For my 100th club, I flew to St. Petersburg Florida. Kathy’s Duplicate BC is owned by Kathy Newell and runs on Wednesday’s at the St Petersburg BC. I arranged with Gretchen Funk and Leon Lyday to keep the second half of my purpose for visiting St. Petersburg a secret. Not only was I attending my 100th club, I was naming Charles Gill, manager of the St Petersburg BC, as the recipient of the Nadine Wood Volunteer of the Year Award. Charley is President, manager, part-time director, partnership chairman and he writes a clever email on the upcoming club happenings every week! He is a great guy and I wish every club had a Charley. To surprise me, Charley presented me with a caricature of yours truly in honor of my 100 clubs in 100 days. It is really just fabulous. We both pulled off a surprise!
Well I achieved the 100 clubs but I needed more. I decided to visit another club that was in somewhat familiar territory. In about 1973, I founded the South Jersey BC with two other guys and we had games seven nights a week. We introduced a day game and a game for players with less than 100 points. I sold my ownership after a couple years, but the club survived numerous owner and location changes. Today there is a club called the BC of South Jersey, so I think of it as a continuation of club I founded. This was my 101st club. They had 14 tables, and I played with Joelyn Shilliday.
So on September 21st, I completed club 99 and spent the next six weeks basking in failure. Now I have exceeded my goal and I did it in 97 days (no one ever said 100 clubs in 100 consecutive days). The tour was great. Thanks to everyone. Bridge players are nice.