June 2012 - 6

Viewpoint
By Brent Manley, editor@acbl.org

People rarely succeed unless they have
fun in what they are doing.
- Dale Carnegie

A good job
Anyone who has read this column for very long knows how I feel about tournament directors. They are interesting, fun people. I am lucky to know as many
of them as I do.
Not long ago, I was asked to do some editing on an outstanding collection of
stories about TDs. It was written by Julie Greenberg, late of the ACBL Education Department and an outstanding TD in her own right. She put the book
together mostly for her former colleagues.
It's an amazing collection, making me wonder whether she was taking notes
through all the adventures. Surely, no person's memory is that good.
Anyway, if the book - Oh, What a Life - becomes available for general
consumption, you will read about it here. There are many gems in the collection, including several involving the legendary Harry Goldwater.
At the 1964 Summer NABC in Toronto, a man approached Goldwater and
asked about kibitzing a certain event. "Well," Goldwater said, "this is the Mixed
Pairs and you'll have to have a woman to kibitz with you." The man spent the
rest of the afternoon in a fruitless search for a woman willing to sit with him.
The next day, the man showed up with a woman in tow, only to be told the
event was a team of four!
Maury Braunstein was another TD with a quick wit. On one occasion at a
tournament, he was called to table No. 7, where two players in priestly garb
were holding up the game with their slow play. Said Braunstein, "Our fathers,
who art at seven, hurried be thy game."
Jerry Machlin once took the microphone at a regional in Richmond VA to address the weary players who had slowed down near the end of a session. Said
Machlin: "They have a peculiar rule here in Richmond. The afternoon game has
to be finished before the night game can start."
Phil Wood, the pride of British Columbia, was known as Mr. Woop to friends
and fellow TDs. He got the nickname when he left his briefcase on an airplane.
One of the flight attendants found it and got on the public address system at
the airport. The name tag apparently was handwritten, however, and the "d" in
Wood looked more like a "p." The announcement: "Call for Mr. Woop. Call for
Mr. Woop."
Walter Wilson, well known to players in the South, almost always drove
to tournaments. On one rare occasion that he flew, he forgot that he hadn't
driven, and when he couldn't find his car, he reported it stolen.
You can't make this stuff up.
r
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6 Bridge Bulletin June 2012

Letters to
the Editor
How did he know?
To the Editor:
In noting with sadness the death
of Russ Arnold (March, page 25), I
couldn't help remembering a deal
from a game I had with him.
It was in the final of the knockout
teams at a regional in Jekyll Island GA.
In those days - more than 30 years
ago - there was only one KO. I was
playing with Russ against the Jeff
Meckstroth-Eric Rodwell team. Russ
and I were playing the two stars,
who bid the following two hands to 6.
A K 4 - A Q 10 4 3 A J 7 4 2
Q 8 7 6 10 4 3 K 2 K Q 10 6
After taking all 13 tricks, Jeff and
Eric began to discuss how they might
have been able to bid the grand slam.
Russ calmly told them not to worry
because our teammates would be in a
partscore - and he was right!
If memory serves, the bidding at the
other table was 1-1; 2-3; 3
-Pass. To this day, I regret not asking
him how he came to that conclusion.
Russ was certainly one of the giants
of the game and will be truly missed.
CHARLES M. DAVIS
Atlanta GA

Well done!
To the Editor:
What a thrill it was to have the
Spring NABC in Memphis. I played
with four different partners and
enjoyed meeting people from all over

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of June 2012