December 2008 - 22

By Augie Boehm

In the mid Sixties, Columbia
College consistently excelled in two
sports, fencing and bridge. In tumultuous 1968, the year of student riots
at Columbia and around the world,
four members of the varsity bridge
team received a merit award from the
Columbia Alumni Association, recognizing outstanding achievement.
Alan Truscott, bridge columnist
for The New York Times, chronicled
a number of the team's exploits.
Besides noting collegiate triumphs,
Truscott's newspaper covered two
team matches we staged against distinguished Columbia bridge alumni,
including Sam Fry, Richard Kahn,
Lee Hazen, John Solodar, Roger
Stern and George Boehm, my father.
The first year, we lost. The next
time, we won.
When Oswald Jacoby was a
Columbia undergrad, as he reminded
our captain and fellow Texan John
Bromberg, Columbia didn't have
just the best college bridge team
- they had the best team, period!
Alma Mater took notice of our accomplishments, probably because
in the Sixties, Columbia rarely won
anything competitive.
In June of 2008, the team decided
to have a bridge reunion. Actually,
we've had other reunions. The first
took place in New York in January of
2003, coinciding with the recreation
22

of the Culbertson-Lenz match. I
played the role of Sidney Lenz, and
my classmates came to root and rehash old times.
In June 2007, we were scheduled
to meet for three days in Texas, but
flight disruptions reduced the time
together to one day. Undaunted, we
rescheduled for 2008. As in 2007,
Captain Bromberg hosted the event
at his weekend home outside Austin
TX on Lake Travis (we've renamed it
Lake Bromberg).
I flew in from New York, Allan
Hillman from Hartford and Richard
Margolis from Orlando. This time
there were no travel hitches, and we
headed to the lake for four nights and
three days of visiting, water sports,
political and philosophical discussions, frequent cell phone calls to our
wives, and bridge. John and Allan
are attorneys, Richard is a rabbi, and
I make my living from bridge and as
a musician. In college, John majored
in art history, Allan in history, I was
a music major, and Richard earned
two degrees, one from Columbia and
the other from the Jewish Theological
Seminary.
At Columbia, the partnerships
were John and me, Richard and
Allan. John christened the other
two the Aviary - each had an avian
nickname (Richard is the Penguin,
Allan the Crow) relating to physical

resemblances, and they sometimes
had erratic results that suggested that
they must have been "flyin' 'round
the room." I was the Bobo, a reference to a Peter Sellers comedy of the
period about a singing matador. John
was John.
In our senior year (Richard was
technically Class of 1969, but we
welcomed him as a classmate), we
often played bridge in a decrepit
Morningside apartment and scored in
red ink on the wall, which we termed
the Big Board.
To prevent damage to his home,
John supplied an erasable white
board. Richard had suggested a
surfboard where bad results could
instantly be washed away. We rotated
partners and played Chicago, using
Cavendish vulnerability where
dealer's side is not vulnerable on the
second and third deals to encourage
preemption. No money was at stake,
but the play was serious and deliberate because of personal pride and a
deep love of the game.
Since graduation, Allan has played
virtually no serious bridge. John
focused his energies on building a
career and raising a family - his
sporadic tournament appearances
have brought him a high rate of success. Living in and around New York,
Richard and I became a partnership
with an occasional foray into national
prominence.
The first day, our foursome
played on a covered, floating dock
on the lake. The surroundings were
unmatched for comfort and beauty,
and a cluster of ducks came to kibitz,
no doubt pulling for the Aviary, but
dummy needed to work hard. The
wind was gusty, and dummy was
required to protect cards, score pads,
pencils and bridge notes, sometimes
diving into the lake to retrieve and
dry items that escaped. The wind
never abated and we were beginning
to run out of full decks, so we moved
indoors.
Over the course of about 120 deals,
our group executed an assortment of
straightforward squeezes, endplays
and coups. Rust may have accounted
for some of the other results that
were perpetrated. On the following
Bridge Bulletin
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of December 2008
