Talk:Helen Sobel Smith

Name

Owing to several marriages, she is referred to by many names. The details and timing are uncertian to this editor and so I am starting a chronology with references to sort it out. Any assistance with references would be appreciated. Some details added August 13/15 but dates for marriage to White not yet determined. Newwhist (talk) 23:04, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

1. Born 1910 in Philadelphia. Birth name was Helen Martin Newwhist (talk) 22:57, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
2. Married Jack White (date?) and they then divorced (date?).
3. 1937-1945. The bio for Al Sobel in OEB sixth edition (page 740) states that he married Helen Martin White in 1937 and they divorced in 1945.
4. Referred to as formerly Mrs. Al Sobel on page 738 of the same edition of the OEB
5. Referred to as formerly Mrs. Jack White on page 738 of the same edition of the OEB. "She rocketed to stardom ... In 1934, as Mrs Jack White ... she won ... the first of many titles."
6. Referred to as Mrs. Stanley Smith and Helen Martin Smith on page 738 of the same edition of the OEB. Married Stanley Smith 1965. Died in Detroit hospital on September 11, 1969 of cancer. Newwhist (talk) 22:57, 13 August 2015 (UTC).
7. Residence path seems to be: Born in Philadelphia, lived long in New York City, moved to Miami Beach in 1963 and then to Detroit after marriage to Smith. All this is in OEB sixth edition page 738.
8. In the Spingold win of 1960 she is Helen Sobel
9. In the Vanderbilt runner-up of 1962 she is Helen Sobel
10. In the Whitehead Women's Pairs runner-up in 1965 she is Helen Sobel
11. In the Chicago Mixed Board-a-Match she is Helen Sobel in a 1954 win and as Helen Sobel Smith in a 1968 win.
12. The ACBL Hall of Fame citation is for Helen Sobel-Smith although the body of the citation omits the hyphen.
13. The foregoing suggests that she became Helen Sobel Smith between the years 1965 and 1968 inclusive.
14. The foregoing suggests she was Helen Sobel for the greatest majority of her bridge career - 1937 to 1965 at least.

Newwhist (talk) 23:06, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

The ACBL database NABC Winners now credits her as Helen White with second place in the inaugural 1933 championship for women teams (see Sternberg Women's Board-a-Match Teams and Wagar Women's Knockout Teams). That is the achievement of Marie White in our table of "Sternberg" winners now, and in its Daily Bulletin list of "Wagar" winners at least 2009 to 2012 (google). Her much older ACBL HOF citation makes the 1934 women pairs Helen Sobel-Smith's "first national title" [1].

NABC Winners now doesn't recognize "Marie White" [2]. --P64 (talk) 21:58, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Sources

• The All-Time Bridge Greats (7): Helen Sobel. 18th European Youth Team Championships, Bulletin 8, 15 July 2002, p3.

Regarding the "greatest woman player", it has been said of both Helen and Dorothy Truscott so much as, ahem, that each is/was universally considered the best ever. Judy Kay-Wolff is one example regarding Helen (blog 2010-12-26). In Comment later that day, Kay-Wolff "far from qualified" herself, paraphrased remarks by Bobby Wolff on Edith Kemp, Sabine Auken, and present gals, and remarked herself on Sally Young.[3] (Those 3 of 200 recent new player pages are sure to survive here.)

• "As Female Stars Remarry, Confusion may be a result". Alan Truscott. NYT. April 15, 1985 —

That one is generally valuable and not foremost concerning Helen MWSS. I readily found this seeking an obituary by Truscott, who was the NYTimes bridge columnist from 1964.

--P64 (talk) 20:57, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Edgar Kaplan as a source

We may be able to improve the use of Edgar Kaplan as a source.

Kaplan and Sobel were both inducted by the ACBL HOF in 1995 when he was alive and reasonably well--still publisher-editor (now co-editor) of The Bridge World as he had been when she died in 1969. Previously we have paraphrased and quoted Kaplan twice without a reference. Her HOF citation now quotes him five times, some apparently in context of some paraphrase, all without a reference.

Last hour I added a formal reference to the HOF citation of Sobel [ref name=ACBLhof] and refashioned our paraphrase and quotation of Kaplan to fit its use of him as a source, using indirect quotation myself [diff]. For the first quotation in particular, my revision places the first nine words "Helen's style was frisky and aggressive – so aggressive that" outside the quotation and eliminates both the ellipsis and the closing exclamation mark, " ... they were the girl!"

(User:Macdonald-ross added that paragraph nearly 7 years ago [diff], without a reference, when some External links already included some HOF citation. The next use of Kaplan and that of the 1969 Bulletin date from anonymous work September 2010 [diff] and evidently match the online HOF citation.) )

Of course the selection of Sobel was a likely occasion for ACBL to solicit assessment or anecdote from older stars--Kaplan more than most, I suppose, for he was a leading journalist too. So there may be no extant more complete version of what he said. I consider it barely possible that the ACBL Bulletin reported at greater length, presumably during 1995. But it's quite possible that some of the HOF citation's five quotations of Kaplan date from The Bridge World 1969 (her death) or 1990s (run-up to establishment of the HOF or announcement of the first selections). Finally, the HOF citation also calls EK "former editor and publisher of The Bridge World" which shows it to be revised at least slightly after 1995, although the 2011 versions says "* Player biographies are up to date as of the year of induction."[4] So the online citation may in other respects differ from a 1995 original, as by incorporating something Kaplan wrote anew or clarified after the ceremonies. --P64 (talk) 20:19, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

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