President's Perspective
Bowling for Dollars

(Feb. 3, 2010)  Ah, the burdens of leadership. It’s not enough being president of a Newspaper Guild local: I have to anchor the local’s bowling team. And at an annual fund-raiser, I got high score for our team in all three games – but if you
saw my total pin count, we’d both be embarrassed, as would be the other WBNG members who bowled Jan. 31 for the “Organizers” in the D.C. AFL-CIO’s Community Services Agency "Bowling for Gold" tournament.

I suppose it’s a good thing that I didn’t get challenged to any per-pin pledges. Although my sponsors would have saved spent less toward my efforts, the purpose of this tournament is to separate people from their money, since it’s going to a good cause: the Emergency Services Fund of the Community Services Agency. The Fund cannot be supported by union dues, so it requires discrete funding sources. There’s a fund-raising golf tournament in the fall, but I prefer bowling. For one thing, the ball is bigger and much tougher to lose. For another, you can roll three games with your team in three hours; I dare any golfer to make that claim!

We won’t know until at least the end of February how much money was generated by entry fees, donor pledges, and the ever-popular 50-50 raffle that takes place during the "Gold" event. But we indeed had a good time. One fellow in a nearby lane rolled nine strikes in a row, winding up with a 268 in his third game. Another bowler in the tournament kicked off his day with a perfect game of 300 – only the second time that’s happened in the 18-year history of “Bowling for Gold.” I also ran into a woman whose children go to the same school as my daughter. You see, it IS a small world after all!

My great thanks to my fellow Organizers: Tiffany Heath, Amy Lampkin and Debbie and Mike Noonan, all of whom are in the local’s AFL-CIO unit. Well before the last ball was rolled, we were talking about sponsoring two teams for the 2011 tournament. Why not? And maybe T-shirts. Why not? Well, for the latter, I wouldn’t want to OK a run of only 10 T-shirts for a bowling team. But, in the context of promoting the Guild and the local, I can see 10 ruggedly handsome and attractive Guild members proudly wearing T-shirts that tell everybody who we are. As I said before, why not?