2 April, 1948 – 12 March, 2011
Edward John Chadwick was born on April 2nd 1948 in a small Lancashire village near Blackburn. He was the second of 5 children. At school, Ted was good at mathematics and in due course was accepted at Bristol University. Before starting uni he took a year off and earned some money as a bus conductor. At uni his studies lagged due in part to activities such as drinking, table tennis and. . . . . contract bridge.
After uni he moved to London and became a computer operator at BP. Ted met Marilyn Hancock in 1968 at BP where she was a senior operator. Marilyn fondly remembers the time when her instructions were carried out immediately!
They married in May 1972. Marilyn had relatives in Sydney who she was keen to visit so Ted organised an IT job (programming) in Sydney and they arrived in 1974 planning to stay. Their first child, David was born December 1975. They decided to return to the UK but in due course found they were missing sunny Australia and within a year returned.
Soon after, the family was extended when Katy was born in December 1978. Ted took a job at AMP as a Systems Analyst where he stayed for most of his 30+ years computing career. He enjoyed the commute by ferry from Manly to his office at Circular Quay. Ted focused on career and family until the early 80’s when he started playing more bridge with Marilyn and other partners. Ted and Marilyn were a formidable partnership in Bridge, but as is well known, taking bridge problems home can be injurious to a healthy marriage, so they wisely chose not to play together too often.
Perusal of NSWBA Bulletins of the early 80’s showed a flurry of wins in and around Sydney for Ted in pairs and teams congresses commencing mid 1982 with a number of different partners. He subsequently formed many successful partnerships, notching up numerous State and National titles, but his most successful partnership was with David Beauchamp.
The highpoint of Ted’s bridge playing successes was making the Australian Open bridge team partnered by David Beauchamp for the 1996 World Championships in Rhodes, Greece (an Olympiad year). Australian Bridge Magazine’s issue of February 1997 carried a 19 page report from Ted on Australia’s performance, as well as his own observations and impressions. In that article you can see Ted’s special brand of perceptive wit. Ted could be amusing, droll, critical, frequently self deprecating and generous in his praise for good bids and plays. In the ensuing years Ted’s occasional reports for Australian Bridge magazine and other bridge publications were always instructive and entertaining. Ted brought those same qualities to commentating at Vu Graph sessions.
Ted left AMP in the early 2000’s and soon after became a full time bridge professional playing with great success with a variety of clients in Australia and overseas (Hawaii, San Francisco come to mind). He was a bridge director for a while at North Shore Bridge Centre and NSWBA and was involved very successfully in bridge coaching at North Shore operating in tandem with David Beauchamp. They ran a lot of very successful workshops both jointly and severally. Ted was not only a great teacher but he also entertained. In fact people came from far and wide and many returned to hear the same lessons again.
Ted was an extremely ethical player. He was conscious of his tempo and made every effort to play the game in the right spirit. Whilst generally very easy-going he was sometimes prone to the odd raised eye-brow at the end of a hand when he thought the opponents had been ‘ethically challenged’. He had high hopes that all players would play as he did and he endeavoured, somewhat vigorously at times, to guide players in the right direction.
Ted had a special interest in the area of appeals and served on many appeals committees as well as acting as an appeals advisor at many of the large congresses tournaments for any players considering appealing a director’s ruling wanting to discuss the merits or otherwise of such action.
Ted was non-playing captain of the Australian Open Team in 2001 and also non-playing captain for the NSW Open Team in 2003 and 2005. He was an active participant in ABF gold point events in other states. The Victor Champion Cup (VCC) in Melbourne was a favourite such event and Ted partnered by Avi Kanetkar with Kim Morrison – Marilyn Chadwick as their teammates were regular contenders there over the years -winning in 1997 and 2000.
Few people got as much pleasure out of bridge as Ted. He just loved playing and discussing the game. It was impossible to have a conversation with him without the words “You hold” cropping up in double-quick time. His stories were full of passion and enthusiasm and always entertaining. Ted was a red wine expert and some astute buying in the 80’s including some Hill of Grace (which at that time was affordable), led to an impressive wine cellar. He was a keen golfer but never enjoyed the same success there as he did at bridge. In 1994 Ted and Marilyn became Australian citizens.
Kim Morrison, a long standing friend of Ted and Marilyn’s, gave the eulogy at Ted’s funeral and included these comments:
“I had the pleasure of playing with Ted for a few years. He was of course full of sage advice. How many of us have heard him say?
- Keep winners… throw losers
- Play our suits not theirs
- Don’t ruff thin air
And my favourite, as you proudly put down the dummy and preen yourself behind it;
- Where’s the hand you held in the auction?”
His eulogy also included some amusing snippets from his articles:
| From his first VCC article: | “Making up our team were Marilyn and Kim, a long standing partnership with many agreements, the main one being that a second bottle of wine should be consumed at each meal break.” |
| And the next year: | “Marilyn and Kim were the best we could do for teammates, as all the good pairs had been snapped up.” |
Here’s another one in his more traditional self deprecating style;
“If an expert is defined as someone who knows exactly what he should have done immediately after he has done something different, then I am certainly in that category”
Ted had his first encounter with melanoma in the mid 80’s and a vigorous course of treatment then seemed to have nipped it in the bud so to speak. However in the late 2000’s there was a re-occurrence -again tackled vigorously . . . but, ultimately, that battle was lost.
Ted’s last outing was to walk Katy down the aisle at her wedding on February 4, 2011. His father of the bride speech was delivered in his own inimitable fashion causing much laughter.
He was a happy man that day.
Peter Jamieson
Ted was a member of the Open Olympiad team in 1996, captain of the Open team at the Bermuda Bowl and PABF in 2001 and a member of the PABF Seniors team in 2007.
Ted’s successes included wins in the ITS Open Teams in 1991, 1997, 1998 and as Captain in 2005, the Butler Trials in 1993, the GNOT in 1995, the VCC in 1997 and 2000, the ANOT in 1996, the Dick Cummings pairs in 2006 and the Autumn Senior Swiss Pairs in 2007 and 2010.
