EDGAR KAPLAN’S PROGNOSTICATION COMES TRUE

My real exposure to serious bridge came about the time I met and married Norman Kay in the early sixties.  Norman was playing with Sidney Silodor until Sidney’s death in 1963 and he floundered for a year or so afterwards.     It was then he reunited with his former partner Edgar Kaplan who (in about 1960) released Norman to play on the “big team” when asked  to join an impressive group by his Philadelphia partner Silodor — on teams with Johnny Crawford, Tobias Stone and Alvin Roth.  Young Norman had reached the big time and held his own well with the likes of Schenken, Becker, Rapee, Lazard, Gerber, Mathe, Hodge, etc. who (together with scads of others) were the creme de la creme.   The top thirty players read likes a Who’s Who (including great Canadians Eric Murray and Sammy Kehela).  Until Edgar’s death in ‘97, Norman and he played with Jordan, Robinson, Roth, Root, Kehela, Murray, Pavlicek, Hamman, Wolff, Bramley, Lazard and then it came to a screeching halt with Edgar’s death from cancer in September.   Though he lingered for a couple of years after its discovery, he never gave up the game he loved and won his last big event – The Open Swiss Teams (formerly The North American Men’s Swiss Teams) in Dallas with a last minute potpourri of Norman, Geir Helgimo, Brian Glubok, Walter Schafer and Bart Bramley a couple months before his death.  Knowing Edgar was on borrowed time, there was not a dry eye in the room when the results became final.

In fact, Edgar, when Norman complimented his brilliance that day, retorted with, “I have abdominal cancer, not cancer of the brain.”   He never failed to produce a witty reply in all the years I knew him.  It is now fifteen years since he passed away and I still think of him every day (and not because I used to be a disciplined KS devotee – now converted to the more adventuresome Wolff System) – but because Edgar was eloquent, articulate, brilliant, funny, clever, original, etc. and he was so very patient and kind to me.    How lucky can a gal get?   First Norman (with Edgar thrown in gratis)  – then Bobby – and to think some females never get it right once.

However, of all the phenomenal lines and thoughts that his incredible mind produced, I remember him most for his appall that it was harder and harder to get a team of truly top experts who were interested in preserving the beauty and majesty of the game of bridge without turning it into a business.   His prediction unfortunately became a realization as I cannot spot a team today where a lesser player is not picking up the tab one way or another.   Edgar was light years ahead of his time.

Let me add —  I am not against professionalism in itself (locally or nationally) but when it hits the big time and infiltrates the three best pairs who are suppose to represent their homeland, they should earn it on their own and be the best that our country has to offer.   Already it is taking its toll as seen by the ascendancy of the other foreign teams’ success in recent times.