartment. At first we used Pea Pod to order from Stop and Shop. When Geissler’s expanded its delivery area to Enfield, we switched to them.

Finances and taxes: Dad wrote his own checks, but he was utterly incapable of balancing his checkbook. I had to take over that responsibility before he even moved to Connecticut. I don’t remember how he provided the information to me. Maybe I did it on his computer.

I also did his taxes. They were very easy except for the first year in which he had to file in both Connecticut and Kansas. He always paid on time. I remember that for some reason he had a dispute with the IRS about his pension, which had been passed from one insurance company to another after he retired. He was upset at the insurance company more than the IRS. He was greatly relieved when the whole mess was straightened out in his favor.

I don’t know if he worked with a lawyer on this, but his personal affairs were in excellent condition at the time of his second fall.

Visits to the Lisellas: My dad naturally wanted to visit his grandchildren, all of whom were living in nearby West Springfield, MA, as much as possible. My sister Jamie was living elsewhere (explained here), but her ex husband Joe Lisella and his new wife Jenna (who was thirteen years younger than Jamie), seemed happy to involve dad, as well as Sue and me, in holidays and other events.

I don’t know if my dad enjoyed these occasions or not. He was much more sociable than I ever was, but the whole thing was awkward for him. Divorce was unheard of in his family, he did not know any of the other adults in attendance, he could hear but not see what was going on, and once he parked himself in an easy chair, it was hard for him to get up. The kids, especially Gina, treated him well, but he was obviously uncomfortable. I was, too.

I don’t remember any of them visiting my dad until his last days after the second fall.

Miscellaneous memories: My dad and I sometimes watched college football games together on his plasma-screen television³. He actually listened more than watched. I remember that he used the television for several months before we realized that it was not set to show high-density programs. A simple adjustment greatly improved the viewing, at least for me.

Sue tried to involve dad in the senior social life in Enfield as she had for Chick Comparetto. Dad did not think much of Chick, but he liked some of the other people.

My dad was not much of a cook, but he used his George Foreman grill to cook steaks and chicken fillets. He loved it when we took him to a restaurant for supper. He could not read the menu, and so he usually ordered Chicken Alfredo.

Dad and I had a long-standing argument about who was the worst president of all time, Richard Nixon or George W. Bush. He said that it was Bush because he had attacked Iraq even though Iraq had done nothing to the U.S. I claimed that it was Nixon because of his needless extension of the Vietnam War, his secret war in Laos, and his overthrow of the democratically elected government in Chile.

I may have been prejudiced because Nixon was president when I was drafted. I always suspected that dad had voted for Tricky Dick in 1972 and was therefore sheepish about criticizing Nixon’s presidency. I admit that I had no direct evidence, but I remembered how vociferous he was about Nixon’s deviousness when he ran in 1960, and I know that dad supported the War in Vietnam until the publication of the Pentagon Papers,

The first fall: I think that the first fall happened in late 2010 or early 2011. My dad was in his bedroom. He might have been going from his bed to the bathroom, a distance of a couple of yards, when he fell. The lights must have been off because he was not able to get to his feet and he was disoriented enough that he ended up in the closet.

At some point on the following day the delivery man from Geissler’s knocked on the door. When no one answered, he contacted someone at the office. They did a wellness check and found my dad in some sort of pitiable position. An ambulance took him to Johnson Memorial Hospital on the far west side of Stafford. They called me to tell me what happened.

I visited him in the hospital several times. I never was certain what exactly was wrong with him. He could not walk, but when I asked the doctor what was preventing him from walking, he just said that that was a good question.

The doctor was most concerned about dad’s mental state. My dad had told him that he had been in Milwaukee with some friends of his. The doctor, of course, thought that he was hallucinating. I told him that a more likely explanation was that he had dreamt about being in Milwaukee, he remembered the dream, and he was unable to disassociate it from real experiences because he no practice at doing so. I do it almost every morning, but he claimed that he had never had a dream.

The doctor also asked if he was reckless. He was afraid of releasing a man with poor vision and mobility to live by himself. I assured him that he was the most careful person whom I knew, and, if anything, he was paranoid about fire, getting mugged, and other potential hazards.

After a few days he was walking behind a walker. He never did regain the ability to walk without one. The doctor told me that he would release him, but they wanted him to go to a nursing home for a while. They asked me to select the one that they would release him to. I picked Blair Manor⁴ on Hazard Ave., a few miles from our house. I knew nothing about nursing homes. I just picked the one that was closest to our house.

My dad’s stay at Blair Manor was not a happy one. On my first visit he was having paranoid hallucinations. He informed me that the nurses were trying to kill him, and instructions to them were being broadcast over the television. At the time Meet the Press was on someone’s set within earshot. I tried to calm him down, but he just got frustrated that I—of all people—would leave him in this perilous situation.

I talked to the nurse about this episode. She said that he had been taking some drugs that could cause such symptoms. She said that she would report it to the doctor. She did, and he altered the dosage, and dad was all right after that. It shook me up pretty thoroughly.

Dad later asked me if he had made a fool out of himself. I said, “No, powerful drugs prescribed by your doctor made you act like that. The nurse said that it happened frequently.” Even so, he hated the place and wanted to depart as soon as possible. They finally let him depart. I brought him to his apartment. The people at Bigelow Commons were very happy when he was able to return.

I don’t know how long the period was during which he needed his walker to get around. I remember going to Friendly’s quite a few times.

The second fall took place in August of 2011. It was shortly before his 87th birthday, which was on August 25. On this occasion he fell down in the laundry room. He used his wheeled laundry cart as a walker when he did his laundry. Someone found him there unconscious. An ambulance took him to Hartford Hospital.

Early the next Sunday morning I got a phone call that we should hurry to the hospital. Sue and I rushed there. The nurse said that she did not know why the doctor had ordered that such a notice be sent. Dad was still unconscious, but the nurse said that there was no imminent danger of him dying.

A few days later the doctor in charge told me that his systems were “just worn out”, and he should receive palliative care. It could be at the hospital, at a nursing home, or at a house. I told them that we would not be able to do it, and I could see no reason to move him to a nursing home. So, he stayed at Hartford Hospital. I visited him every day, but he never communicated.

Some of the Lisellas came by on September 12. They were shocked and saddened by his appearance. He died on September 13, 2011.

The story of his funeral and other arrangements has been posted here.

1. This looks like a typo, but it isn’t. Westbound Elm St., a major four-lane road (CT 220) north of Enfield Square Mall, makes not one, but two right turns at intersections where the road itself continues onward. It then strangely transforms itself into North St. where the latter appears on its left.

2. In 2017 St. Bernard’s and Holy Family merged to form one parish called St. Jeanne Jugan Parish. In 2022 St. Martha’s and St. A’s also joined. I guess that the administrative offices are at Holy Family. The schools are at St. Bernard’s. There was also a church in Thompsonville called St. Patrick’s. It had previously merged with St. A’s. I think that all five churches are still open in 2023.

3. We still have that television in 2023. Sue watches it in bed when I have gone to sleep.

4. Blair Manor was closed in 2017. It was subsequently converted to “assisted living” apartments.

2008 Road Trip to Michigan

Posted on November 18, 2021 by Mike

Driving through Canada to the Wolverine state. Continue reading →

In 1975-76, my last year of coaching at U-M, the debate team was in shambles. I described the situation here. During the three years that I spent at Wayne State in downtown Detroit I heard virtually nothing about the U-M team. I do not recall hearing that they attended any tournaments. I figured that the team had been abolished or reduced to obscurity.

I discovered at some point in the 2007-2008 school year that, unbeknownst to me, they program had at some point risen from the ashes and was competing strongly at the national level. I don’t remember how I learned about this, but as soon as I did, I composed and sent an email to Josh Hoe¹, the director of the debate program. In it I described my lackluster career as a debater and my much more successful efforts at coaching. I also described the hardships that the U-M debaters and coaches had to overcome when it was funded by the speech department.

Josh really appreciated my email a lot. He forwarded it to all of the alumni of the debate program. This precipitated an outburst of “reply all” responses from old-timers. Josh needed to ask them to take their communications off-line. It was great for me. I was able to find out what had become of most of my charges.

At some point over the summer Josh and his assistant Aaron Kall² decided to host a mostly informal gathering for debate alums on the weekend of U-M’s first home game against Miami U. (OH) on September 7, 2008. As it happened it was also the debut in Michigan Stadium of newly hired coach Rich Rodriguez. The team had lost its opener, 25-23 to Utah.

By 2008 I was no long working as constantly as I had in the nineties. My wife Sue and I also had amassed enough money at this point to pay for trips. As soon as I heard of the debate/football event, I made arrangements with Josh for us to attend. We decided to make a mini-vacation of it and to drive across Michigan to visit Sue’s aunt and uncle, Boband Carol Locke³, and their daughters, Deb, Wendy, and Sandy. They all lived in the Grand Rapids area. Our destination was Bob and Carol’s home in Hudsonville.

Sue was really looking forward to that part of the trip. Sue liked everyone in that part of her family a lot. I suspected that part of the attraction was that Bob was the only member of his family to move away from Enfield. His three brothers and his sister (Sue’s mother Effy) all lived within a couple of miles of one another.

Documentation: I don’t think that I took any notes on this trips. I had a small Canon point-and-shoot camera in those days. If I brought it, I either did not take any photos, or I lost them. I think that for some reason I left it home.

I found a folder on my computer about this trip, but its contents were of no help. Inside it are two identical html files that contain MapQuest directions from 1275 Huron St. in Ypsilanti to our house in Enfield. That address in Ypsi in 2023 was associated with the Marriott Eagle Crest resort and hotel. I have absolutely no memory of staying there. Aside from that it only contains an image of the Hampton Inn logo and a small map of the area around the Hampton Inn in Ann Arbor.

When I first asked Sue about the trip, she had no recollection at all. She could not even remember being in Michigan Stadium. Later, after a little prompting, she recalled a few details that I have included.

In short, I am relying almost exclusively on my memory for the account below.

Enfield to Ann Arbor: The town of Ann Arbor had a population of only about 112,000 in 2023. However, on football Saturdays almost that many people would be crammed into Michigan Stadium. Lodging would be in high demand. My first order of business was to find a place for us to stay for Friday and Saturday night. I booked us rooms at the Hampton Inn that was just south of the U-M golf course. I probably used the points from my credit card to pay for at least part of the bill.

I think that we must have left on Thursday morning. We took the Canadian route through Ontario, and I remember that I was very upset that there was a long delay when we entered near Buffalo. When we got to the front, the border guy asked me what my license plate was. I knew that it was three digits followed by FAU, but I was not sure of the number. I guessed, and he said that that was close enough.

The 10+ hour drive time that Google Maps sited, and I am pretty sure that we did not leave at the crack of dawn, and we stopped for food twice. We might have stopped in Plymouth to check out the house on Sheldon Rd., too. Also, I have a vague recollection that we crossed over north of Lake St. Clair to avoid rush hour traffic in Detroit. The Ambassador Bridge was closed for construction. The lines at the tunnel must have been outrageous.

In any case, I think that we arrived at the Hampton Inn after dark on Thursday, September 5. We probably ate the free breakfast at the hotel the next morning.

I remember that we spent most of a day walking around the U-M campus and assessing how much had changed in the twenty-eight years since we had last been there. That must have been on Friday. I remember that Allen Rumsey House did not appear to have changed much at all. I am pretty sure that I ducked into the Intramural Building to assure myself that the overall championship won by A-R in 1969-70 was still recognized on the banner.

I also remember showing to Sue the spot behind the administration building where the water balloons launched from the fourth floor of A-R landed. I am pretty sure that we ate lunch at a restaurant on S. University near the engineering buildings.

We also had an appointment with Linda (Calo) Martini, who was working, I think, at the Michigan Debate Institute or maybe the Michigan Intercollegiate Speech League. We were hoping to see Kent (introduced here) as well, but he was not present. Linda said that he had taken it very hard when his mother died. It all seemed a little mysterious.

We were supposed to meet Josh and some other debate alums at a bar in Ann Arbor on Friday evening. Several of those in attendance wore Michigan Debate tee shirts that closely resembled the one that I once had. However, none of theirs had the letter C (for captain) on the front and “Prof. Wavada” on the back. My tee shirt had not survived the decades since the debaters gave it to me in 1970.

I am pretty sure that Bill Colburn, who had been Director of Forensics back in the sixties and seventies was there, too. I could hardly recognize him.

I learned that the debate team had been divorced from the speech department, which had at some point been combined with the journalism department. Somehow the debate team had taken control over the summer institute and turned a locally successful gathering run mostly by Wayne State people into the #1 such event in the entire nation. The benefits to the U-M debate program were enormous. It generated a lot of cash for the team. It provided summer employment and recognition for the coaching staff. Most importantly, top-flight high school debaters flocked to the institute every summer, and some inevitably fell in love with Ann Arbor and the U-M campus, enrolled, and joined the team.

The program also received funding from the University and had begun to receive significant contributions from its growing alumni base, most of whom were lawyers. I was astounded to learn that one of the recently graduated debaters, Dylan Keenan, had attended one of the Shawnee Mission schools and had majored in math⁴.

On Saturday we ate breakfast at the Hampton Inn and then drove to the game. Parking was always scarce, but we found a spot that was not too far from the stadium. We somehow eventually found the area where the debaters tail-gated. I think that we met up with Wayne Miller there. He was with some of his friends from the seventies.

Another short walk brought us to the stadium. Almost everyone wore blue and/or maize, but someone in the large group of fans crossing the street was wearing a red hat with a white M on it. The guy directing traffic called to him and said, “Well, you got the letter right, but whoever sold you that hat must have been color-blind.” Sue told me that someone also gave her a hard time because she was carrying a red handbag.

We sat in the upper reaches to the left of the scoreboard. The student section begins in the middle of the block M and stretches to the far end zone.

There are no bad seats in Michigan Stadium, but almost everyone had a better view of the action than we did. We were near the top in one of the corners of the end zone. It was more comfortable than being crammed together in the student section. It was also much more pleasant than UConn games because no liquor was allowed in the stadium.

I think that this was the big play near the end of the game.

The game, however, was painful to watch. U-M started well. The score was 10-0 at the end of the first quarter, and people in the stands were happy for a time with the team’s new approach to offense. However, after that the winningest team in college football stalled. By the fourth quarter it was 10-6. Brandon Minor scored a late touchdown to make the score a little more acceptable. Michigan had never lost to any team from the Mid-American Conference. For a while it appeared that we might be watching something historic.

Afterwards we drove with Wayne to Krazy Jim’s Blimpy Burgers. Wayne was surprised that I knew about it. I informed him that I had gone there more than once a month for the four years that I lived at A-R.

Inside a blowhard who was a little ahead of us in line started telling stories about how he had worked with the legendary Krazy Ray. Everyone was impressed when I said that I came here all the time when Krazy Ray ran the grill, and I sure didn’t remember this guy. I then explained how upset Ray would get if someone tried to order the whole meal from him. He strictly grilled and assembled the burgers. You were expected to give the rest of your order to the next person behind the counter.

The burgers were still very tasty, and the atmosphere was magical. I had a great time.

Ann Arbor to Hudsonville: One other very important event occurred in Ann Arbor, but the details are shrouded. Sue somehow arranged for a new custom-designed tee shirt for me that was nearly identical to the one that the guys had gotten me in 1976. I remember that she ordered me to stop at a location on the outskirts of town (I think) on the way to Hudsonville. She went inside for a while and returned with a bag that she presented to me. I can’t say that I was surprised—Sue is notoriously bad at keeping secrets—but it was a very nice gesture.⁵

I don’t remember anything about the drive to Hudsonville. We probably arrived there at about lunch time. I think that we only stayed one night and that Bob and Carol put us up for the night in a cottage that was on their property.

An overhead view of the Locke property. Those trees had leaves on them when we were there.

Their home was in a secluded area surrounded by woods and wildlife. I remember that there was a pond nearby and that Carol was interested in birds, especially cardinals.

We saw at least some of the daughters, their husbands, and their children. Sue reportedly brought a game with her that she had used in her work with the Enfield after-school program. It was involved with traveling from state to state. I vaguely remember it. She said that she left it with them.

Hudsonville to Enfield: Our route home was quite different fromour route to Hudsonville. We took I-96 and I-69 across Michigan and crossed to Canada at Sarnia. We then took 402 and 403 across Ontario. I remember nothing about this journey.

1. In 2010 Josh was convicted of soliciting a minor for sex and went to prison for a few years. The article in the Ann Arbor News about the incident is posted here. In 2023 his LinkedIn page (posted here) listed his jobs as Criminal Justice Policy Manager at Dream.Org and host of the Decarceration Nation podcast.

2. Aaron took over the program after Josh was fired. In 2023 he was still the coach of perhaps the most successful program in the country. However first place at the National Debate Tournament has still evaded the Wolverines.

3. Carol died in 2018. Her obituary has been posted here. Bob outlived all of his siblings. He died in 2022. His obituary is posted here.

4. That last part may not be right. Dylan, whose LinkedIn page is posted here, evidently majored in economics. Dylan and his partner, Adam Farra, had made it to the semifinals of the NDT in 2008.

5. I still have the tee shirt in 2023.

2021 The Rebirth of the Simsbury Bridge Club: Part 2

Posted on November 8, 2021 by Mike

SBC 2.1. Continue reading →

Wednesday evening, March 11, 2020, was the date of the last game of the Simsbury Bridge Club at Eno Hall before the shutdown necessitated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Fred Gagnon played with my wife Sue. He regaled us with the story of how the week before he had played an event in Colorado Springs¹ that Colorado’s “patient zero” also attended. He said, quite correctly, that he was very lucky that he had not played against her or in any other way associated with her. In those very early days the treatment methodologies were mostly guesswork. Dozens of other bridge players were not as fortunate as Fred.

At the time my wife Sue and I were scheduled to start a riverboat cruise on the Danube River² the next week. We had heard that a few people had already canceled, and we half-jokingly asked Fred if he wanted to sign up.

The club’s usual director, Ken Leopold, could not attend on March 11. Margie Garilli substituted for him. As a result I ended up with all of the club’s bridge equipment during the pandemic.

Unless you were lucky enough to be stuck in New Zealand, you probably did not give much thought to face-to-face bridge for the next year or so. A few clubs in Florida reopened rather quickly, but some of them had to close because of transmission of the virus.

The Hartford Bridge Club resumed play on June 15, 2021. Several people asked me when the SBC was going to reopen. I told them that it was up to Ken, who was the director and proprietor. This was his response:

I’d like to see how live playing goes at HBC for a while. When we restart (probably sometime in July), I’m going to ask people to sign up on Mondays to see if we have enough people for a game. I think people should be vaccinated to play.

July was a bad month for Ken, and so I was not too surprised to receive on August 3 this email from Sally Kirtley, who had been the director before Ken took over in Simsbury and who had directed regularly for the Hartford Bridge Club before and during the pandemic:

I got an email from Eno that they are accepting reservations starting in the fall. I forwarded it to Ken, who responded that he is not going to be able to run it this fall. I don’t know if that means that he won’t be playing at all either. Just wondering if you think that it makes any sense for me to try to start it up again? Do you think that we will get enough players? Will you play if we start up again?

I replied that I definitely would play, but I thought that we should try to gauge how much interest people had in the game. I brought my mailing list (described in Part 1, which is posted here) up to date, and sent an email indicating that Sally and I were hoping to get the game going again in September. I asked people to respond if they thought that they would play, and I received over forty positive responses. Quite a few players indicated that they would play often.

The next email that I received from Sally on August 14 included the following:

I will see how quickly we can get into the space, and will definitely ask if we can require vaccinations – it being a public building, I don’t know. As a private club, we certainly could, but I will make sure.
As to masks, I think that we need to listen to the experts at the time. I am personally okay with people not masking if they are vaccinated, but I do think that they are probably a good idea.
I am also planning a vacation in October and will be gone 10/13.

Jeanne Striefler, a long-time member of the Simsbury Club reported to me that masks were definitely required in public buildings in Simsbury with or without vaccinations. Moreover, other groups that used public facilities had had problems with attempting to require vaccinations. I did not want to be involved in something that caused even one person to get Covid-19. I was therefore adamant that we require vaccinations.

The missive from Sally dated August 23 contained great news.

The town has reserved the room for us starting September 9. As of right now, masks are required in town buildings. We can require vaccinations.

I wasn’t exactly sure how we could check for vaccinations, but I thought that we should agree on a schedule and publish it as soon as possible. We had pretty much decided on starting play on September 15 when I received this email from Sally on August 27:

Eno Hall says we can’t require vaccinations on town property. I think that means a no-go for us – unless we just ignore them and request proof of vaccinations anyway?

So, I was forced to send out an email to everyone on my list that we would not start in September. Here was the text:

I wrote in the last email: “I am assuming that Eno Hall will allow us to verify that all players have been fully vaccinated. I, for one, will not play in a game that does not do this.”
Unfortunately, my assumption was wrong. The people who run Eno Hall will NOT permit us to check that all players have been vaccinated. Under those circumstances Sally and I are not willing to run the game. The current form of the disease is extremely contagious; one person could easily ruin it for many. We will review this decision in a few months. Perhaps things will have changed.

I received a lot of sympathetic responses to this. The one from Med Colket, who had played at Eno with his wife Kathy for several years, included an idea that caught my attention. I relayed it to Sally.

Med Colket had an intriguing suggestion. He recommended that we request that players submit proof of vaccination to me voluntarily. Then we only invite the people who have submitted valid proof. I would send out invitations every week, and people would RSVP. This will have the advantage of giving us a better estimate of table count.

A little later Jeanne learned that because we were a private entity we could require vaccinations if we wanted. The previous information that Sally received from Eno Hall had been erroneous. I decided to implement Med’s approach anyway. Our first game would be on October 20. I sent an email to everyone on my list:

We have used a suggestion from Med Colket to devise a way to reopen the Simsbury Bridge Club. We need a little time to get everything set up. Here is our schedule of games for the rest of the year:
October 20 and 27
November 3 and 10
December 8, 22, and 29. I am aware that some bridge players must cater to the wishes of burdensome family and friends during the holidays. However, I am optimistic about the last two dates because Christmas and New Years are on Saturdays this year.

Anyone can register as a vaccinated member of the SBC by sending an email or text to me, or leaving a message on my voice mail. You can register as either a player or a pair.
1) Designate the names of the player(s).
2) Provide proof of vaccination—either a photo of the card(s) or the date and time of a game played at the Hartford Bridge Club in 2021.
3) Pairs should designate whether they wish to be considered “recurring”.
On the Friday before every game I will send to all who have registered as vaccinated an email announcing the next week’s game. The deadline for responses will be the following Monday. People should notify me (by email, text, or voice mail) if:
1) They are a “recurring” pair that will not be playing the following Wednesday;
2) They are a registered pair that is not “recurring” but plans to play.
3) They want to provide proof of vaccination for a partner who was not previously registered.
4) They would like to play but lack a partner.
If fewer than twelve people (three tables) commit to play, the game will be canceled. I will send an email announcing the cancellation on the Tuesday before the game. I will also post a notice to that effect on the club’s website, which is at http://wavada.org/SimsburyBC/.

It was not overly difficult to implement this system. First I needed to add a field on the “audience” file for the SBC on the free version of MailChimp. I called the new field Registration. That part was easy, and I was familiar with how to do it. I then used a feature on MailChimp to designate two segments, one with a blank in this field and the other for players with a letter. I put an H in this field for those whom I had seen play at the Hartford Bridge Club and a C for people who had sent me copies of their vaccination cards.

The time-consuming part came next. I had to enter these by hand one at a time. I had to sort the file, find the player I wanted, select them for editing, scroll down to the field, enter the character, scroll to the bottom, and save it. The most annoying thing was that when I returned to the list of players, not only had my place on the list been lost. The records were also no longer sorted. So, I had to repeat the same process. After a while I had to add another step—skipping to the next page after sorting.

The good thing was that I could easily see a list of all the registered players and another list of the players who were on the master list but had not provided me with proof of vaccination. By the time of the first game seventy-two players were registered.

It has been well established that Ken and Lori Leopold had done a great job in 2019 of establishing a new standard for a small duplicate bridge club. One of the biggest attractions of the game—especially for those who often ate alone—was the wonderful spread of food and drink that Lori and some others helped prepare every week. Sally and I would have been happy if we could somehow have emulated them, but it was not really feasible for either of us, and the persistence of the Delta variant of the pandemic made it even a little dangerous.

Another thing that would be missing in this new version of the club—at least in the beginning—would be the lessons that I had presented. They had begun at 6PM or as close to that time as I could manage. Because I was still afraid of catching Covid-19, I intended to wear a mask, at least at first. I was fairly certain that one senior citizen struggling to speak through a mask to a group of senior citizens would not be very attractive. Also, the rest of the preparations would probably take up a good bit of my time, and I was quite busy with other projects, including these blog entries.

So, we would be relying on the wonderful game of face-to-face bridge to attract people to Eno Hall. We would also try to promote the same uniquely cheerful and supportive attitude among the players that the SBC previously boasted. We had strong hopes that those two elements would suffice.

As I mentioned, I had all the equipment, including the computer, at my house. Linda Starr, who had helped me in 2020 to use the Hartford Bridge Club’s Dealer4 machine to create the boards for SBC games, agreed to set up files for our first game and to give me a refresher course in how to create the boards. Actually, I had only the vaguest memory of how to use the the software that ran the dealing machine. She had to show me everything again. I took careful notes and promised not to lose them this time.

I was able to create a set of boards and to photocopy the hand records. I remembered how to load the dealing machine with cards, but I warned Linda that the fine coordination in my fingers was terrible. I then proved my point. When I withdrew the very first hand from the very first board three or four cards slipped out of my hand and came to res behind the shelves on which the Dealer4 was positioned.

Left to right: printer; display, keyboard, mouse, & computer; Dealer4 on shelf.

This had happened to me at least once back in 2020. I just removed a box of who knows what from the bottom shelf and told Linda “At least I also have long arms and fingers.” I then skillfully retrieved all the missing cards. I counted them to make certain.

From that point on I created the boards and printed the hand records with almost no difficulty. I did not interpret this unexpected feat³ as an ill omen, but I probably should have.

Linda also created PBN files (needed to submit results) for all the rest of the games scheduled for 2021. She copied them to a USB drive that I had brought with me, and she showed me how to find them on the computer that ran the dealing machine. I should be all set for all of 2021.

By this time I had commitments from ten pairs. We were all set to have a real face-to-face bridge game!

On Tuesday, October 9—the day before the game—I received this depressing email from Sally:

We have a problem! Eno Hall is telling me that they can’t accommodate us tomorrow. We can start back next week. I’m sure we could use HBC for one week if you want to tell people to meet there one time? Or just tell them that we will start next week?

So, I had to send out an email announcing the cancellation of the first week. It frustrated and humiliated me to have to do it.

We later found out that the reason that they could not accommodate us was because they had not scheduled a janitor for that evening. That was what I had speculated was the source of the problem, but most people thought it must be something less mundane.

We had an even better turnout for the rescheduled first week—eleven pairs with a remarkably diverse level of experience. I came in early to the Hartford Bridge Club on Wednesday morning before the game. I planned to use the boards made for 10/20. I could see no reason not to use them. The only problem was that Linda had not copied that one file on the USB drive. So, I asked Donna Feir, the club manager and the director for that morning’s game, if I could copy that one file. My other alternative was to make new boards from the file for 10/27 that was already on the computer. That would take me about a half hour even if all went well, and then I would need another ten minutes or so to print the hand records.

I let Donna talk me into a third alternative—using the boards and the hand records created for the previous night’s game at the HBC. They were available because too few players had signed up. So, all that I had to do was to copy the PBN file from the computer used by the directors. I located the file without difficulty, put my USB drive in the port, and copied. I then put all of the gear in my car. Now I was ready.

I had arranged to take Sue Rudd and Maria Van Der Ree In my Honda to Wednesday evening’s game. I was supposed to pick Sue up at 5:30. The Honda and I arrived in Sue’s driveway fashionably late at 5:32. I honked my horn and waited a few minutes. Her house appeared dark. I honked the horn again. Then I took out my cell phone and dialed her number. It rang five or six times. Then a bizarre masculine voice identified itself as the “backup voice mail” for Sue Rudd. It then advised me not to leave a message because Sue does not usually check it!

So, I called Maria’s number to see if she knew what was going on. It rang five or six times and then went to voice mail. I left a message and could think of nothing better to do than to drive to Maria’s home. I found her outside waiting for me. I tried to tell her that she couldn’t play because I could not rouse Sue, but she got in the car anyway.

At that point, I called Sue Rudd again. Three phone calls in one day was a personal record for me; the previous record was one. Sue answered this time. She was upset at me for not picking her up on time. I told her that I had been in her driveway at 5:32, and I would be there again in ten minutes. I was. Sue got in my Honda, and we took off.

I was not stopped by any policemen on the way to Simsbury, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. I pulled into Eno’s parking lot at 6:45, fifteen minutes late. Jerry Hirsch was standing there waiting to help me with the gear.

Everyone was playing by 6:50. The game itself went fairly smoothly. We were done by our mandated finishing time of 10 o’clock. Everyone seemed to have had a good time. “And the evening and the morning were the first day.”

The crowded room that greeted me when I finally entered the playing area made everything worthwhile. The two people whom I had never met—David Marks and Ann Sagalyn—introduced themselves to me while Sally, Jerry, and a few others set up the six-table Howell.

When, after the scores had been announced, I tried to transfer the PBN file from the USB drive onto the SBC computer, I discovered that I had copied the wrong file at the HBC. So, I had to promise Sally that, when I obtained a copy of the right file, I would send it to her by email.

I then copied the file containing the text version of the results so that I could insert it into the email to the registered members scheduled for Friday.

I brought all of the gear home except the very heavy laptop and its power supply. Sally took those with her so that she could send the results to the ACBL.

I have driven from Simsbury to Enfield hundreds of times. I may have even bragged that I could do it blindfolded. On this evening, however, I was very tired. The adrenaline high had worn off. As I exited the parking lot, I turned the wrong way onto Station Street, which is one-way. This totally disrupted my perspective. I took Iron Horse Blvd. up to Route 10 without any difficulty, but then I missed my turn onto Wolcott Road. I could have salvaged a little dignity by turning onto Floydville Road, but I did not see a sign for it. Instead I drove all the way up to Route 20 in Granby. This little detour added perhaps ten miles to the trip.

I did not realize until the next morning that I had never eaten supper the previous evening.

I was still exhausted on Thursday, but I took the time to write up a Hand of the Week. It took me much longer than before because I had never precisely documented the php programs that I had written in 2019 to produce it. I eventually figured out how they worked, keyed in the hand and my ideas, and sent out an email to invite everyone to the game on November 3. This email included a copy of the summary of the results from the 10/27 game.

The file that I needed was stored on the HBC director’s computer, which is barely visible through the left armrest.

I obtained a copy of the correct PBN file and emailed it to Sally. However, I never received the email from the ACBL with a link to the Live for Clubs web page for the game. It turned out that Sally had never used the procedure for submitting results established in 2020 for submitting the results in the format required for the Live for Clubs software. She promised to figure it out.

The preparation for the second game went smoothly. The trip from Enfield to Simsbury was blissfully uneventful. Both Sue and Maria were ready on time. We arrived at Eno at 6:15, and we were ready to play by 6:25.

Unfortunately, Route 44 was closed because of an accident somewhere on or near Avon Mountain. The alternate routes were jammed with traffic. Two people from West Hartford—Felix Springer and Kathie Ferguson—arrived late.

When Felix arrived at about 6:45 we started the game. Al Gee and Kathie were assigned a sitout for the first round.

It was a near thing, but we got all twenty-four boards completed and scored so that we could leave by 10 o’clock. Some people had apparently doffed their masks at some point, and someone noticed them. Sally received an email on Thursday from Karen Haberlin at Eno Hall:

Hi Sally,
This is just a reminder that masks are still required in town buildings unless people are eating or drinking.
Thank you,
Karen

Meanwhile, Sally must have figured out how to attach the files; I received the emails for both games. I thought that something was still amiss. I noticed that the links to download the hand record files were missing from both the selection page and the results pages. I later determined that they were also missing on the HBC results. The software must have been changed during the pandemic.

I adjusted the emails in which I invite players to the next game so that the instructions for taking advantage of the feature for printing a hand record was removed.

1. On May 1, 2020 the New York Times ran a long article about this event and the popularity of bridge in general. It is posted here.

2. Our experiences regarding the First-Ever Regional at Sea on a Riverboat is described here.

3. The trickiest part of using the dealing machine is withdrawing the completed board from the machine. Cards sometimes get stuck. If you pull the board out a little and then push it back to adjust the cards, Dealer4 might start dealing the next deck. Then you have a mess to deal with.

2019-2020 The Rebirth of the Simsbury Bridge Club: Part 1

Posted on November 5, 2021 by Mike

SBC 2.0. Continue reading →

In early May of 2019 my friend and bridge partner, Ken Leopold, agreed to become the manager and director of the Simsbury Bridge Club (SBC). This was shocking news to me. Ken was an extremely busy guy with a demanding and very important (literally life and death) job and a large family to which he was quite devoted. I was not part of the negotiations with the former director Sally Kirtley and the former manager David Rock about the transition. I knew nothing of the details. I still don’t.

The first game that Ken directed took place on May 8, 2019. The results sheet contained many familiar names:

 Wednesday Evening Pairs Wednesday Eve Session May 8, 2019
 Scores after 24 boards  Average:   36.0      Section  A
 Pair    Pct   Score    Sectn Rank    MPs     
                          A     B  
   7   63.19   45.50  A   1          0.80(A)  Jerry Hirsch - Sally Kirtley
   8   58.33   42.00  B   2     1    0.56(A)  Margaret Garilli - Donna Lyons
   5   57.64   41.50  A   3          0.40(A)  Jeanne Striefler - Susan Glasspiegel
   2   47.22   34.00  A                       Michael Wavada - Kenneth Leopold
   4   45.83   33.00  B         2    0.22(B)  Kathleen Colket - Meredith Colket III
   6   44.44   32.00  B                       Alden Stock - Reba Stock
   3   43.75   31.50  A                       David Rock - Deborah Ouellette
   1   39.58   28.50  B                       Lori Leopold - Rob Stillman

Ken emailed the results to everyone who had been on the mailing list that David and Sally had used. One day later he sent out a second email that contained a hand record for the boards that we had played. Those boards had not been predealt. We shuffled them before the first round, just as we had every week for the previous fifteen years. I replied to Ken with the simple question: “How did you do this?”

Here was Ken’s answer: “I inputed the hands into DealMaster Pro. Took me about 20 minutes.”

At the time I had owned the Dealmaster Pro (DM Pro) software for a few years, and I had been given a class in how to use it by the developer, Ed Marzo¹. I had entered a substantial number of hands for my own purposes. I was thoroughly familiar with the process.

We had played twenty-four boards that night. Ken had to enter thirteen cards for only three of the four players. DM Pro can figure out that the remaining cards are held by the fourth. Still, that is 39 x 24 = 936 cards for which the suit and number must be entered. I doubt that I could have done what he did in less than five minutes per hand, which would be two hours. Who knows? Maybe he is that much faster than I am.

We had never had hand records at the SBC. I am certain that this new feature was greatly appreciated by everyone, especially the newer players. They could go over the hands in detail and determine what they could have done better.

I decided that I could be most useful by helping with the communications. I had a free account on MailChimp that I had used for monthly emails that I did for the Connecticut Bridge Association (CBA). I converted one of the lists on that account for use by the SBC. It seemed to me that we should be mailing to all players within within reasonable driving distance of Eno Hall. I therefore created a list of nearby zip codes and used MySQL to select players with addresses in those zip codes from the ACBL database. I also sent emails to the “unknown” email addresses on the list that Dave and Sally had used to ask if they wanted to stay on the list. Eventually I came up with an “audience” table that included names, addresses, phone numbers, and other relevant data for all those players. One nice feature was that it was easy for me to update the audience every month, so that new players and ones who recently moved to the area could easily be added.

On Mary 13 I sent an email trough MailChimp to everyone on the list with the subject line “Return of the Simsbury Bridge Club”. It explained how the club would be run under the new regime. The text of that email is posted here. There were three major changes in approach:

I undoubtedly should have given more emphasis to the word “goodies” in the first paragraph. In previous years snacks would sometimes be available when one or more of the players brought them. For example, Jerry Hirsch often brought brownies. The spread at that first game was much more impressive. However, I did not know the source, which was primarily Ken’s wife Lori, and I was not sure that it would continue. It certainly did. For the next ten months there was enough food so that skipping supper in favor of grazing at the club’s goodies table was a viable option.
Ken volunteered to try to find partners for people who lacked one. I was not sure when I composed the message how that would be implemented. I was pretty certain that Ken would not dump me as a partner in favor of waiting around every week to see if someone needed a partner as Paula Beauchamp and Helen Pawlowski had done. It turned out that Lori played an important role in this aspect, too. She was a skilled matchmaker.
I volunteered to give short lessons on competitive bidding before each game. I am no expert, but I have devoted a considerable time and effort to learning about competitive bidding. Most of the important developments in bridge theory in the previous few decades were in that area. I thought that some players would be interested in my perspective.

Ken and I both received a goodly number of positive responses to the email. Only a couple of people unsubscribed.

These photos were taken at Kathy Colket’s Life Master party at the SBC.

The new approach worked. The game on May 22 attracted 14 pairs. We were able to play a Mitchell movement² for the first time that anyone could remember aside from a few Life Master or holiday parties. The attendance continued to be pretty good throughout the summer and autumn. It fell off a little in the winter of course. Many SBC players had homes in the South.

I presented my first lesson on May 29. The game had nine tables, which was equal to the stunning turnout for Moe Walsh’s Life Master party. Everybody was ecstatic.

I did what I could to help maintain the momentum. I spruced up the club’s website that I had developed a decade or so earlier and began to mention it in the emails. I also created a page that contained club-oriented links. It had four columns that contained dated entries: Results, Hand of the Week (an analysis that I provided of one hand each week), Lesson Handouts, and Hand Records. I also provided a link to this page in every email. The SBC website can be seen here. The page with the links is here.

In 2019 the ACBL mandated use of its new Live for Clubs software. Learning how to use it was not easy. Ken struggled with this, but he finally got everything integrated together. The first game that used the Live software was on September 18. The results from that point forward have been available at https://my.acbl.org/club-results/212829.

I missed the game on June 19 because I was at the regional tournament in Nashua, NH. I thought that Ken might want to cancel the game because the HBC was running three games that day. Nevertheless, Ken held the game, and seven pairs attended. Ken gave a lesson on the five approaches to defense in bridge. The club also donated $100 to the ACBL’s Longest Day collection for the Alzheimer’s Association.

Ken and I communicated via email nearly every week. In August he asked if I could produce a list of names and phone number. I did that for him. He kept it in the briefcase that contained supplies. I updated it every month after I downloaded the new roster from the ACBL.

I don’t remember why our six-table game on September 4 was played in the American Legion room. Fred Gagnon played with a guy name Curt Whitaker. I don’t know what darkened his attitude, but he was very obnoxious. Even his partner thought so. Curt announced during the game that he would not be coming back, and, sure enough, he unsubscribed from the mailing list.

On October 23 we held a Life Master party for Kathy Colket. I don’t know where we put everyone, but we had eleven tables!

Many members of the SBC also played regularly at the Hartford Bridge Club (HBC). The manager of the HBC, Donna Feir, let me know that we could use the club’s Dealer4 dealing machine. Linda Starr created PBN files for us using the Dealer4 software. Here is what I wrote to Ken concerning my second attempt to get the machine to work just before I left for the Harvest Regional tournament in Mansfield, MA, the first week of November:

I spent several hours yesterday filling my plastic boards with decks that I thought were likely to work with the dealing machine. I managed to find 36 decks that were either Bridge Buddy or ACBL. Linda and I spent more than an hour after the game trying to get the dealing machine to work with them, but it kept jamming. Susan Seckinger said that we should get Bridge Buddy cards. The link is http://www.bridgebuddy.net/category-s/116.htm.
For this week’s game Linda said that she will make boards using the HBC’s carriers and get them to you or Lori before Wednesday’s game. I still have the suitcase of steel boards. Let me know what you want me to do with them. I am playing at the HBC tomorrow but not Tuesday.
If you cannot get Live for Clubs to work, send me the results by email, and I will post them from Mansfield on Thursday.
I don’t know what the plan for the following week should be. I will be in Mansfield until Sunday evening.

The SBC needed a new set of decks. Ken found the best cards for use by Dealer4. Unfortunately, they were on backorder. We had to wait for several months to be able to start using the dealing machine.

That’s Ken in the background keying in player names and numbers on our trusty Windows 7 laptop.

Meanwhile Linda made boards for us. She also gave me a short course in the use of the Dealer4 machine, but I still found it difficult. I am just not good at repetitive tasks, especially when they involve use of a machine that is both very sensitive and unforgiving.

I received the following email from Ken on December 9.

The Bridge Buddy has gotten their new shipment of thick cards and I ordered 32 decks.
Linda will be away at least one of the days in January (I think she told me Jan 8). That might be a good time to transition to your making the deals. Hopefully, we’ll then be able to add the deal file to ACBL Live so that the deals will be published with the results (we’d need to be able to export the file from your deal-making program to the Simsbury BC computer so that I can upload it onto ACBL Live along with the results).
How was San Francisco?

The answer to his question about San Francisco can be found here. On December 31 Ken informed me that he had figured out how to include the PBN file created by Dealer4 with the results that he sent to the ACBL. We were cooking!

I made a serious mistake when I created the boards for the game on January 15. Ken discovered it:

Mike, it looks like board 18 didn’t get made so that hand record board 19 and above were placed in boards numbered 1 less (i.e., the board that was played as 18 is board 19 from the hand records, 19 is hand record 20, etc.).

By the end of February I was close to competent at running Dealer4. On February 24 I received this email from Ken:

I will be away March 11 and 18. Sally, can you direct those dates? Mike, will you be around?

My answer was “I can play on 3/11, but I will be in Vienna on 3/18.”

I did play on 3/11; Maria Van Der Ree was my partner. However, I was not in Vienna on 3/18. The reason is explained here.

I still have not been to Vienna, but I harbor hopes of being there in May of 2022.

There was quite a spread of “goodies”. The other table was equally filled with less fattening offerings.

As far as I can tell the following players made their first appearance at the SBC between May 2019 and March 2020:

On May 22 Helene Wade played with Stan Stolarz.
Ann Malone played with her husband Jim Griffin.
Ann and Mike Belzer played together. I knew Mike from the Thursday night games at the HBC. Sue played in at least one team game with them at a tournament.
Donna Simpson played with Max Horton.
On May 29 Lois Labins, a Deadhead I knew from the HBC, played with Rachel Peled.
Annmarie Gagne played with Joe Peled.
Rob Stillman played with Stan Stolarz.
Beverly McKeeman played with Elayne Cree.
Barbara Edelstein played with Maria Van Der Ree.
On June 5 Robert Kendrick played with Frank Thompson.
On June 12 Joel Wolfe played with Tom Joyce. Joel is a very good player who regularly plays at the HBC.
YC Hsu played with Roz Sternberg. I often talked with YC in the back room before morning games at the HBC.
Bruce Meade played with Kathy Fahey.
John Lloyd played with Stan Stolarz.
July 10 was a qualifying game for the NAP. Loretta Levy played with Renee Janow. I knew both of them from the HBC.
Peter Katz played with Tom Joyce. I had played with Peter for many years on Saturday afternoons at the HBC. Highlights from those experiences and others are detailed here.
July 24 was also a qualifying game for the NAP. Xenia Coulter drove all the way from Moodus to play with Nancy Calderbank.
On July 31 Mary Beth Macko played with Lesley Meyers. Dick Benedict once teamed up with Mary Beth and her mother.
Mary Sullivan played with YC Hsu. I played with Mary Sullivan as a mentor, as is described here.
On August 7 Bob and Ann Hughes played together. Eric Vogel and I have played as their teammates a few times.
On September 18 John Willoughby played with Sue Wavada. I have known John for a long time since our days in the Tuesday evening games at the HBC. In 2021 John is the vice-president of the HBC and the chairman of the Planning Committee.
On October 9 Kathie Ferguson played with Sally Kirtley.
On October 23 Frank Blachowski played with Joel Wolfe and finished first. Frank is an excellent player and student of the game who plays regularly at the HBC.
Doug Deacon played with Dan Finn. I have known Doug for a long time from the Tuesday evening games at the HBC. In November of 2021 when we were unable to run games at the SBC I played as his partner twice in that game.
On October 30 Al Gee played with Kathie Ferguson.
On November 6 Mark Smith came up from Florida to play with Joel Wolfe. Not only did he win. He also gave the mini-lesson while I was playing in Mansfield.
On November 13 Sharon Kochen played with Debbie Katz.
On December 18 Helma Strauss played with Betty Nagel. Both of them are long-time regular players at the HBC.
On January 22 Luigi Montefusco and Robert Hastings played together. I had played against both of them many years ago, but I had not seen either one in a very long time. They both live in the Springfield area.
On March 4 Michael and Carol Yachanin played together. I don’t remember them at all.

By my reckoning forty people who had never before attended any games at the SBC played during this ten month period. What an astounding achievement!

1. Ed Marzo lived in Springfield MA. He knew Bob Derrah, and he wanted to help Bob and me with our project of teaching the game of bridge to middle-school students. He gave a copy of DM Pro to both Bob and me. We went over to his house, and he showed us how to use it. Ed died in 2019. His obituary is here. Comments about Ed’s contribution to the bridge community have been collected 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

Memoirs, bridge, popes, travel, and other stuff

Monthly Archives: November 2021

2008 Road Trip to Michigan

2021 The Rebirth of the Simsbury Bridge Club: Part 2

2019-2020 The Rebirth of the Simsbury Bridge Club: Part 1