Swiss STAC week arrives August 21 through 27, with the unit holding a special single-session Swiss game at noon on Sunday the 27^th. There will also be more NAP club qualifiers. Log on to sjbridge.org for more information.

Dan Turkus, Stu Goodgold, and Bill Langlois were re-elected to the Unit 507 Board of Directors. Welcome to newly elected Joel Koransky, Judy Clark, and Derek Fiero. Derek is our new unit game coordinator, Judy is the education chair, and we’ll find plenty for Joel to do.

June served a full plate of local sectionals. At the East Bay sectional, stratification tops in pair games went to Jiang Chen, Nongyu Li, Jennifer Gu, Mansoor Gowani & Ravi Thomas. First in the Swiss X flight were Bruce Luttrell, Tania Moalem, Jack Verson & Dana Brown.

At the San Francisco sectional, strat tops were earned by Bryan Reese & Mindy Foos and Stephen Tu. Tania Moalem’s Swiss team won the flight X. The Earthquake sectional lacked an earthquake but had good homemade snacks. In the pair games, topping their strats were Mary Henderson, Nongyu Li, Fran Dickman, Kit Humphrey & Henri Fahri and Mindy Foos & Michael Fleisher. These last two pairs teamed up to win the next day’s Swiss game. The Swiss games in these sectionals felt like knockouts, having only six rounds of nine boards. I, for one, hope this isn’t a trend.

At the Palo Alto regional-like sectional, the following unit members earned strat tops in pair games: Harriel Shea, Laura Walters & Lorraine Rodich, Manju & Raghu Agarwal, Linda Rallis & Marilyn Cox, Barbara Coyle, Jiang Chen & Nongyu Li, T-C Yang, Kamen Nedeltchev, Stacie Bowman, Lynn Shannon & Bruce Scott, Surendra Mandava, Neeru & Pravesh Mehra, Joel Koransky & Katarzyna Wesolowska, Zag Kadah, Bob & Nancy Ward, Boyer Chu, Eryl Barker, Li-Chung Chen, Peggy Chen, Cheryl Mandala, David Gambelin & Tina Pearson, Ivy Cheuh & Chingling Jim Tseng, Joyce Sogg, Ravi Thomas, Mischel & John Postas. Ed Barlow won the only two-session pairs game. This honor roll would be longer except some of these folks won than once.

Winning their knockout brackets were Tania Moalem; Eugene Hung; Cheryl Mandala & Yul Inn, Daniel Rappaport, Rekha Nirula, Richard Jacobs & Mike Sullivan; Barbara Mash, Bruce Scott, Keith & Carol Burnett. In the all-day Swiss, Jennifer Gu, Nongyu Li & Jiang Chen had a strat top.

At the international level, Rose Meltzer’s transnational team won the Rosenblum Cup at the World Championships in Italy, making Rose the World Bridge Federation’s first ever female Grand Master. Congratulations! What’s next for her, the interplanetary championship?

Back into the stratosphere, congratulations are due our new masters: Judy Borlase, Eric Kubo, Linda Rallis (Junior); Wendy Dewell, Steven Gunia, Larry Lee, Dee Peterson, Sharon Sava (Club); Michael Bodell, Alan Chase, Marc Epstein, Robert Hanson, John Postas (Sectional); Phyllis Reinhardt (Regional); Matt Moore, Lyle Supp (NABC); Cassandra Leung (Life); Jack Verson (Silver).

At the end of June, Jim Hayashi relinquished directing on Wednesday nights, thus ending a directing career that began 40 years ago. I’ll have more to say about Jim next month when space permits. His directing shoes will be ably filled by Will Watson.

I don’t have the space here to recognize the winners of our 14 weekly club games, who are publicized in our Di-rek’Tor newsletter. But Doris Oelberg is worth mentioning, because we don’t have too many winners who can reminisce about their 90^th birthdays. May we all play so long and so well.