The Color Tile stores had the crooked TILE letters. Tandy Corp. once owned Color Tile as well as the other store pictured here, RadioShack.
Color Tile1 was a chain of small retail stores that was based in Fort Worth TX. In 1995 it had over six hundred stores. The IT Department, which already owned AS/400’s, contacted Doug Pease2 about using AdDept for its advertising department, which was quite small compared to the ones for department stores. Doug and I flew to DFW, rented a car, and drove to Fort Worth to demonstrate the AdDept system and to talk with the employees in the advertising department.
The presentation went very well. I sent them a proposal and a contract. They signed and sent TSI a deposit. Shortly thereafter I flew back to Texas and installed the system on an AS/400 in the company’s data center.
These are the two people from Color Tile in a conference room in Ft. Worth. Doug, whom I cut out of the photo, and I were sitting across from them.
I could find no notes from the time that I spent at Color Tile. I only found the photo at the left when I was looking through my Tandy photos.
Throughout the installation I only worked with a couple of people in Color Tile’s advertising department, and I don’t remember their names. The guy insisted on taking me to lunch at a real Mexican restaurant. He said that he wanted to prove that eating Mexican food need not require spending excess time in the men’s room an hour later. Mexican food never affected me that way, but I definitely enjoyed the meal with him.
The woman was very excited about the progress that had been made in just a few months. However, the company declared bankruptcy in January of 1996 and was liquidated a little more than a year later. Later she was hired by RadioShack (described here) and worked with the AdDept system for several years.
Fortunately, Color Tile owed TSI very little when they entered bankruptcy. In the end the company left all of its vendors high and dry.
1. The retailer Color Tile, Inc. should not be confused with Colortile, a brand of floor covering that was still in existence in 2023. The confusion is enhanced by the fact that Colortile’s signage often splits its name into two words.
2. Much more can be read about Doug here and in most of the entries for AdDept clients.
Marshall Field’s was most famous for its store in downtown Chicago and for Marshall Field himself, who was a driving force behind the Windy City’s recovery from the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. By the time that I came into contact with the department store chain it was based in Minneapolis and was owned by the Target Corporation.1
The skyway entrance was on the 2nd floor.
In 2004 the May Co. purchased the Marshall Field’s stores from Target with the intention of administering them from Minneapolis in the Marketing Department’s headquarters in one of the high floors of the store that was previously the flagship store for Dayton’s. Its address was 700 Nicollet Mall. The plan was for all of the advertising to be scheduled, purchased, and paid for using TSI’s AdDept system on an AS/400 at the Midwest Data Center in St. Louis. A meeting was scheduled for September 16 at Hecht’s2 Advertising Department in Arlington, VA. I attended, as did representatives of the May Co. and the Marketing Department of Marshall Field’s. Dave Ostendorf from Famous-Barr3 may also have been there.
Richard Roark and most of Dave Ostendorf.
The meeting was unlike any that I had ever attended. The people from the May Co. announced that Marshall Field’s would use AdDept, and the May Co. would pay for any necessary revisions! They made it quite clear that they were being given a blank check. Throughout the rest of 2004 I worked on documenting in some detail the changes that needed to be done. This resulted in a fifty-page design document delivered in December and a fifty-nine page tome sent to them in April of 2005. I found Acrobat files of these two booklets. They are posted here and here.
It seems likely that I took more than two trips to Minneapolis in 2004 but I only found notes from one in November and one in December. Perhaps Dave Ostendorf or Richard Roark from Foley’s4 in Houston helped me gather the information needed for the design documents.
Working conditions: On my visits to Minneapolis I flew Northwest and took a taxi or the light rail from the airport to downtown. I never rented a car.
The top arrow is Marshall Field’s. The bottom is the Hilton. The skyway is 9.5 miles long.
I stayed at the Hilton that was a few blocks south of the Nicollet Mall store. I almost never stayed at a Hilton; I preferred one of the affiliated hotels that awarded Hilton Honors points4, especially Hampton Inns. I have two strong memories of this Hilton:
I could walk from the hotel to the second floor of Marshall Field’s via the skyway without ever setting foot outside. This was a valuable feature in the winter.
There was no free breakfast. However, because I had achieved Silver status in the Hilton Honors program I could go up to the top floor where they had an executive dining room for road warriors like myself. The food there was terrific and free.
Working with the people at Marshall Field’s was a very enjoyable experience. There were, however, a few peculiarities.
The skyway entrance was on the second floor of the store. When I arrived in the morning the store was not open. So, it was a little spooky.
To get to the Marketing (NOT advertising) Department I had to take a fairly large number of escalators. There were elevators, but they were not as convenient.
How many marketing departments posted a map to help its team members.
The people at Marshall Field’s used a different word for many of the concepts with which I was familiar. Customers were called guests, employees were team members, advertising was marketing, ads were called promos, and so on. I kept a list of these, but I no longer have it.
Every time that I went to the bathroom (or anywhere else) I had to call someone to let me back in to the Marketing area, which was restricted. I was very excited in April of 2005 when I was given a badge so that I could come and go as I pleased.
The toilet paper in the bathrooms was the flimsiest that I had ever seen. They must have imported it from another country. I cannot imagine that anyone would buy it in the U.S. Maybe they did it to save money, but they didn’t save any on me. I just used more of it—lots more. I once asked Chuck Hansen5, one of the people involved in the installation, if others did the same. He said, “Oh, yeah. Definitely.”
While I was there in February of 2005 the temperature dipped below -20 Fahrenheit: not wind chill, degrees. I had to go out in that frigid air to walk to the taxi stand to catch a cab to the airport. It was only a couple of blocks, but I was very relieved to see a few cabs lined up and ready to go.
Amy and Becky are seated. Dave has a mustache. The other guy is Chuck. I don’t remember the other two women.
The “team members”: Our main contact in the first few months was Amy Spears, who was the assistant to the Finance Manager, Becky. I cannot remember her last name. They were both very conscientious and amiable. When Becky left the company on short notice in 2005, Amy was in something of a panic. Mari Pittman6 was brought in from Foley’s to take on Becky’s role.
A woman named Thu Le worked on expense invoices. I vaguely remember her. Nate Jeppson7 also worked in the finance area. I helped him fine-tune the entry in the sub-account table. Two ladies named Kimber and Adrianne worked in accounting. Either or both of them might be in the photo.
Soni.
Beginning in April of 2005 David Harris8 assumed the function of liaison with TSI. His main job was managing the Mac network. My memories of him are not very distinct. I remember his replacement, Soni (pronounced like “sunny”, short for Sonja) Froyen9 a lot better. At the end of the project she sent me a tee shirt that had an ad release form with the box for “Released” checked.
Sheila Wilson came from Hecht’s in 2005. She was deeply involved in the AdDept product.
My notes from February of 2006, when the division was officially dubbed Macy’s North, disclosed the names of two new employees in the finance area: Shannon Feuerhelm and Megan Boie. Jackie Smith was hired to place newspaper ads, a job that formerly had been done by Target’s ad agency, Haworth.
The last set of notes were dated in December. They indicated that Chuck, who had been in another department for a few months, had returned to the Marketing Department. They also mention that Lynn Robinson had been placed in charge of Direct Mail.
The projects: Getting Marshall Field’s system up and running was the last gigantic project that TSI undertook. It was so big and so complicated that the individual details have tended to fade. Here are a few things that struck me as I read through the design documents and the month end checklist that I set up for Becky
The most striking thing was that so many changes were required to the file structure, including several new tables. It is a tribute to our system of change management that we were willing and able to implement these changes without disrupting our other installations.
I wrote all of this. I made a few mistakes, but on the whole the presentation was very thorough and professional.
It is hard to understand why PageMaker, which was used to create these documents originally, had so much trouble with non-proportional fonts like Courier. The vertical bars on the reports (e.g., page 9 of document 1) should all align, but they don’t.
So much of what is described is unique to Marshall Field’s. For example, no one had ever used the term “production credits” at any other installation.
I have a dim memory of Item #3. Becky had a gigantic number of general ledger accounts (called “internal” in the document) that did not match up well with the May Co.’s accounts. The cross-reference table was huge.
Any changes to the cost accounting algorithms were risky. These programs were so complicated that they were barely readable. TSI’s programmers were reluctant to touch them because the people who used them were always under severe time pressure. “Yesterday” was the deadline for addressing problems.
I had totally forgotten about the “buckets” and “metro markets”.
The use of “campaign” instead of “event’ must have come from an ad agency. No one talked about campaigns in a retail setting.
I wonder if they actually used all the work that we did on production schedules and the job jacket.
Over $7,000 in changes to the insertion orders are in document 2! I don’t remember if they ever used AxN. It is mentioned on p. 34; I guess that they must have. The NAA# was assigned by the Newspaper Association of America. Prior to becoming part of the May Co. Field’s Haworth bought the newspaper space.
Document 2 mentioned CAPS, which was the May Co. system for expenses and G/L.
I did not remember importing sales by department.
The closing process is lengthy, but it is very specific. I wonder if they actually used the three-page checklist.
Denouement: I am certain that we did exceptionally good work for Marshall Field’s. They always treated me royally when I visited them. It would be nice to be able to say that the department ran like clockwork for decades.
However, that is not what happened. By 2008 Marshall Field’s was no more. The stores that were allowed to remain open were rebranded as Macy’s. Worse news was that Macy’s North (the people with whom we worked in Minneapolis) was consolidated into Macy’s East. The wonderful people and environment that I found there vanished.
I did not think too much about that. We did good work, we got paid, I made some friends, and we made their lives a little better for a short period of time.
The downtown store in Minneapolis was closed for good in 2017. It is in the process of being repurposed for multiple uses.
1. Prior to 2000 the company was called the Dayton-Hudson Corporation. Its name reflected the logos of the Minnesota and Michigan chains that merged in 1969. The company was renamed in 2000 in recognition of the fact that the Target stores produced 80 percent of the revenue. One year later the department store division rebranded all of its stores as Marshall Field’s.
2. The story of the installation at Hecht’s can be read here.
3. Details of the Famous-Barr installation in St. Louis are posted here.
4. My card from those days calls them Hilton H Honors points. I never understood what the middle initial stood for.
5. Chuck Hansen stayed on and is working for Macy’s in 2023. His LinkedIn page is here.
7. Nate Jeppson’s LinkedIn page is available here.
8. David Harris’s LinkedIn page can be viewed here.
9. I discovered on Soni’s LinkedIn page (found here) that she studied Latin and history in college. I was also surprised to learn from my notes that she knew how to code in php, which I did not yet know enough about to know that it never shown in caps. She was also the only one of my business associates who followed me on Twitter. In retrospect I feel as if we might have potentially been soulmates. Of course I was eighteen years older than she was.
The governing body for competitive bridge in North America (and a few islands like Bermuda and Hawaii) was the American Contract Bridge Association (ACBL). Its headquarters was in Horn Lake, MS, a suburb of Memphis. The ACBL sponsored three national (actually continental) tournaments in different locations every year in March, July, and November-December. These were the spring, summer, and fall North American Bridge
One of the primary purposes of the ACBL was to provide the rules for distribution of masterpoints, which, depending on the event could be black, silver, red, gold, or platinum. Nearly every player aspired to attain the rank of Life Master, which, when I started playing required an assortment of masterpoints totaling 300. In 2011 the needed total was changed to 500, and the number of silver and gold points was increased.
When I began playing in 2004 there were eleven ranks:Rookie, Club Master, Sectional Master, Regional Master, NABC Master, Life Master, Bronze Life Master, Silver Life Master, Gold Life Master, Diamond Life Master, Platinum Life Master, and Grand Life Master. In 2011 the rank of Advanced NABC Master was created for players who had achieved 500 masterpoints but did not meet the other qualifications for Life Master status. Later the rank of Ruby Life Master was inserted between Silver and Gold, Sapphire between Gold and Diamond, and Emerald between Diamond and Platinum. That increased the number of ranks to fifteen.
Geographic organization: The ACBL was organized geographically into twenty-five districts. The six New England states comprised District 25. The governing body for District 25 (D25) was the New England Bridge Conference (NEBC). Prior to 2020 each district elected one person, the District Director, who served on the ACBL’s Board of Directors.
Each district was divided into units. D25 had eight units—one for each of the less populous states and one each for western, central, and eastern Massachusetts. The unit for Connecticut was identified by the number 126. Its governing body was the Connecticut Bridge Association (CBA). The other units had similar appellations and three-digit numbers. The most populous by far was EMBA.
The ACBL’s districts and regions in 2020.
The lowest level sanctioned by the ACBL was the club. Most clubs were owned by one or two people. The Hartford Bridge Club (HBC), which was the oldest continuously operating bridge club in North America, was one of the few that was owned and operated by its members.
In 2020 a new geographic entity, the region, was created for the purpose of reducing the size of the Board of Directors for twenty-five to thirteen. D25, 24 (NYC and Long Island), and D3 (northern NJ and eastern NY) were combined into Region 2. The Regional Director (RD) was elected by the units within the region, but the person so elected was not supposed to represent his/her constituents. Instead the RD was charged with promoting the interests of all members.
Masterpoints: Winners and high finishers in club games ordinarily received black points. The units could sponsor sectional tournaments that awarded silver points in larger quantities than club games did. The districts could run regional tournaments that awarded red and gold points in still greater quantities. The most valuable points for achieving Life Master status were gold and silver.
The primary way to receive silver points was to attend a sectional tournament sponsored by a unit. Most units in D25 ran several sectionals per year. Three or four weeks a year Sectional Tournaments at Clubs (STaCs) could be run at clubs within the participating unit. These events also paid silver points. At some point in the teens the ACBL began to sanction sectional tournaments on cruise ships as well.
The primary way to receive gold (and much less important red) points was to attend a regional tournament sponsored by a district. Through 2019 D25 ran five regionals per year. The NABCs also included regional events that paid gold and red points. At some point in the teens the ACBL began to sanction regional tournaments on cruise ships as well. My wife Sue and I went on one in 2012 (described here). We signed up for a second one in 2020 (described here).
Administration: The ACBL and each of its units and districts were not-for-profit organizations. The ACBL itself was, in theory at least, run by the Board of Directors, who were bridge players. The day-to-day operations of the organization were run by salaried employees, most of whom knew little about bridge. Aside from running the three NABCs, the ACBL also hired and trained the Tournament Directors who administered each event at tournaments. It also tested and certified directors for club games.
The governing body of the New England Bridge Conference was its Board of Delegates. Its members were chosen by the units. It only met twice a year. Its main responsibility was to elect the four officers: president, vice-president, secretary, and treasurer. Most policy-level decisions were made by the Executive Committee, a group that met several times a year. It consisted of the four officers and representatives of each unit (two from the CBA and EMBA). The president appointed the tournament manager, the webmaster, the tournament coordinator, and committee chairmen and members. The most important committee was the Tournament Scheduling Committee. The district also had a director-in-charge and and Intermediate/Novice chair. Those roles were held by Peter Marcus and Sue Miguel for all the years that I was involved.
The governing body of the CBA was its Board of Directors. This group was elected by attendees at a designated tournament. It consisted of the same four officers as the distric, the past president, and twelve representatives, eight of whom were from specific regions. The president appointed the tournament coordinator, the list manager, the webmaster, the unit coordinator, and STaC chairman.
Bridge clubs had a manager and at least one director. The former administered the club, and the latter ran the individual games. At many clubs the director and the manager were the same person. The Hartford Bridge Club was administered by a Board of Trustees, all of whom were elected at an annual meeting. It had the same four officers and a set of six trustees. The Board met once a month. The manager of the club had been Donna Feir for as long as anyone could remember.
The games: All competitive bridge games are “duplicate”, which means that each pair’s results are compared against other pairs playing the same cards. The most common form was pairs, in which each pair of players competes against other pairs. The scoring was rather simple. Each pair gets one point for each pair that it outscored on the hand and a fraction of a point for each pair that it tied (one-half if two pairs tied, one-third if three pairs tied, etc.). Adjustments were made if the same number of pairs did not play all the hands. Almost all club games were pairs games.
It was also possible for four people1 to compete as a team in various formats. They were explained in detail here. A few large clubs—such as the HBC—scheduled and ran Swiss teams events. They were usually quite popular.
A third form of the game, in which persons competed as individuals, became an endangered species in this period, but I had several interesting experiences with it.
Tournaments: Sectional tournaments ordinarily lasted last two or three days. They were ordinarily held at a hall owned by a church or ethnic organization, a senior center, or some other similarly large room. Usually the last day features one or more Swiss teams event. The other days are pairs. In general they must be run by a tournament director approved by the ACBL.
Regional tournaments ordinarily ran from four to seven days. They were generally held at a hotel with a ballroom or two and featured a mix of events. In most cases both pairs and teams events were offered at the same time. Traditionally the last day was devoted to a teams event of some kind.
Each NABC lasted for eleven days and featured a large assortment of events every day. Some were held at hotels; some were at convention centers. Traditionally the last day featured a very large teams event of some kind.
People sometimes attended tournaments without a partner. The administrators of tournaments tried very hard to find a suitable match for each such person.
Equipment: Bridge was, of course played with a deck of fifty-two cards. Four people sat around a card table. Competitive bridge required a little more equipment. In a social game the cards were shuffled after each hand. In duplicate bridge the cards were kept in carriers (usually called boards) made of plastic or metal to keep the cards used by each player (North, South, East, or West) separate so that they can be played by others siting in the same direction.
At tournaments and large clubs the boards were created by dealing machines, and scores were entered on hand-held devices called BridgeMates.
In duplicate bridge the bids were made by selecting card from a bidding box. Players were also required to make available an official convention card that explains the meanings of their bids.
High-level events at NABCs sometimes positioned the players behind screens. In that case players did not talk among themselves at all. The purpose was to minimize the opportunity for cheating. Nevertheless, some players were caught doing it.
Online: At some point during the teens the ACBL recognized a game with rules and behaviors similar to those of bridge that was played on the Internet. A website called BridgeBase Online (BBO) signed an agreement that even allowed its users to win masterpoints on their website. I hated this game and refused to call it bridge.
1. In events that last two or more days teams could have five or six members.
If you are not familiar with competitive duplicate bridge in North America, you may wish to read the entry posted here first.
Because of the threat of COVID-19 only two bridge tournaments were held in all of New England in 2021. Both were three-day sectionals in Watertown, MA. 114 people won masterpoints in the first one in October. 178 people won points at the Holiday Regional in November. This was better, but still unspeakably bad attendance. In the last tournament held in Watertown in 2019 exactly twice as many people won points—356.
The tournaments in Watertown were run by the Eastern Massachusetts Bridge Association (EMBA). I was not a member, and I attended none of the three tournaments listed above. However, I was a member of the Board of Directors of the Connecticut Bridge Association (CBA), the “unit” for the state of Connecticut. The CBA ordinarily held six sectionals per year. Two of them were restricted to players with less than 199 masterpoints.
The June Tournament: I am pretty sure that the unit’s official bylaws required that the final decisions about the scheduling of tournaments be voted on by the board of directors. I can say without fear of contradiction that no such votes were taken between March 8, 2020—the last day of our last pre-pandemic tournament—and June 2022. In point of fact the board did not meet at all during that period. We did not even have a Zoom meeting.
Somehow a decision was made, probably after consultation between President Frances Schneider and Tournament Manager Cornelia Guest, to hold a three-day tournament on June 3-5, 2022 at the St. Barbara Greek Orthodox Church in Orange, CT. The schedule was essentially the same as used in 2019-2020. I don’t know who, if anyone, approved the date. The Rhode Island Bridge Association (RIBA) held a tournament the same weekend. The district was supposed to prevent conflicts like this, but someone evidently fumbled the ball.
The first notification of the tournament went out on May 8. Here was the text of the email.
Dear Michael,
CONNECTICUT 2022 SECTIONAL
June 3 – 5
St. Barbara Greek Orthodox Church
480 Racebrook Road Orange, CT 06477
See the attached flier for tournament information.
In my opinion the notification should have been sent earlier, and more effort could have been put into content of the email. For over a year the people whom we needed to attract had been paying only a few dollars to play bridge. Persuading them to return to face-to-face play and pay a lot more would require more effort than this brief announcement displayed.
As usual I sent an email to dozens of my partners past and present, but I only one responded to the invitation to play in Orange. Sonja Smith said that she could play with me in the pairs games on Saturday. She was a very good player, and I knew that she and her husband Chris were planning to move to North Carolina before the end of the summer. So, I jumped at this chance to play with her.
I was also committed to making the trip to Orange on Sunday if only to attend the board meeting that had always occurred on Sunday morning before the Swiss teams game. Chris brought Sonja to Exit 38 on I-91, and I drove the rest of the way. On Sunday I drove myself. I planned on offering to play if they needed me.
I was quite excited at the prospect of playing in duplicate bridge tournaments again. During the drive to the tournament Sonja and I discussed our convention card. We agreed on a set of conventions that was much reduced from what we had played the last time that we played together. I had pretty high hopes that we could do well.
Sonja Smith.
I was not expecting the large crowds that the unit’s sectionals had been experiencing before the pandemic, but the turnout was still disappointing. The open pairs had only thirteen tables, and the 299ers had to play a three-table Howell. Friday had been even worse. The Open Pairs had fourteen tables in the morning and twelve in the afternoon, but there were not enough 299ers to play in either session. Their games had to be canceled. They either had to go home or play against the Grand Life Masters.
Sonja and I had some difficulties in the morning. Most of it was my fault. The competition, as expected, was very good. They avoided mistakes and took advantage of ours.
In the afternoon, however, we rallied with a score of over 62 percent, but that was only good enough for fifth overall out of twenty-six. Still, we both had a very good time, and we returned home with a couple of silver points.
Jan Rosow.
The Sunday meeting was the usual frustrating session. Everyone was morose about the attendance, but only Jan Rosow had a workable suggestion for improving turnout. She suggested changing the upper limit on the limited game to 500 points. We all agreed, and Cornelia was directed to arrange for a sectional in October.
The other main outcome of the meeting was to appoint a committee to prepare a slate of new board members. I managed to avoid participating in that endeavor. Frances had been president for much longer than she expected and was obviously ready to pass the baton to someone else. In fact, she had asked me if I would do it. I had to decline because of commitments to the district.
After the meeting we were all pleasantly surprised to see a fairly large group1 ready to play in the Swiss. Sixty-seven people were waiting to play. John asked me if the offer to play still stood. I said that it did, and I played a very simple card with him as my partner. Our teammates were Barbara Federman and Jim Levitas, who were from California2. She was an experienced player, but he had less than ten masterpoints at the time.
We entered here for both tournaments.
We bumped around the middle of the pack until round six out of seven, which we won with a blitz. In the last round we met an A team that was much more experienced than we were. We would have won if not for the last hand that John and I played. Debbie Benner stretched her nineteen-point hand to open 2NT. Her partner, Art Crystal, who had over 5,000 points, had passed in the first round, but he jumped to 6NT.
The cards sat favorably, and Debbie was able to bring home the slam. At the other table Jim and Barbara did not bid as aggressively. We lost the match by one point.
We won the B strat, however, with 81 points. We also tied for fourth in A, which was very good for a patchwork team. I was very happy with the 6.7 masterpoints that I won in just two days of work. In fact, the drive home was probably the most pleasant experience that I had had in Connecticut since the start of the pandemic.
The board’s reaction to the first sectional: Treasurer Cindy Lyall released a report on the financial hit from the first sectional on June 21.
As requested at the Board meeting, please find below an accounting for the Orange Sectional Tournament that took place from June 3-5, 2022. A spreadsheet version will be included as part of my next Treasurer’s report. If you have any questions in the meantime, please feel free to reach out to me or Cornelia. Unfortunately, the loss from the tournament was just over $4,000.
Thank you,
Cindy
Revenue:
Table Receipts: +$4,984 based on 89 tables (26 on Friday, 29 on Saturday and 34 on Sunday)
ACBL Related Expenses:
Less Fill ins: -$112 Less Tournament Director’s Hotel Accommodation (3 nights): -$631.35 Less Tournament Director’s Per Diem: -$258.75 Less Tournament Director’s Fees ($210 per session): -$1260 Less Sanction Fees: -$281.88 Less ACBL Duplicated Hands: -$32 Less Sectional Surcharge: -$180 Less Caddies, Clocks, Supplies, Boards, Bridgemates, Predups, Hand Records, Free Plays, Pizza: -$935.23 Plus amount Paid to ACBL: +$30.21
Net: +$1323
Additional Unit Expenses:
Cornelia Stipend: -$250 Gene Remuneration: -$750 Snack Expense: – $266.28 Marketing: -163 Venue: -$4160 (Space $3000, janitorial service $700, Table rental $210, security deposit $250 which will be applied to next event)
Total Additional Unit Expenses: -$5,589.28
Loss of $4,266.28 – Please note that the $250 security deposit for this event has not been returned as it is being applied as a deposit to our next event, as such the “loss”for this event is $4,016.28.
In early September the second sectional was announced in the same pedestrian manner as the first. I sent the following email to all board members:
I see that in Orange the limited games have been expanded to under 500. By my calculation this increases the target audience (for unit 126 and 188) from 2235 to 2607. That might help, but it might also reduce the open attendance if people drop down.
Are we doing anything to attract the under-500 group? Many of these people have never played F2F. I propose that someone arrive a half-hour early each day and conduct a lesson in the mechanics of F2F play: bidding boxes, BridgeMates, alerting and announcing, how to avoid leading out of turn, how to prevent your partner from revoking, etc. I will volunteer to create a syllabus and do it on one of the days.
I also think that we need to send two sets of emails targeted to this group, one this week and one in two weeks. If this is already planned, fine. If not, I will volunteer to do it.
Have fliers been sent to the clubs? I have not seen one at the Hartford Bridge Club.
If we don’t want another financial fiasco, we must act soon.
I sent two emails to players in Connecticut and Westchester County, NY. I then sent the following email to board members.
I have attached three things. On 9/16 I sent Email1 to 1,600+ players from CT and Westchester. 64.8% of them opened the email, and 1.3% clicked on the link to the flyer.
On 9/30 I sent Email2 to the same people. 56.3% opened it, and 2.2% clicked on the link to the flyer.
In the emails I mentioned that “an experienced player” would be available on Friday and Saturday to explain the differences between F2F tournament play and online play. The attached F2F Outline contains a list of things that I could think of and a full-page picture of a Bridgemate. I can be there both days. If anyone wants to help, I would appreciate it.
Email1 can be viewed here. Email2 can be viewed here. The F2F Outline is posted here.
Peter Marcus.
During the period between the tournaments the unit’s nominating committee came up with a list of candidates for the vacancies on the Board of Directors, but the information was promulgated to neither the membership nor even the board. Peter Marcus, of all people, would be the new president. Phyllis Hartford would be vice-president. There would be five new members: Phyllis plus Roger Caplan, Linda Green, Linda Starr, and Debbie Prince. This would give the Hartford Bridge Club five members of the board, the most in the ten years that I had been involved.
Great Barrrington in August: I don’t remember exactly how or when the arrangements were made, but Abhi Dutta, Jim Osofsky, Mike Heider, and I agreed to play in the Swiss event on Sunday at the Western Massachusetts sectional tournament at the Berkshire South Regional Senior Center in Great Barrington, MA, on Sunday, August 14. Abhi and I also agreed to play in both sessions of the open pairs to be held on Saturday.
On previous visits to this tournaments I had taken the back roads through Suffield and points west. This time I decided to take the Mass Pike to Lee and then go south to Great Barrington. That was a good plan, but I became engrossed in the opera to which I was listening on Saturday morning, and I drove all the way to Northampton before I realized that I had missed the exit for the Mass Pike. Fortunately, I had left early enough that I still arrived in GB with ten minutes to spare, but Abhi was quite nervous.
Abhi and I played pretty well in the morning session, but we fell apart in the afternoon. However, Mike and Jim had a good day. They placed fifth overall.
I remember one startling fact about the morning session. There were two occasions on which we bid one of a suit, and the opponents overcalled 2NT. In the twenty-first century virtually everyone who played in open events treats that as the “Unusual Notrump”, showing at least five cards in the two lowest unbid suits. In both of these cases, however, when we asked about the bid the opponents said that it was strong and natural. Yes, that was what the bid meant when I was playing in the sixties, but what are the odds of being dealt a twenty-point balanced hand with stoppers in the opener’s suit? They are not good, and the happened to us twice, and both of those opponents were playing this defense. As of this writing I have been playing duplicate bridge for almost nineteen years, and I have never encountered this bid before.
The other thing that I remember was that in the first round of the first session we were East-West against a couple from Connecticut. I had played against them several times in sectional tournaments there, but I had not seen them for years. They told us that they had never used the BridgeMates to record the score before! They said that they always sat East-West at tournaments. So, I had to give the man a very brief lesson on how to use the machine, and I had to help him record each result. I don’t remember the names of the couple.
The Swiss was, from our perspective, absolutely amazing. There were eight six-board matches, and, unbelievably, we won our first seven. Our lead over the field after the seventh round was so large that we could have been blitzed in the last round and still won. We did lose the eighth round badly against a very weak team, but we still won the event by twelve victory points over two good teams from the Boston area.
My most vivid memory is of the match in which we played against John Debaggis and Motoko Oinaga, two Western Mass players who had occasionally played at the HBC. John had opened 2♦, which Motoko alerted as a Flannery bid showing five or more hearts and exactly four spade. John actually had six spades and four hearts. After the hand Abhi called the director and claimed that John had psyched (which is legal in a tournament). John agreed to this. Tim ruled that psyches were not legal when a conventional bid had been employed and penalized John and Motoko.
After the tournament I approached John and asked him if he really psyched. He sheepishly admitted that he had made a mistake. I advised him that he should always admit to mistakes in such situation. I then told him about the times that I had accidentally opened 1NT with two diamond suits (and no hearts). No penalty was imposed either time.
The October sectional: The second sectional was scheduled for October 14-16. The venue would be the same church in Orange that was used for the first such tournament. Eric Vogel told me that he could play on Friday and Saturday in the open pairs. On Sunday Linda Starr and I would be partners in the open Swiss. Our teammates were Abhi Dutta and Paul Johnson, who was Abhi’s partner when he lived in Connecticut a few years ago. I liked this arrangement’ I would get to play against the best players, but we would be in the B strat3 in all five events.
I got to St. Barbara’s at about 9:15 on Friday. I sat near the director’s table to see if anyone appeared to need help. The attendance seemed to be much better than in June. I did not end up giving any kind of a class. The same thing happened on Saturday.
Eric Vogel.
The competition on both days was very good. Eric and I had a miserable morning on Friday. We played better in the afternoon, but our score was not quite good enough to qualify for a place in the overalls.
Our play on Saturday morning was better. The highlight was when I doubled Joe Grue, one of the best players in the world, and he was unable to make the contract. However, we once again failed to win any points. I made one very stupid play against one of the best teams.
Everything came together for us in the afternoon. For the first time in the three days (one in June, two in October) that Eric and I played together, we seemed to get some breaks in the form of mistakes by our opponents. Of the thirty-two players who played in that session, we were the only ones to score above 60 percent. We won 9.35 silver points. This was only the second time that I had won a pairs event at a sectional. The drive back to Enfield was very pleasant.4
The board meeting on Sunday morning was more interesting than usual. Peter talked about the sectionals for next year. He indicated that clubs could run limited sectionals. They could set the limit to any number of points up to 750, and they could exclude Life Masters if they wanted. I ended up on a communications committee, but we only communicated by email. I was also confirmed as one of the unit’s delegates to the district’s Executive Committee.
Linda Starr.
A guy named Bill Segraves was the new webmaster. I had never met him before. He seemed very eager and competent. The board was badly in need of someone with those attributes.
The new board members attended. I knew all of them well except for Debbie, whom I played with a few weeks later, and Phyllis, who—despite her surname—was from Stamford, a very long way from Hartford.
Our team played pretty well in the Swiss. We received a very bad draw for the seventh round. Linda and I had to play against the pair of Steve Becker and Larry Bausher, two of the very best players in the state. Our teammates had an even worse draw. Their opponents were Rich DeMartino and Geof Brod, both of whom were Grand Life Masters—the highest rank in bridge.
We played well enough to win, but we were once again defeated by a clever bid by one of our opponents. Linda opened a nineteen-point hand by bidding one of a minor—as I would have. We ended up in 2NT. At the other table Geof upgraded his hand because of his five-card suit and opened 2NT. Rich raised to 3NT. Both declarers scored nine tricks, and the game bonus was enough to give them the victory.
Steve Becker and Larry Bausher
Rich DeMartino and Geof Brod
We ended up fourth in B, which was worth 1.98 silver points.
152 players earned points at the tournament. That was a big improvement from the 116 that won points in June. However, it was still far short of the 248 players who won points in the sectional held in March of 2020. Cindy Lyall later reported that the unit lost a little under $2,000 for the tournament.
1. In all 116 players won points. In the last sectional in Orange before the pandemic the number was 284. So, attendance was down almost 60 percent!
2. I don’t know how they heard about the tournament. Someone told me that they were in the process of moving to Connecticut. However, as of December 2022 their addresses were still both in California. Jim was not even on the December ACBL roster, which meant that he had not paid his dues. I learned that Jim was a University of Michigan graduate who was a little older than I was.
3. Some events at tournaments had more than one “flight”. Some flights had a limit on the number of points each player may have. If not, they were called “open”. Each flight was usually divided into two or three “strats”. The lower strats had limits on the average number of points. In Connecticut the cutoff between the A strat and the B strat was usually 3,000 masterpoints, but sometimes the directors assigned different levels.
4. The only unpleasant part was the first few minutes. There was not a cloud in the sky, and after I turned onto the parkway I was going straight east. In several places the sun in my rear-view mirror or the one on the left was absolutely blinding.
The first Home Quarters Warehouse (HQ) stores were opened in 1985. They were large warehouses selling hardware and other home improvement products. They later competed with Home Depot. Only two years later the company was purchased by Hechinger, a chain of hardware stores/lumber yards that was an institution in Washington and Baltimore. Hechinger allowed HQ to run as an independent division with its headquarters in Virginia Beach, VA.
I do not remember making a presentation to HQ, but I might have. I seem to recall going to an IBM office in Norfolk.I know that the company’s IT department was already was using AS/400’s for other applications. So HQ did not need to invest much in new hardware for the AdDept system. I seem to remember that, because the operation was not as complicated as our previous installations, we gave them a very good deal on the software. I think that the installation occurred some time in 1993.
I was surprised to discover that Hechinger owned HQ at the time that I installed the system in Virginia Beach. In the summer of 1995 management of HQ’s advertising (and everything else) was brought to Hechinger’s headquarters in Landover, MD. The HQ offices in Virginia Beach were closed.
HQ headquarters in Virginia Beach.
Memories of Virginia Beach: HQ had a very nice office in Virginia Beach. My recollection is that I flew via US Air into Norfolk, probably having changed planes in Baltimore. Then I rented a car, and drove to Virginia Beach. I remember encountering a very large number of active-duty members of the military on these journeys.
Once, because I had two other stops to make, I drove my Saturn all the way from Enfield. I must have been a glutton for punishment in those days.
Entrance/
TSI always did some custom programming for each AdDept installation, but I do not remember any code that we wrote for HQ. Most of their advertising was in inserts or broadcast. We might have written an interface to feed advertising expenses to their accounting systems.
I dealt mostly with the manager of the advertising department’s business office, but I do not remember too much about her. I recall one trip when I was called into an executive’s office. He told me that they were dissatisfied with the pace of the installation. I was, too. I remember that I stayed for a couple of days that time, and we made great progress. I don’t think that we ever had any significant problems with the installation after that.
I only remember one other employee in Virginia Beach. I think that she scheduled and ordered their newspaper buys. One day we ate lunch together at Taco Bell, which she said was her favorite. I probably would have eaten there anyway if left to my own devices.
No, thanks.
Memories of Landover: I don’t think that any of the people who worked in the HQ advertising department made the move to Landover. The new department wanted me to show them how to use AdDept for both HQ and Hechinger stores. Most of the latter were located in and around Washington or Baltimore. HQ stores were spread throughout the country.
I made a couple of training and consulting trips to Landover. I seem to remember working with a guy named Joshua. I was not impressed with him or anyone else there. Hechinger had always been a company with strong local roots. The people in the advertising department seemed to me ill-equipped to run a company that was trying to compete with Home Depot throughout the country.
One other detail stands out in my memory of Landover. One evening after work I drove to a mall that was rather close to my hotel. I do not remember what I intended to purchase. When I had been in the mall for a few minutes it suddenly struck me that no one there was white. It was a strange feeling that minorities must experience almost every day.
The last period:An investment group named Leonard Green & Partners had acquired Builders Square from Kmart. After a delay because of poor earnings by Hechinger, LG&P acquired both Hechinger and HQ and merged them with Builders Square in 1998.
The result was catastrophic. I remember watching the last Builders Square Alamo Bowl on December 29, 1998. The announcers dutifully used the entire four-word name for the contest, but there in the middle of the field was the HQ logo, and no one ever explained what it had to do with the game. The new company had decided to rebrand all of the Builders Square stores as HQ, but it was apparently too late to change the name of the sponsorship.
Incidentally, Purdue upset heavily favored Kansas State in that game 37-34. It was not as close as the final score would indicate. The score after three quarters was 37-13 before Purdue Coach Joe Tiller took his foot off of the gas pedal.
This kind of flub was emblematic of the new company. I found the following quote in the Baltimore Sun:
What did they do wrong? “The short answer is: everything,” said Jack D. Seibald, a retail analyst for Blackford Securities. “They’ve had a screwy management that has not kept its eye on the ball.”
I enjoyed working with the people in Virginia Beach, and I think that we accomplished quite a bit together. HQ was thriving and Hechinger was flailing when the two divisions were combined.
I need to mention that when Hechinger declared bankruptcy in 1999 the company owed TSI a few thousand dollars for training trips. They paid us every penny. Many of our clients declared bankruptcy at one time or another. Most of them—except the newspapers and Filene’s Basement—paid us some portion of what they owed, but no one else paid the entire amount.
