1966-2024 Bleeding Maize and Blue

Posted on January 28, 2024 by Mike

Michigan football and me. Continue reading →

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I followed the marching band up

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

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

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

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

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

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

This man deserved to play inn the Rose Bowl.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lloyd Carr with four-year starter Chad Henne.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Coach Carr was living in Ann Arbor in 2024.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aidan Hutchinson was the best defensive player since Woodson.

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

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

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

When Corum got hurt, Edwards stepped up.

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

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

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

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

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

Corum was the star in overtime, but everyone contributed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2008-2019 Bridge Partners at Tournaments Part 2

Posted on November 22, 2023 by Mike

Occasional partners at tournaments. Continue reading →

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After this I had no further contact with Greg.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tink was still a very active player in 2023.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sabrina approved this photo of herself and Darryl Legassie.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2008-?? Partners at the Hartford Bridge Club Part 2

Posted on October 23, 2023 by Mike

Mentoring and short-term partnerships. Continue reading →

This entry describes my partners who participated in the mentoring program of the Hartford Bridge Club (HBC) and the ones with whom I have only played once or twice. The regular partners can be found here. Those I encountered outside of the HBC mentoring program after the pandemic have been posted here.

Mentoring: The HBC’s Board of Trustees established a mentoring program several years after I became a Life Master. I cannot think of a way to set the date. The purpose was to allow newer players to pick up a few tips from more established players by playing together as often as possible over a three-month period. The incentive for the mentors was that one game per month was free. I always participated. I am not certain of the order of my partners, but I have put them in chronological order as closely as possible.

My technique varied little from year to year. I asked my partner what they wanted to focus on. I then asked them to send me a copy of the convention card that they were currently using. I wrote up a series of questions about the card/ After they answered we scheduled our play at mutually convenient times.

I communicated very little during the play. I generally try not to watch my partner’s play very closely because I do not want to make them nervous. If we had time after the round I might fo over anything that I noticed. Afterward I went of

My first partner in the mentoring program was Susan Glasspiegel¹, who was already a pretty good player. At the time she played mostly with her husband Bob on holidays, in night games, and occasionally at the SBC. I also encountered them sometimes at nearby tournaments, where they often teamed up with Ru Cole and Silvia Szantos. I remember losing my temper when my team lost to them. I did not mind losing, but Ru was late turning in the score—for no good reason. That meant that both teams received the dreaded red dot. Two red dots would result in a loss of a victory point. My team never got the second dot, but theirs did.

I don’t think that playing with me had much effect on Sue’s bridge game. At the time she was pretty set in her ways. Bidding has always been my favorite aspect of bridge, and she made it clear that she needed to continue bidding the way that she did because Bob was unlikely to change.

I remember that Sue played Standard American rather than 2/1, her sparse set of conventions included the Brozel defense against 1NT openings. She also insisted that if she was responder after a one-level opening in a suit, and her right-hand opponent overcalled, that a 1NT response did not necessarily imply a stopper in the overcaller’s suit.

In later years Sue played at the HBC quite a lot with Lee Wilcox and a few other people. By then I think that her bidding was more sophisticated.

Sue suffered a very bad accident in 2022. However, when she heard that we had two and a half tables in Simsbury, she told Bob that she wanted to play so that we could have a reasonable game. That was very nice of her.

JoSue Coppa: JoSue usually played with her husband, Gene, described below, both in tournaments and at club games. I was a little surprised to learn that she had signed up for the mentoring program.

I cannot remember any memorable occurrences during our partnership. I don’t think that she advanced a lot.

Gene and JoSue moved to Fairfax, VA, during the Pandemic or shortly thereafter.

I also don’t have a lot of memories of playing with Linda Erickson. The main one is that I was scheduling games for her at the time that I had scheduled a game with Linda Starr. It was the first and (so far) last time that I double-booked. The other Linda was very gracious about the situation, although she admitted that she had placed a curse on us. Linda E. and I had a horrendous result.

I remember that Linda said that in her house she was the CEO of the kitchen. She evidently did not appreciate her husband messing around with culinary paraphernalia.

Linda served as vice-president of the HBC for a while. I guess that she was in line to become president, but for some reason she decided not to. My wife Sue, who was on the nominating committee speculated that her reluctance was because of the fact that she and her husband were moving to Charlotte, NC. However, she was still playing locally in 2020, so she must not have moved before the Pandemic.

Fran Weiner² was a member of the HBC long before I returned to the world of bridge, but she did not have a lot of masterpoints. We only played together a couple of times. In fact, I ended up owing her

At the time, Fran’s daughter Jennifer, a novelist was involved in some kind of promotional event in California for one of her novels or screenplays or something. So, Fran went out to the West Coast to help her or to babysit or something. I expected Fran to get in touch with me when she returned, but she never did.

Bridge was not a very important part of Fran’s life. She was in the ACBL for twenty-nine years, and she only amassed 282.19 masterpoints. I doubt that she got much out of our association. Nevertheless, I was quite disappointed that she seemed to disappear from the HBC after that. I wanted to learn more about how her daughter managed to break into the world of publishing.

I often say that everyone in bridge has an interesting backstory. Hers certainly qualified.

John Calderbank came to the mentoring program with a specific objective, to learn the 2/1 bidding system. I wrote up a description of the differences between the Standard American that John had always played and 2/1. The differences were not insignificant, but there were not a lot of new things to learn.

John probably got more out of our partnership than any of the other people with whom I worked. When I wrote this entry in 2023 I was still playing with him in the morning game at the HBC nearly every Tuesday. I subsequently have taught John a few new conventions, but he mostly has wanted to take it slowly.

John and Mary Sullivan (below) took over management of the mentoring program in 2022. Their oversight was far superior to the previous coordinator’s.

In 2023 John was still doing a lot for the club behind the scenes. In addition he and his wife Nancy (below) were running an unsanctioned game in their home town of Glastonbury. He also took and passed the ACBL’s directorship test. His first assignment for the club was to direct the Sunday afternoon High-Low game. My wife Sue and I played in it regularly.

Of all of my mentoring partners³, Mary Sullivan was the most conscientious. She always responded to my emails, which she shared with her regular partner, Xenia Coulter, and she usually had additional questions.

Xenia was already a Life Master when I started playing with Mary It did not surprise me at all when Mary achieved the same rank in 2022.

In 2023 Mary was still running the the club’s mentoring program with John Calderbank (above). She also was assisting several of the other programs aimed at helping newer players.

Mary has hearing difficulties and macular pucker, scar tissue in the macula that can distort vision. Through my first seventy-five years I avoided the first of those, but I was still struggling with the latter in my left eye.

In 2022 Nancy Calderbank asked me to be her mentor. Like her husband, John, she had been playing bridge for a long time, but she wanted to learn how to play the 2/1 bidding system. We only got to play together a few times, but I am pretty sure that she had mastered 2/1 by the time that the mentoring period was finished.

I also worked with Nancy for three years on the HBC Board of Trustees. She and John, whom she called a “busy-body”, also ran an unsanctioned bridge game in Glastonbury, CT.

In the summer of 2023 I got to meet and play with Fran Gurtman, who had much less experience than any of the other players whom I had mentored. She was still a practicing physician when we started playing together.

Fran had taken online lessons. The first convention card that we played was very unsophisticated. It had no defense against 1NT openings, and it also lacked Jacoby 2NT, New Minor Forcing, Drury, and other conventions used by most of the mid-level players at the HBC. We only played together, but she felt comfortable adding most of them.

On November 8, 2023, Fran was driving from her home in Avon to play with my wife Sue in the weekly Wednesday evening game at the Simsbury Bridge Club. A deer jumped in front of her car. The collision killed the deer and damaged the auto. She called Sue to ask if she was still needed. Sue told her that we would not be able to have a game if she dropped out.

So, after filing a police report Fran drove the car, which was difficult to steer, to her house and drove a different car to the game. She arrived only a couple of minutes late.

A new mentoring session started in January of 2024 and ran through March of the same year. I was assigned by the mentor program to work with Mike Kaplan, who had even less experience than Fran did. Our convention card contained a lot of blankness. I taught him New Minor Forcing, Fourth Suit Forcing, and the two-suited bids.

Unfortunately, we had to play in the open pairs games at the HBC. Our results were therefore not very good, but I think that Mike learned quite a bit. I wrote up all of the hands on which we did poorly as I always did. I could have played for free in three of the games, but I donated the money to the HBC, which got reimbursed $30 by the CBA.

Playing with Mike on March 7 I was dealt the following hand: ♠A5432 ♥A653 ♦A5 ♣62. This hand had no face cards and only forty-four pips, an incredibly low number. The lowest possible number is twenty-eight. Mike had a very good hand, which got a lot better when blended with my three aces. He took all the tricks, but we only bid 4♥. We got a bad score.

At the same time I served with Mike on the HBC Planning Committee.

One-time partners: For quite some time I have maintained a spreadsheet with one line for each person with whom I have played at least one entire session in a sanctioned game at a club or tournament. Below is a list of the ones with whom I played only one or two games at the HBC. They are listed in alphabetical order, mostly just to make things easier for me to make sure that I did not skip anyone.

A guy whose last name was Balasubrama played on Saturdays a few times one summer at the HBC. He asked everyone to call him Bala, but the spreadsheet also has KC in the First Name column. On at least one of those occasions I played with him. He was pretty good, and he liked to play with me.

I could find no trace of Bala either online or in my database of players. Perhaps he dropped out of the ACBL before I began downloading the rosters in 2013. It is also possible that I have his name wrong. Unfortunately, in 2023 there is no longer a way to look up HBC results on the Internet.

Myrna Butler lived in Southwick, MA. She came down to the HBC to play occasionally. I played with her at least once at the HBC. I am pretty sure that she answered one of my mass emails soliciting partners.

I remember that some time after we played together I found a card filled out by Myrna at the partnership desk at the regional tournament in Cromwell. My team had been eliminated in an early round of a knockout. We planned to play in the next day’s “Loser Swiss”, but one of our team members was not feeling well. Since we had already played together, I assured the remaining members of the team that I would play with Myrna. However, I was unable to get in touch with her. I later learned that she had gone home and had neglected to remove her card from the partnership desk. I don’t recall how the team dealt with the situation.

I played in a Swiss team event at a tournament in (I think) Hyannis, MA, with Myrna and her partner, Connie Dube (introduced here). They were late for the first match. Helen Pawlowski, the tournament manager, and Sally Kirtley, who at the time was learning Helen’s job, sat in for the first match. After she learned whom she was replacing Helen said, “Oh, Myrna’s always late.”

Myrna has played a few times at the HBC since it reopened after Covid-19.

Gary Cohen played bridge for only a little more than a year, but what a year it was! He played mostly at Stan Kerry’s West Hartford Bridge Club (WHBC) game at the temple in West Hartford³. During his first year of play Gary amassed more masterpoints at club games than any other rookie in all of North America. That earned him the national Ace of Clubs award, as well as the district and unit versions. Since I was still playing with Dick Benedict, that must have been in 2008.

I am pretty sure that I played at the temple with Gary once. He made a joke about getting out the big (circumcision) knife. Although we did pretty well, I did not enjoy the experience much. Stan’s laissez faire style of directing was not appreciated by serious players like myself.

I am certain that I played with Gary at the HBC. It was on December 31 of, I think, 2009. Gary asked me to play in hopes of augmenting his chances of winning the award. We did win a fraction of a black point, but, as it turned out, he didn’t need it.

I remember playing on a team with Gary at the Cromwell tournament the next year. We had to play against Y.L. Shiue’s team. Gary did not think that it was fair for us rookies to be matched against “the best card-player” at the club.

Gary, who was a professional photographer, often went on vacations with both his wife and his ex-wife—at the same time! He insisted that he could get away with this because he was “a catch”. His LinkedIn page is here.

Gene Coppa and his wife JoSue (introduced above) joined the HBC a few years after I did. I played with Gene at least once at the club. We played together at a limited game on Wednesday afternoon that was designated as an NAP qualifier. There were at least ten pairs. Gene and I were the only people in the B strat. All of the other players were in the C strat and had considerably less experience than we did. So, we should have easily been able to qualify; in fact, we should have won.

Instead I got the worst result that I had ever received at the HBC. We finished dead last, and we did not earn our Q.

I was playing East that day; prior to that time I had always sat in North, South, or West. For quite a few years thereafter I refused to sit East in that building. When I began playing with Joan Brault (introduced here), she insisted on playing West when we were assigned to sit East-West, I reluctantly discarded the superstition.

Gene served a term as HBC president. He also served as hospitality manager for Unit 126 before the Pandemic. He and Jo Sue moved to Fairfax, VA, in 2022.

Phyllis Crowley was a fairly new player when I was paired with her for some reason. She was, in my recollection, somewhat overwhelmed by the event.

I think that she still plays in limited games in 2023. I have not seen her in any open games, but she was still on the email list.

I remember playing with Lucie Fradet once at the HBC, but I do not remember the circumstances. I remember, too, that Felix Springer and I helped her to win some gold points at a regional while playing in a Swiss event of some sort.

In 2023 she was still a member of the HBC , but she mostly played at the WHBC.

In real life Lucie had been a French teacher, and she still loved to speak in that language.

I am certain that I played with Marsha Futterman only once at the HBC. She was a very good player at one time. She even won the Governor’s Cup at a sectional, but she refused to take the very large trophy home.

Marsha often played with Peter Katz. She told me that she thought that she was a better bidder than Peter, but Peter played his cards better. That may have been true then, but Peter’s bidding improved, and Marsha’s play did not.

Marsh directed the Saturday games at the HBC. Her husband, Carl, often came with her, helped set up and clean up, and filled in at the bridge table when necessary. When Marsh played with him (to avoid a sitout), she was constantly frustrated by the way that he played. I suggested that she could play with my partner, Peter, and I would play with Carl, but she did not want to do that.

Marsha gave up bridge after the Pandemic. I don’t know why.

Carl Futterman died on November 12, 2023, while I was composing this entry. His obituary can be read here.

Margie Garilli has for year run one or two games in the northeastern suburbs of Hartford. She has played at the SBC quite a few times, mostly with Donna Lyons. She seldom came after the Pandemic because she could not drive at night.

Margie, who is a pretty good player, asked if I would play a game with her at the HBC. I quickly agreed. I don’t know if she got a great deal out of it, but she seemed to have a good time.

Marilyn Goldberg was an exceptionally good player with much more experience than I had. She asked me to play with her very late in her career. I made a mistake—I don’t remember the details—and she remarked that she knew that I would do that. That hurt.

Marilyn died in 2022 at the age of 93. Her obituary can be read here.

I played with Judy Hyde quite a few times before she moved from the Hartford area to Northampton, and I played with her a couple of times at the Northampton Bridge Club before she paired up with Bob Sagor.

On one occasion at a regional tournament in Nashua, NH, my wife Sue and I went out for supper with Judy (my partner at the tournament) and Judy Cavagnaro (Sue’s partner). The unusual aspect was that Judy C. was married to Jud H.’s ex-husband, Tom Hyde. There was not a bit of animosity between the two Judys.

On her eightieth birthday Judy bought herself one lesson and game with a local pro, Doug Doub.

Judy served as the representative of Unit 186 (Western Massachusetts) on the committee that I formed to determine the first winner of the Weiss-Bertoni award. That process was described here.

C.J. Joseph‘s first name was Carolyn, but absolutely nobody called her anything other than C.J. I only played with her once.

C.J. met her husband, who was (to the best of my recollection) a hospital administrator while they were both attending the University of Michigan. So, most of our conversations were about the Wolverine football team.

She left the Hartford area for a seaside home they built in Englewood, FL She scoffed when joked about her house being washed away. I don’t know; the Ross Ice Shelf is several hundred meters thick and the size of France. Nothing but friction is holding it back.

In 2023 C.J. was still a member of the ACBL, but she did not appear to be playing any more. A lot of that happened during the Pandemic

Joel Krug was still a regular at the HBC as I wrote this in late 2023. I only played with him once, but I recognized him on an old photo of an annual meeting, and none of the other members looked familiar.

The only thing that I remember about our game was that he was surprised that I knew how to play the McCabe Adjunct as well as the Brozel 1NT defense.

Joel was one of the best players at the club. He may have lost a step over the years, but he was still formidable.

I played at least one round with Pam Lombardo, when she was just a novice. Maybe it was during one of the first sessions of the Sunday high-low game before Covid-19.

Pam has had significant health issues that seemed to affect her ability to play, but in 2023 she was still an active member of the club.

A friend of hers named Butch Norman was one of two recipients who objected to me using the name Tonto in one of my emails. I discussed this incident in detail in the blog entry that I posted here.

At one time Donna Feir planned to hire Pam as a director, but that plan never came to fruition.

Jim Macomber (MAY cum ber) was a regular player in the Tuesday evening games when I first started playing at the club in 2008. I may have played against him more times than against anyone else.

One of Jim’s regular partners at the HBC morning games was Jeanne Striefler. I asked Jeanne and Jim to team up with Eric Vogel and me for the knockout in the Presidential Regional in Southbridge in February of 2023. We did very well on the first day, but terrible on the second. The saga has been recorded here.

Later in 2023 I finally got to play a round as Jim’s partner. I had long respected him a great deal. Our result was uninspiring, but it left me hoping for a second chance.

When Jim had his cataracts removed in the late summer of 2023 he was left with double vision, something to which I could relate. He was unable to drive until he got a pair of glasses to address the situation.

Partab Makhijani was my regular partner on Tuesday mornings at the HBC before Covid-19 caused the club to close. We played a fairly sophisticated card. I remember that he criticized one of my bids once, but I don’t recall the details.

Partab did not return to the club after it reopened in 2021, and I have not heard any explanation for his absence. His LinkedIn page, which is posted here, in 2023 listed him as part of the adjunct faculty of the University of Hartford.

Lesley Meyers was (and still is in 2023) one of the best players at the club. We only played together once. There must have been something about my style that she did not like. She never responded to any of my emails after that.

Lesley (LEZ lee) notices things about people. She was the only person who noticed the golf-ball-sized lump on my left elbow that was presumably caused by the effort required to extract gallons and gallons of water from the basement of our house in Enfield after Hurricane Ida in September of 2021. That episode is recounted here. I am glad that she noticed the problem. I saw a doctor about it, and he gave me a wrap that eventually reduced it to nothing.

Lesley was also the only person who asked me about the fingernails on my left hand. They apparently got severely bent and bruised when I fell in Budapest in May of 2022. That misadventure has been described in detail here.

When I first started to play at the club, no one intimidated me as much as Lesley. She was not tolerant about novices who took excessive times concocting their bids.

I remember distinctly that Nancy Narwold told me that one day that she would surprise me and respond positively to one of my emails soliciting one-time partners. Her name is on my spreadsheet, and I have a convention card for her. Therefore, it must have happened, but I don’t remember it. It seems strange that I remember the off-hand comment more than the 3.5 hour game that it resulted in.

I do recall that before she became a Life Master Nancy played almost exclusively with another woman whose name has escaped my memory—Karen Somebody, I think. The HBC held a party when the two of them achieved Life Master status. I attended. The other lady told tales about their efforts to attain the rank, including something about answering a knock on the door of their hotel room in a nightgown. I always considered Nancy a much better player than her partner.

After that event I don’t think that they ever played together again. From then until the closing for the Pandemic Nancy played mostly with Joel Krug. She also ran an unsanctioned bridge game at one of the country clubs on the west side of town.

I have deduced that in 2023 Nancy teaches business at Manchester Community College. If so, her LinkedIn page is here. She is still winning masterpoints; she probably plays online.

Val Orefice was not as serious about bridge as most of the people on this list. Although she joined the ACBL in 1994 (ten years before I did), she only made Bronze Life Master in 2012, a year after I did. She dropped out in 2018.

I remember only two things about Val. The first was that she did not seem to be familiar with several of the conventions that nearly all the accomplished players used. The other was that she pronounced her last name the same as the common word “orifice”. The Italian word orefice means goldsmith and is pronounced oh RAY fee chay.

I played with Pam Palmer a few times when her main partner, Aldona Siuta, could not play. Pam. They played a much simpler system than I was accustomed to. They very seldom made mistakes, and both of them were very good at playing the cards.

In 2023 Pam was still playing, but at a much reduced rate. She seemed to be very frightened of Covid-19, perhaps on account of her partner.

Both Pam and her partner were quite active in the same church attended by the Calderbanks.

Susan Pflederer, who was (and still is in 2023) one of the best players at the HBC, once told me that she wanted to play with me because she had a hard time playing against me. This astonished me because I did not remember having particularly good results when I played against her.

I know very little about Susan. She had been playing bridge for a long time when I started. I seem to remember that our results were mediocre. I probably made some mistakes that she noticed and I didn’t. We never played again.

After the Pandemic Susan has played less than she did before.

Trevor Reeves has the unique distinction of playing with me without making it onto my spreadsheet. When we were scheduled to play together a second time, he was able to show me the results from our first partnership. I cannot imagine how it could have happened, and I took no notice of it.

Trevor learned to play bridge in England, which explains why his BBO handle is ACOLyte. Trevor is a very good player. Although in late 2023 I still have more masterpoints than he does, the people in the club obviously consider him a better player than I am.

Trevor formerly played as a teammate of mine at many tournaments, and we did quite well. He also played with me in a pairs event at the Summer NABC in Toronto in 2017 (no notes?). We won our section in the evening session.

I would like to play more with Trevor, but he obviously prefers other partners. He asked me to play with him in the sectional in Orange in August of 2023, but I had to turn him down because of a previous commitment to play in the sectional in Great Barrington, MA.

Trevor’s primary partner at tournaments has been Felix Springer. They have a great record together and even made it to the semifinals of Flight B of the Grand National Teams in 2022.

Trevor served as both the president and then treasurer of the HBC. He was responsible for implementing the accounting changes that allowed the club to do accurate budgeting during and after Covid-19.

I cannot say that I enjoyed the one time that I played with Joan Salve. Her world view was just too different from mine. I don’t remember any details, but I was happy when the session was over.

I met Carol Schaper at the SBC. She was a regular there when I first started playing. I liked her a lot.

She played with a former nun named Louise Alvord. Carol was interested in my book on the popes (posted here). She especially liked the title, Stupid Pope Tricks: What St. Mary Immaculata Never Revealed About the Papacy. Louise, however, did not want to hear anything about Roman Catholic clergy, good, bad, or just unusual. Carol tried to defend me, but Louise did not want to hear it.

I played with Carol only once at the HBC and never at tournaments or, for that matter, the SBC. I thought that she had the potential to be a pretty good player, but she did not want to put in the effort.

Carol was one of the thousands of people who let their membership in the ACBL lapse during the Pandemic or shortly thereafter. She had enough points for Life Master, but she must have been short some gold and/or silver.

Susan Seckinger has long been a key person at the HBC. She was hired as a director and Donna Feir’s right-hand person. Before that she was a critically important official for Unit 126. She had the formidable responsibilities of being both the treasurer and the tournament manager at the same time. She did a good job in both roles.

Susan’s husband Gary was considered one of the best players in Connecticut. He often played with Deb Noack at sectionals. He died in 2014, just as I was becoming active at the district and unit levels.

I only played with Susan once. I think that we both enjoyed it, but we never played again. She has long had a small group of women with whom she played regularly.

Mike Smith almost always played with his wife Susan. They became a formidable pair during their stay in the Hartford area. They even won a pair of national championships. Mike was a Life Master when they moved to God’s country. I spoke at Susan’s Life Master party and complained that she had never once agreed to play with me and that they had stolen my favorite teammates, Bob and Shirley Derrah.

I never got to play with Susan Smith, but on one occasion Mike asked me to play with him on a Tuesday evening when Susan was busy elsewhere. I jumped at the chance. I really enjoyed it, but he was an intimidating figure (both physically and at the table). I made a mistake that kept us from having a good round. It was embarrassing.

Mike was still working full-time while the couple lived in the area. So, his presence at the HBC was pretty much limited to evenings, weekends, and holidays. Susan, however, became a rather active member. I an pretty sure that she participated in the mentoring program.

In the post-Pandemic period the Smiths moved to Alexandria, VA. I have not encountered them since they did.

I first met Linda Starr during the Tuesday evening games. She usually played with Mike Carmiggelt in those days. They—and many other players in those games—were good enough that they intimidated me. Once Mike accused my partner and I of something unethical. When I responded with a one-word interrogative: “Ethical?” Linda immediately responded by saying that Mike was just crabby because he was hungry. I am not sure why, but Linda has not played with Mike for a few years.

I have paired with Linda a few times at the club and at least once at a sectional in Orange. That experience has been recorded here.

Shortly before Covid-19 struck Linda passed the director’s exam and was hired by the HBC. At my suggestion the club bought a subscription to MailChimp to send emails about news of the club. Linda took over the project of maintaining the database and composing emails. Her emails throughout the closure helped maintain a sense of community among club members.

Linda came up with the idea of the High-Low game on Sunday as a way for experienced players could help the less experienced. She has unofficially mentored Doug Eitelman and greatly improved his game.

Linda and I worked together on the fantastically successful Limited Sectionals that were sponsored by the HBC in 2023. Documentation of those events begins here. At the time she was a member of the board of the Connecticut Bridge Association (CBA). She became very upset at the handling of the notorious “Tonto Scandal” that has been documented here. After a short sting on the CBA board she resigned. At the HBC’s annual meeting in October of 2023 she became the first director ever elect to the Board of Trustees.

Gary Cohen put together a team for a Swiss event at the HBC. I don’t remember the date. I was assigned to play with Merrill Stein, whom I barely knew. I don’t remember any more details. I think that Merrill died in 2018. An obituary for someone with that name has been posted here.

Jeanne Striefler has been an active member of both the HBC and the SBC for longer than I have. We have played on teams together at tournaments quite a few times and we have paired up at least once or twice.

On a few occasions Jeanie (as everyone called her) invited my wife Sue and me to the house in West Simsbury that she shared with her husband Fred⁴. One of those occasions was when she celebrated making Silver Life Master, and Susan Seckinger celebrated making Gold Life Master. She probably would have invited us more often if we had reciprocated. Fat chance.

Jeanie served as the HBC’s secretary for many years.

Jeanie and Fred went on a Viking cruise in France at the same time that I took the European cruise (described here). She contracted Covid-19 near the end of the cruise and was unable to leave Paris for several days. She reported that she had had a terrible experience. She was surprised that I enjoyed my journey and thought that Viking did well under the circumstances.

I learned when I played with Rowna Sutin at the HBC that she had been a professional opera singer in Pittsburgh. She appeared as Musetta in Puccini’s La Bohème. I immediately remarked that she must have sung the show-stopping aria, Quando me’n vo’⁵. I then asked her if she wore a red dress. She said that her dress was not red, but it did have a very long slit in the skirt.

I also discussed with Rowna about the version of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin that was performed on television and is available on YouTube here. Rowna did not like the cuts that were made. I felt that the cuts made it a much better television show and highlighted the talents of the wonderful choir and dancers.

I told Rowna about my favorite Tchaikovsky opera, Cherevichki. She replied “How come I have never heard of it?” I wasn’t sure how to explain why it has not gotten much attention in the U.S. I speculated that it might be because it was difficult to stage. I refused to believe that it had anything to do with the music.

That was the last time that I saw Rowna. For some reason she stopped coming to the HBC. She was still a member of the ACBL in 2023, and she had won a few masterpoints during the year.

Bill Watson became the president of the HBC shortly after I joined. As president he arranged for Michael Lawrence, a world champion and highly respected author, to visit the club and give a free presentation on takeout doubles. He even let him stay overnight in his house.

I attended the event. During a break I encountered Mr. Lawrence in the men’s room. He stumped me with a question about whether the faucet’s water ever became hot.

Bill was also a director at the HBC and with Laurie Robbins ran the club’s education program for new members. For six years he ran the Limited Sectional that the club hosted every October.

I played with Bill a few times before Covid-19 shut down the club in 2020. I remember that he was shocked when I said that a bid at the two-level in the fourth seat should show a minimum opening hand. The club’s experts agreed with me, but later when I played with Barbara Gallagher that the best players in Denver played that the same bid at the one-level was weaker.

Before the Pandemic Bill often was the public address announcer at football games for one of the local high schools in Hartford.

Bill and I have not played together since the club reopened. He mostly has played with Mike Carmiggelt and Larry Bowman.

Bill drove a red Jaguar that gave him a lot of grief in 2023.

John Willoughby started playing at the Tuesday evening games a little after I did. I think that I only played with him once, and I don’t remember any details about the occasion. My wife Sue played with him pretty often online during the Pandemic.

Although he and his wife had moved to North Haven in 2022 John continued as president of the HBC until his sudden and very unexpected death in the summer of 2023. Previously he had lived in Suffield. In his business life he worked as an underwriter for one of the insurance companies. His obituary can be found here.

When John was vice-president of the HBC, he was also the chairman of the Planning Committee, of which I was a member. The committee came up with many good ideas during this period.

The club held a special event as a tribute to John. Many of his family and friends attended. Over $6,000 was raised for the club.

1. In September of 2023 Bob and Sue Glasspiegel moved to Charleston, SC.

2. I was surprised to discover that Fran was still living in West Hartford when she died in 2021. Her obituary is posted here.

3. Stan had just opened his club when Gary began the year of his feat. Stan took advantage of a loophole in the ACBL rules to give extra points by designating every game as a “charity game”. In addition, although all of the games were technically open games, almost no Life Masters ever attended. So, because the games were fully rated—and then some—it was much easier to earn points at the WHBC than at the HBC, where the open games were dominated by experienced players. .

4. Fred was introduced here. His real first name was Manfred, not Frederick.

5. The long version would be “quando me ne vado”, which just means “when I go out”. I don’t know what happened to the “e” in “ne”.

2003-? The Papacy Project

Posted on August 25, 2023 by Mike

Obsession about papal history. Continue reading →

On Saturday, January 25, 2003, a momentous event occurred in my life. I was, as usual, working in my office at TSI in East Windsor. My Bose radio was tuned to the local NPR station. I don’t remember what I was working on, but I do remember Scott Simon’s interview of A. J. Jacobs on Weekend Edition about his quest to become the smartest person in the world by reading the Encyclopedia Britannica from beginning to end. On that show he reported that he had just finished reading the letter H. To my surprise and delight the entire interview has been posted here.

Most of the conversation concerned the account that he read in the F volume concerning the corpse of the ninth-century Pope Formosus, which was disinterred and put on trial in January of 897 by a subsequent pope named Stephen¹. Jacobs described the occasion as it was depicted in 1870 in a famous painting by Jean-Paul Laurens called The Cadaver Synod. Having been found guilty, Pope F was excommunicated and defrocked. The thumb and forefinger that he used for consecrating the host were broken off. His skeleton was dumped in the Tiber. All of Pope F’s decrees and investitures were declared invalid.

That is all that Jacobs mentioned, but it was not, as I soon discovered, the end of the affair. The rest of the shocking story has been related in Chapter 5 of my book Stupid Pope Tricks, which can be read here.This radio show had a startling impact upon my life. Although I had attended Catholic schools for twelve years, I suddenly realized that I knew embarrassingly little about Church history. I could name all of the popes of my lifetime, and I knew that the first one was St. Peter himself. In between was a large blank slate. I had never heard of Formosus or Stephen, and I wondered if perhaps A. J. Jacobs had not gotten the story quite right.

U-M has many libraries. This one is the largest.

So, I got no more work done that day or the next. I was too busy googling and reading. I soon discovered that an enormous number of entire books had been scanned by Google in a project that defied belief. At the time the company had nearly finished scanning all the books at the University of Michigan’s enormous library². The ones that were in the public domain were available online in toto and free. Almost every work in which I was interested was available at my fingertips. If I googled “Formosus”, every reference in every one of these books showed up, and, best of all, there were no ads cluttering up the search because no one had named a product or company after the poor fellow.

I started with Pope Formosus and worked backwards and forwards. I eventually realized that all written records of that period were quite suspect, but what Jacobs reported seemed to be pretty accurate, at least as far as anyone knew. One of the first additional things that I discovered was that shortly after the notorious incident Pope Stephen VI was strangled by a mob of the supporters of Pope F. Jacobs did not mention that both of the principals in the story were pontiffs in the first century of the era that lasted for more than a thousand years in which the pope was the ruler of a strip of land in central Italy that stretched from coast to coast. Their conflict was more political than theological.

The catechism that we used in parochial school promulgated the idea that the papacy had been an unbroken chain of successors to St. Peter. That notion did not survive the weekend in my new level of understanding. Duplications—when two or more men claimed to be pope at the same time—and gaps of several years when no one was recognized as pope were evident. The pope is, by definition, the Bishop of Rome, but for seventy years in the fourteenth century no pope ever set foot in Rome. They lived in Avignon in France and were absentee landlords for tens of thousands of Italians. I was also astonished to learn than during the first millennium of the papacy there wasn’t even agreement upon how the successor to a dead pope should be chosen. Some were appointed by kings or emperors.

I had previously assumed that most popes had been saints. The official Church position has always been that the Holy Spirit has inerrantly guided the cardinals (or whoever) who elected or appointed them. The popes at the top of the chronological list (about whom almost nothing is known beyond names and dates because all records were destroyed at the beginning of the fourth century) were considered saints, but at the time that I began my research only three popes³ had been canonized in the last one thousand years! One pope, John XII, was apparently not even a teenager yet when he became Supreme Pontiff, and once he became pope he was, according to all accounts, pretty much out of control.

I discovered so much remarkable material during those first few days that I struggled to make any sense of it. I searched diligently to find a book that put the various anecdotes together in a comprehensive way that explained the evolution of the office in a way that an outsider could understand. Everything that I found was severely lacking. Some simply parroted the “unbroken chain” line or just emphasized what churches were constructed during their reigns. Others were diatribes against specific popes.

Reluctantly I began putting together a timeline of my own and tried to compile the materials so that I could make sense of the big picture.

I decided to assemble and write what I had learned, starting with a two-thousand-year timeline. It was an extremely long project, but I judged that it would be interesting to others. After all, there were approximately a billion Catholics in the world. Most of them were surely as ignorant of papal history as I had been. The spiritual lives of all of them were ruled by the pope in Rome. It made sense that a significant percentage of these Catholics—not to mention the millions who, like myself, had grown up as Catholics but had “fallen away”—would be interested in learning the many remarkable things that I had discovered.

The original book had nine very long chapters. The emphasis was on how the personalities of the individual popes and the forces of history combined to provide the fascinating story of the survival of the institution, which had property and authority but no standing army, for two thousand years. I don’t remember what the original title was.

When I was nearly finished, I bought a book at Barnes and Noble that had contained a list of names and addresses of literary agents. From that I made a spreadsheet, which I recently found. I sent letters to a dozen or two of the agents. A couple were interested, but I eliminated one who seemed like he might be running a scam. I sent the manuscript to the other one, Daniel Bial⁴, but he sent it back with a note that he was no longer interested.

I rewrote the whole book with a new approach. I increased the number of chapters to twenty-four and added a lovable fictitious nun named Sr. Mary Immaculata. She provided the Church’s position on puzzling events. The new version emphasized the trickiness of the various pontiffs. It was now called Stupid Pope Tricks: What Sr. Mary Immaculata never revealed about the papacy. I also added a lot of humorous touches such as a list of “bankable bar bets” about strange aspects of papal history.

I sent the new manuscript to Mr. Bial, but he would not read it. I did not blame him. Who was I to be writing about the history of the papacy? I had no credentials either as a writer or as a historian. I also had no “platform”, which is what publishers call the natural audience that politicians, celebrities, and a few others have for their memoirs.

I therefore decided to post it on Wavada.org using a slightly modified version of the code that I had written for my travel journals, as explained here. This would me allow me to add a lot of images and make it more entertaining. I did not promote it, but a few people stumbled onto the site and told me that they liked it. That was somewhat comforting. I don’t know what more that I could have done.

In my opinion the most fascinating pope was Benedict IX of the eleventh century. I could not find a single author that wrote anything good about him, but the source of most of the calumnies against him was a monk named Peter Damian. Yes, he was canonized as a saint, but he was also a cloistered monk who never visited Rome during Benedict’s pontificates. All of his information must have been second- or third-hand. Perry Mason could easily have gotten all the charges dismissed.

The word “pontificates” in the above paragraph was not a misprint. Benedict IX’s name is on the official list of popes three times. His first pontificate ended when a rival family staged a coup, drove him out of Rome, and elected a new pope named Sylvester III. That pontificate lasted 48 days before Benedict regrouped his supporters and reclaimed the throne. A short time later Benedict, who was still a young man, fell in love and resigned in order to get hitched. A new pope (Gregory VI) was elected, but shortly thereafter the new Holy Roman Emperor came to Italy, decided that he was not worthy, and forced the bishops to elect his choice to replace Pope Gregory. When the emperor departed from Italy, Benedict assumed the throne again. No one seemed to know what happened to his wedding plans.

In all, Benedict was the recognized pope for about thirteen years, the longest pontificate in the eleventh century. It was about the same length as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency.

I had a very hard time thinking of any set of scenarios that made sense of the middle of the eleventh century—before Gregory VII, the Great Schism, and the First Crusade. I came up with a few reasonable (to me) assumptions that seemed to explain the whole period. I then wrote a fictional translation of an imaginary autobiography of Benedict IX defending his reputation replete with scholarly footnotes.The result was Ben 9: An Autobiographical Apologia by Theophylact of Tusculum,Thrice Supreme Pontiff of the Christian Church Translated by Edgar Filbert Thomasson. Most of the characters were actual people. The behavior of the most outrageous character in the story, Gerhard Brazutus, was based on accusations leveled by at least one cardinal. I used Occam’s razor to concoct the simplest explanation that I could think of that explained what the cardinal claimed.

My experience with the first book chastened me from attempting to get this one published. As far as I know the only person who has read any version of it is my friend Tom Corcoran.

So, this novel was also posted on the Wavada.org website, along with the text of the story that Northeast Magazine published that has been described here.

Epilogue: I never lost my fascination with the popes. I have not done a lot of research on Benedict XVI and Francis, mostly because they seemed so much more boring than John Paul II. Benedict at least had snazzy shoes and wrote a three-volume history of Jesus Christ. Both Benedict and John Paul did a rather nifty job of tap dancing around the bishops’ approach to the problem of clerical molestation.

My obsession with the popes has continued for two decades. Every so often I have come across an article or book that makes reference to “the pope”. I always make the effort to chase down which pope was involved and what was the context. Almost always the person making the comment misunderstood or misstated the actual event. The last such event occurred in Würzburg on the cruise that I took in 2022. It has been documented here. In this case it was actions by two different popes that were conflated into one story.

Additional blog entries about the popes can be found here.

1. Everything concerning the popes—even the numbering—is complicated. There has only been one Pope Formosus (the name means “shapely” or “physically fit”), and so he will never have a number unless some future pope picks that name. The perpetrator of the Cadaver Synod was known as Stephen VII at the time, but later a previous pope named Stephen, who had been Supreme Pontiff for only three days, was removed from the list. All subsequent Stephens had their number reduced by one. So, the prosecutor/judge of the trial has been known as Stephen VI since that time. There are also quite a few numbers that have been skipped. For example, there is no John XX or Benedict X on the list. Furthermore, in the twentieth century two popes, Cletus and Donus II were removed, because historians determined that they never existed. So, Pope Donus I lost his number.

2. A description of the amazing partnership between Google (now known as Alphabet) and U-M can be read here.

3. The canonized pontiffs are Celestine V, a hermit who never entered Rome and was essentially imprisoned in Castel Nuovo during the entirety of his short pontificate, Pius V, who was most famous for excommunicating Queen Elizabeth I of England and thereby causing persecution of English Catholics, and Pius X, who opposed modernism and saxophone music in the early twentieth century. As of 2023 Pope Francis had canonized three recent popes.

4. Mr. Bial’s agency still existed in 2023. The website is here.

1999-2005 Mike’s Visits to Jim Wavada

Posted on August 19, 2023 by Mike

Alone in Johnson County. Continue reading →

In one sense my mother’s death in 1998 came as a shock to my dad. In the previous few years her health had deteriorated rapidly. However, for the vast majority of their relationship, she had been the one with the longer life expectancy. She was younger and female, she had never smoked so much as one cigarette, she had very regular habits, she made sure to get plenty of exercise, she ate healthy diet, and she drank very little.

My dad, on the other hand, smoked pretty regularly for nearly fifty years. He was not a drunkard by any measure, but he spent a lot of time with salesmen and advertising people for whom liquor was considered a lubricant. He ate whatever he felt like having (including raw hamburger!), and his only exercise was golf. Furthermore, he had had some kind of incident on a vacation in Arizona that had something to do with his heart.

Throughout their marriage mom was the head of the household. She cooked, cleaned, and did the laundry. She also paid all the bills and managed the cash. If something needed to be fixed or purchased, she took care it. My dad considered it his responsibility to provide enough income for her in the present and the future, and he definitely did that. However, he had never—at least since 1947—given much thought to the little details of daily life until my mom became incapacitated and then died. He confided to me that he always thought that he would die first, and with the insurance, pension, and investments, mom would be all right.

Shortly after mom’s death dad moved into a somewhat smaller apartment that was on the ground floor. Although I can clearly picture both it and its location, I have forgotten the address. My dad had a lot of good friends. I am quite sure that they helped him through the transition. They knew that he had depended on mom, and they gave him good advice about dealing with quotidian matters. They also kept him involved in social activities. At least once a week they had regular breakfasts together, and they invited him to other get-togethers. He also kept up his golf game, such as it was. Needless to say, he kept attending church.

Near the end of this period my dad had one of his hips replaced. I was not involved in the planning or execution, but he told me that the doctor said that the other hip was nearly as bad. His friends must have helped him deal with this as well. I remember that he seemed to be able to walk fairly well after the operation.

One problem that they could not address was his vision. Somehow the retina in his right (I think) eye became detached. He had no vision in it at all. He therefore, had no depth perception. To make matters worse, a cataract was developing in his left eye, which was more than 75 years old.

My dad’s driving ability was definitely suspect. At some point he decided to stop driving on major thoroughfares. This was a good idea. Drivers on heavily used road need good peripheral vision, and his one eye was not enough. Parking was also problematic because of the need to make precise judgments of distance.

He had planned out relatively safe routes to the places that he frequented. If we were going to one of those places—such as the house of one of his friends or a nearby eatery—he drove and I sat nervously in the passenger’s seat. More than once we went to a fairly upscale Italian restaurant in a nearby shopping center. The waiters did not know how to pronounce many items on the menu.

Although I was extremely busy during these years, I stopped in to see him whenever I could. Whenever I was scheduled for a trip to the Midwest or the West Coast I tried to add an extra day or two for a stop in Kansas City. I usually took the shuttle to and from KCI airport. We used his Ford Taurus to get around when I was there.

I made one special trip to be with him when he had the procedure to fix his cataract. Since his other eye was worthless, I had been very worried that in the unlikely event that something went wrong, he would be blind. However, when he came out his vision was much improved. He told me that he had always thought that the blue street signs in the area that he lived were green. Also, he could now see the letters clearly.

Pilgrimages: During my visits we almost always went to at least one favored restaurant that could not be reached easily on side streets or had problematic parking arrangements. I drove on those occasions The establishments that I remember very clearly were the Village Inn for huge breakfasts, Dixon’s for chili, and RC’s for fried chicken. These trips were more like pilgrimages that just dining out. Each deserves its own paragraph.

The Village¹ Inn was located in Mission, KS. The only reasonable way to get there was to take Metcalf, which was a very busy four-lane road. The restaurant was similar to an IHOP, but they also offered something called a “skillet”. The menu explained, “Each skillet meat is prepared with country potatoes, two eggs, any style and served with a side of made from scratch buttermilk pancakes. Egg whites or low cholesterol egg substitute available.” That may sound like to much to eat, but the “Ultimate Skillet” added all of the following: “Two hickory smoked bacon strips, two sausage links, ham, mushrooms, green peppers, onions, tomatoes and melted cheese”. My dad usually ordered a slightly less ambitious skillet, but I generally settled for an omelette. Coffee cups at the Village Inn did not stay empty long.

Dixon’s² chili was nothing like any you have tasted. It was Harry Truman’s favorite restaurant both before and after he was president. Their chili had no beans, but you could ask for some. However, if you demand catsup, you might be thrown out. Actually, you would only be “fined” ten cents. The chili is served on a plate. It is not very hot, but hot sauce and ground peppers are on the tables, and most diners make ample use of them. The restaurant that we patronized was on 75th St., a very busy artery. So, I always drove. Dad always ordered his with tamales. I preferred mine dry. The recommended beverage was RC Cola.

My mother made good fried chicken, but when I was growing up there were still several places in the Kansas City area that made exceptionally good fried chicken. When I was growing up our go-to restaurant for this delight was Boots and Coates. Later my dad found another good one in Martin City on 135th St., RC’s³. If I was in KC for more than one day, we drove there for supper.

The computer: My dad wrote a satirical book, Yup the Organization⁴, that was published in 1986. I am pretty sure that my mom typed the manuscript for him. No one else could read his handwriting, which to me always looked like rain.

He had other ideas for books. He somehow came into possession of a semi-computer made by Brother that could do word processing but nothing else. After mom died, he wanted to buy a computer so that he could send and receive emails, mostly from me. Someone else helped him buy it. It was left to me to describe how to use America Online.

It was hard for him to see the cursor. I adjusted it so that it was larger. Then I set up his account. I created an icon on the desktop for AOL.com. I showed him how he could move the cursor around by making similar movements of the mouse. I did not explain precisely how the mouse was able to cause this. Instead I had him practice double-clicking⁵ on the AOL icon. He finally got it to work, and the login screen appeared. He entered the user ID and the password that I had previously established. Almost as soon as he pressed Enter, the computer’s speakers greeted him with, “You’ve got mail!”

My dad was excited and justifiably proud of his accomplishments. Although I advised him strongly just to delete the items that appeared in his Inbox, he insisted on opening the first one. When he double-clicked on it the contents appeared on his screen. It was explicit pornography⁶ in vivid colors.

In shock he lifted the mouse off of its pad and waved it at the screen as one might use a crucifix to ward off a vampire. I despaired at the prospect of talking him through deleting the email. Instead, I wrested the mouse from him and did it myself.

Dad was eventually fairly competent in the use of text-based email. I never attempted to teach him about images or attachments.

I also tried to help my dad with word processing. He could enter and edit the text, and he knew how to save it. I tried to teach him how to copy and paste. He just could not seem to understand the concept at all, and, despite the fact that I had trained hundreds of people to do tasks much more complicated than copying and pasting, I eventually gave up.

So, he used the word processing on the computer in essentially the same manner as he used his old word processor—hunting, pecking, editing, saving, and printing.

He wrote two more books. I read them, but I did not like them. One was an insider’s look at how dad’s insurance company had gotten Senator Bob Dole to rescue them from a tax mess. The other was a fictional story about three brothers.⁷ Dad tried to get the Dole book published, but it never happened.

Other adventures: My dad loved to play golf. His vision limited his ability to do it. For a while a friend of his walked with him and spotted his ball for him. I don’t know how dad could have gauged the distance on putts. In all the time that I played with him, I never saw him measure a distance in number of strides, and doing such a calculation would have been foreign to the nature of someone who could not balance his checkbook.

I did not play any rounds of golf with him during this period, but we did go to a driving range together a few times. I had to describe to him how much slice he had imparted to each shot. He always said something like, “I’m not coming through the ball enough.” I had no idea what this meant.

I attended two or three of the all-male breakfast gatherings of my dad’s friends. At one of them someone asked me about my business. I explained how we installed AdDept systems to administer the advertising departments of large retailers such as Macy’s and Saks and how TSI was in the process of developing and marketing a service called A^xN to process insertion orders from the retailers to their newspapers. Some of the guys were quite interested in the latter project.

I often ran a few miles in the morning. Once, on a fairly warm day, I did ten miles, and it wore me out. When I got to the apartment I lay motionless on the carpet. Dad nearly freaked out. I had overdone it a bit, but within ten minutes I was functional again. That’s what it is like to be a runner. You recover much faster than people think.

On September 18, 2004, dad and I watched the football game between Michigan and San Diego State, then coached by Brady Hoke. It was a terrible game. SDSU was ahead 21-17 at the half. As the teams left at halftime, the field announcer asked Lloyd Carr what he expected in the second half. He tersely said, “I expect a comeback.” U-M scored a touchdown early in third quarter. After that it was an excruciating duel between the two punters.

The big move: In 2005 my dad was diagnosed with macular degeneration in his left eye. He was given treatments to arrest it. They seemed to work, but he was still legally blind. He could not drive.

The area of KC that he lived in had no public transportation to speak of. I proposed that he sell his car and move closer to me and Sue.⁸ He wanted to give me his car, but I did not want it. I liked my car, and when I stopped liking it, I wanted to pick out my own model and color.

I expected that after he came to the area he would live in an apartment for a little while. Meanwhile Sue and I would erect an addition to the north side of our house tin Enfield to provide him with a place to stay. We did eventually add on to the house, but by then I had come to realize that the idea of him moving in with us would not work for a large number of reasons. It hurt me that I did not keep my promise, but I don’t know how I could have.

So, he lived by himself in apartments in Enfield for six years. That story is related here.

1. In 2023 The Village Inn in Mission appeared to be thriving. Sue and I also frequented the one in Clearwater, FL.

2. Dixon’s was renamed Fritz’s Chili at some point. However, no changes were made when the restaurant in Overland Park was purchased in 1967. It closed in 2018, one day before my dad’s 96th birthday, which he celebrated in another realm.

3. In 2023 RC’s was sold to a couple who announced their plan to leave fried chicken on the menu but also serve Thai food!

4. In 2023 dad’s book was still available on the Internet. He let me read the manuscript that he had submitted. It was pretty good. There was one vignette about a meeting that I particularly enjoyed. Unfortunately, the editor made him remove that item because he (or maybe she) found something potentially offensive. The end result was a work that could not decide whether it was satirical of a self-help book. The nonsensical title was also the editor’s idea; the book made no mention of Yuppies.

5. This took some time. My dad was extremely left-handed, but he used his right hand for the mouse. So, his right forefinger was challenged to perform an activity that his left hand had not yet mastered. Furthermore, to my knowledge he had never performed any kind of fine movement with his right hand. He had never learned the basics of any musical instrument. His typing was strictly hunt-and-peck, and he generally did more hunting than pecking.

6. This might have been the only pornography that my dad ever witnessed. Although he was a contemporary of Roger Sterling, he had a very different set of values. Foul language and off-color jokes or stories were not tolerated in our house. There was no mention of sex at all in my family.

7. Yes, my dad had two brothers and no sisters. He read almost fiction. The only fictional book that he read while I knew him was The Godfather by Mario Puzo, which he read on someone else’s recommendation. He could not get past the language. His own novel had no setting. He left every aspect of the background story vague. I found it almost impossible to read. In fact, I could not get through it.

8. Jamie moved to Birmingham AL in 1999, as is explained here.

Wavablog

Memoirs, bridge, popes, travel, and other stuff

Tag Archives: University of Michigan

1966-2024 Bleeding Maize and Blue

2008-2019 Bridge Partners at Tournaments Part 2

2008-?? Partners at the Hartford Bridge Club Part 2

2003-? The Papacy Project

1999-2005 Mike’s Visits to Jim Wavada