eCribbage Newsletter #9

Hello my little eCribber's its smurfy to be back again after a long hiatus, with  another edition of "Smurfy's Corner".  Again big thanks-you's to all of you for making the eCribbage newsletter a big success in the past. Like all of you eCribber's, I too, looked forward each month to our newsletter and now that we are back up and running we hope you all will enjoy reading it again. It's a great way for us all to catch up on all the new happenings here at eCribbage and keeping you all connected is our aim with the newsletter. It's eCribber's like yourselves that make our newsletter fun to put together and a pleasure to send out to you all each month. As you all know here at "Smurfy's Corner" I will try my best to post any of your stories, jokes or comments so if you have any please feel free to send them in. If you have any suggestions on a topic or what you would like too see in "Smurfy's Corner". I will do my best to try and accommodate any of your ideas. So please send them to me at prettysmurfette38@gmail.com I will try and post as many as possible.   

  While smurfing the Internet looking for interesting tidbits  for "Smurfy's Corner" I came across this article from the Milwaukee- Wisconsin Journal Sentinel ( JSonline). As I read it, it touched my heart and I thought it was such a sweet story of two people's love for each other and cribbage that I thought why not share with all you eCribber's. They say love and cribbage don't mix well, I guess this proves them wrong. So I hope it touches you as much as it did myself and may it leave a smile in your heart.                       

                                                                         "Pair fell In Love Over Cribbage"

About the only thing that Martha Tate Fingleton and Warren Sondericker loved more than playing cribbage was each other. They were a husband and wife who long worked together, playing cribbage during the lunch hour. They played at home in the evening. They traveled to tournaments together - both were life masters - until their health began to fail. Fingleton died of emphysema June 17, 2010. She was 54. Sondericker died of complications of leukemia June 25, 2010. He was 71. "She pegged out first by eight pegs - eight days," said her sister, Jane Kegel. "It was a close match. They didn't skunk each other."Not surprisingly, they met at a cribbage tournament, though it's important to understand that both were well-read and very smart. He had a special gift for telling stories. She loved playing with words and had a quirky sense of humor. So when she yelled out a strange phrase at a tournament, he was instantly intrigued."Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny!" declared Fingleton. "Who said that?" called Sondericker. "I did!" she answered. That began the story of their life together.

Fingleton was born in Ann Arbor, Mich., and later grew up in the Milwaukee area, graduating early from Whitefish Bay High School. "She learned cribbage from our grandparents," her sister said. "What you did at night was play cribbage." Fingleton tested out of all of her freshman year at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, earning a four-year nursing degree when she was still 19, Kegel said. "She was in nursing for a while, but it interfered with her cribbage habit," her sister said, with a laugh. "So after she met Warren, she started working for him."

Sondericker, a Milwaukee native, had started Midwest Fire Protection with a friend, Dick Goelz. He served a stint with the U.S. Army in Germany. He was a widower when he met Fingleton more than 20 years ago, and they married in 1998. About 1996, he bought his dream house - an old firehouse on Milwaukee's north side - renovating it for living quarters. "He liked the idea of living in a firehouse, because he was in the fire prevention business," Kegel said. The building included room for his "Warren Sondericker Hall of Shame." There he good-naturally hung all the second-place cribbage board plaques he had won over the years. "Warren did win the national tournament and the $10,000 prize twice in Reno, Nev.," his sister-in-law said. "He loved to gamble, too, and he'd turn right around and spend it all, but come home with some more great stories."

Fingleton was one of the highest ranked women in the cribbage world, named to the American Cribbage Congress Hall of Fame, and involved in leadership roles with the American Cribbage Congress. "She was a teaching assistant and working on her master's in comparative literature and philosophy when she died," Kegel said. Fingleton also appeared on both "Jeopardy" and "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," not winning but playing respectably.

In their final months, they were separated far too much. Both were hospitalized at times, Sondericker for months, with Fingleton not supposed to risk her own fragile breathing by exposing herself to possible infection during a hospital visit. Finally, she had enough of that. She worked with medical social workers to arrange a weekend visit in her husband's room, complete with hospital oxygen. "Who cares?" she told her sister. "I don't care anymore what I catch." "She had not seen him for weeks and weeks," Kegel said. "She was so excited. They just reminisced. .?.?. She was able to spend the weekend before she died with Warren. I really do believe she went to say good-bye." Sondericker did not survive long after her death. "I think they were both staying alive for each other," her sister said.