I have bowled, off and on, since my mid-teens, when my father and I bowled on four lanes in the basement of a YMCA in Brooklyn.  Those were the days of pin boys;  we used to tip them by tossing coins down the lane to the pit.  I used a three-step delivery (nobody told me that four steps is better) and used that delivery until about 1959 or 1960, when I devoted a summer to changing to four steps.

I know that I bowled a few times during World War II, while in the service, and that I bowled regularly while I went to college, but I don't remember much about it.  I do remember that between 1950 and 1954, when I worked in Cambridge, Mass, how disappointed I was that there were no tenpins, only candlepins (bowled with duckpin balls, the pins were the height of tenpins and the diameter of duckpins.)  I bowled in a candlepin league for one season but could not develop enough enthusiasm for that game to continue.

In 1955, about a year after I started work at the David Taylor Model Basin in Carderock, MD, I found tenpin bowling in the Washington, DC area and I bowled in leagues steadily until about 1980.  I bowled first at lanes in Roslyn, VA and Lucky Strike Lanes in Washington, DC.  Later I bowled in scratch and handicap leagues at the Congressional, Wheaton Plaza and Wheaton Triangle Lanes in Maryland, none of which is in operation any longer.  I also bowled in the DC area scratch Travel League with a team from Silver Spring Bowl.  I went to the Lebanon Dutchman tournament a number of times with that team.  For the past six years, I have traveled to Lebanon with the remnants of that team, Buddy Engleman, Bob Bruner and myself (Bing Davis, a very classy bowler from the Silver Spring team, was also there for the first year but he has since moved out of town).

I have bowled in a number of tournaments over the years, though not as many as I might have.  I have never been to any of the big out of state tournaments like the ABC Nationals.  I have been in the money a number of times but the only time I can recall being in first place was the 1957 DC Area City Tournament, held at Lucky Strike Lanes that year.  I went into that tournament with an average in the 150's and bowled my first 600 set ever, a 650, together with two other over average sets to win the handicap all-events and the doubles with my partner, Walter Brown, from the league at Roslyn.

About 1980, other activities kept me from bowling more than one league, which was not enough to keep up with the changing (already) lane conditions.  I wasn't enjoying my falling average so I quit.

Following heart surgery in December 1989, I was having a problem with my right shoulder. I thought that bowling might help, so I dug out one of my old balls and hit the lanes at Shady Grove. Wouldn't you know, the old addiction grabbed me again and I started bowling in leagues again in the 1990-1991 season;  I think I averaged about 167 that year.  Since then, I have bought more bowling balls than I had in all my previous career;  In the old days, one ball could last for years.  I have had to learn a lot about balls and lane conditions to get my game back to where it is now, but I still have problems making the right adjustments (join the club.)

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