Still Crazy After All (39) These Years

Ray and I have been married for 39 years as of today, October 12th. We are celebrating our anniverary in the state of the palm trees, oranges, theme parks and beaches. I love Florida. Well you might have guessed that already. I was thinking about how Ray is a very special person and how much he has personally given to bridge. He will never be in the Bridge Hall of Fame. I doubt he will win awards (although his books have) but he has made a great contribution to our game.

Let me go back to the 70’s. When I first met Ray he was a bridge teacher as well as a player (along with being a chemistry professor at the University of Toronto). He was also the bridge columnist for the Toronto Star and an avid photographer. We still like to look at the columns most of which feature our generation of young bridge players. Many of the columns had more than just a bridge hand they had a story to tell. A few years ago we collected the bridge columns and put them in a scrap book. I think it would be fun to start to publish some of them on the blog along with some of Ray’s pictures.

Ray used to have a dark room in the basement of the house and he would produce lots of black and white photos and he also had lots of slides. It is still fun to see younger versions of my bridge friends.

Ray taught bridge sometimes with me at various venues. Duplicating notes to give to the players was not as easy then as it now. Team teaching was fun. We also ran games in a local community center.

Ray was editor of our unit’s bridge magazine the Kibbitzer. He created a new format and figured out how to produce a high quality magazine at a low cost. Later he was editor of an insert in the magazine called the Dorbitzer which contained bridge content (rather than board announcements and tournament results which filled the rest of the magazine).

Ray and I had a long rest from bridge while we raised our family but when we returned we started a magazine Canadian Master Point with Ray as the editor. It was non-profit. Nobody was paid. It went from a small local distribution to a country-wide magazine. It was filled with wonderful articles from some of the best in bridge.

At the time Ray was the president of a Canadian publishing company. When Ray decided it was time to leave corporate life he started Master Point Press. It was an unintended non-profit. It took quite a few years before Ray could take a salary. We tried to develop local talent but we also wanted to publish the best books from the best bridge authors and players. Ray built Master Point Press into the world’s biggest publisher of bridge books. One of the things about Master Point Press is that the authors and the bridge book distributors are personal friends. Ray’s goal has always been to produce a very high quality product which he does efficiently and so very well. I believe Ray is one of the best editors in the world. He also is a sound business man.

Many of the best books published by Master Point Press originated from an idea that we had. We then found an author team to take over and write the book. So in more ways than one Ray has contributed to bridge literature.

Ray decided early on that Master Point Press should not be just focused on making a profit. There were the books he did because he knew they would do well but there were also the books he did because he felt they should be published. In many cases we have worked with authors for years to get their book finally finished. The company also decided that making a contribution to the bridge community was very important. So Ray established the MPP IBPA Book of the year, the ABTA teacher of the year and has made contributions to Canadian teams among other things.

A few years ago Ray was a member of the Canadian Bridge Federation board of directors and then its president.  His presidency included 2001 and he supported a decision not to go to Bali after 9/11 and then went to Paris with our team.  Later he selected Canada’s demonstration team for Salt Lake CIty pre-Olympics.  We went along to help and were very proud to cheer the Canadian Open Team to victory.  Ray was also emergency NPC for Canada’s women’s team which went to Shanghai.  That was a tough job because I got quite ill and other team members had some challenges too.  Still our team narrowly lost the quarterfinals to Germany.

He has participated in bridge vugraph in a large bookstore, taught bridge classes in another bookstore, handed out sushi at a tournament to promote Samaurai Bridge, mentored bridge authors, attended numerous tournaments to met with book sellers and authors, spoken at ABTA conferences, handed our prizes and so on.

Ray has a cartoon which shows some aliens looking over a letter from an author which says; “Sometimes I wonder if you editors really are human.” While Ray has had to turn down book proposal he always does it in a helpful way. Potential authors don’t get “form letter number 1.”

So Ray has been a bridge teacher, writer, editor, publisher, promoter, NPC, administrator and sometime player. And what is more he will always be at Table 1 in my personal Bridge Hall of Fame.

Ray relaxing as we search for furniture in Sarasota.

Ray playing  his second favorite game.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I realize as I write this that this blog is about Ray and bridge and of course on our anniversary it seems appropriate to talk about Ray and me.  When Ray and I were first married it seemed we went for years without fighting.  The first fight I remember was over backgammon.  I had a big lead and I doubled Ray.  He knew he shouldn’t accept but he did and then had a series of huge rolls.  One thing led to another and eventually I upended the board and went for a long walk.  By the time I got home I realized how silly the whole thing was.  Since then our fights have been few and far between.  We love and respect each other.  We each have our strengths and weaknesses.  Ray likes to tease me about being vertically challenged, hard of hearing, directionally challenged (I get lost a lot) and a few other things of this ilk.  I poke at him about the time spent watching soccer, being a bit over organized and yes leaving the toilet seat up (although I have given up on that one).  But mostly we treat each other foibles with indulgence and problems and disagreements with humour.  We have learned to be supportive and avoid being hurtful.  So after 39 years I couldn’t imagine a life that wouldn’t have included the two of us, working together, sharing, raising our children, loving our grandchildren, building businesses, furnishing houses and being together throughout it all.