Howie on Hall

Even though Howie Weinstein long ago moved away from Minnesota, we here still consider him a "Minnesota boy."  Howie sends his remembrances of an old friend, frequent teammate and occasional partner from "the old days."  Thanks, Howie.

For many years Jim was often my teammate, occasional partner in both bridge and golf, but always a good friend and class guy.  During the 70's I usually played on teams with some combination of Jim, Larry Oakey, Dick Melson, Dave Lehman, and Steve Garner, until I left Minneapolis around 1980, and then more rarely after that.  Jim was always a great teammate and partner.  He had a great perspective on the game, playing well, but always with a sense of humor, rarely critical of partners or teammates.  He limited his amount of bridge play and associated travel because his family was always his foremost priority. More than once he told me liked spending time with his family too much to spend any significant time away from them.

We played golf together many times and his golf game resembled his bridge game.  He was an extremely good golfer and maintained a low single digit handicap for most of his life, despite a bad back much of that time.  He didn't hit spectacular shots and was not a long hitter, but he hit the ball extremely straight, and had as good of a short game as anyone I have played golf with.   

I do have to relate one story from the first time I played on a team with Jim at a Thunder Bay regional circa 1973 with Ron DeHarpporte, Larry Oakey, Doug Thompson from Winnipeg, and possibly a sixth that I can't recall.  We had won the Swiss qualifying for a 16 team KO and faced a team with a sponsor and a few semi-pros in the first match.   Unfortunately this match fell on Yom Kippur.  Since I was still living at home at this time while a student at the U of Minnesota, and thought my father would be upset if I played on Yom Kippur, I sat this match out. 

I came down to the playing site around noon to discover that we had lost to a forfeit.  Being of curious mind, I innocently asked how this was possible.  The team we faced had a commitment to play another regional the next day, couldn't continue in the event, and were going to forfeit the match.  However, their sponsor wanted to play the match for fun.  Jim said that he was going to breakfast and refused to play, the position also held by at least two others (and admittedly would have been mine as well).  The other team said then we'll play the match for real.  They did, our team lost by 3 imps to the forfeit, and the other team withdrew, with their next day's opponents receiving a bye. 

Jim was the face of Minnesota bridge for years and will be very missed, as a bridge player, but more even much more as a great stand-up guy.