With great pleasure we announce today that John Schwartz is the recipient of the 2020 Unit 503 Service Award for exceptional service for making our club a welcoming place to play bridge. Additionally, he has also been selected to receive the 2020 Goodwill Award of District 21 which oversees 21 different units in Northern California and Reno area with 8,273 members. Each year the district honors only about 5 members for their outstanding contributions and personal qualities that lead to the promotion of bridge. These contributions and qualities include time and efforts on behalf of home units, attention to growth of local membership, a friendly and positive table presence, cheerful general volunteerism, and support and development of newer and less experienced players.
John learned bridge as a teenager, but played little for many years. He is a graduate of Cornell, has a PhD in Physics and a law degree from Harvard. After practicing tax law, he joined Stanford physics faculty and then became vice president and general counsel for Stanford for 20 years. John was president of an investment company, chairman of a biotech company, and flew his own airplane.
Instead of having a relaxed retirement he decided to take on the challenge of contributing to the Bay Area bridge community. Around 2010 he took over a very large successful Thursday bridge game and also started a new game on Mondays to provide opportunity for beginners and intermediates. Both these games were held at the JCC in Palo Alto and because of John’s kind, calm and nurturing nature, became unit’s largest games and were eventually moved to our Bridge Center in Mountain View.
John has volunteered to serve on the unit board for many years and has helped by rewriting and restructuring all the license agreements for club owners, teachers and rental events. He has developed a great rapport with our landlord IFES to make things easier for the unit and the district to hold bridge tournaments and help us navigate the current difficult Covid environment. He works with ACBL on issues such as the recorder role, conflict management and use of BBO in the current environment.
John devotes significant amount of time to attract more players and make the game of bridge an important and enjoyable part of people’s lives. John has been relentless in devoting his time and energy for continuous improvement of his players in the use of BBO.
Please congratulate John for this well-deserved honor and celebrate the recognition of his work.