Peter Alexander Pender
August 10, 1936-November 18, 1990
Photo courtesy American Contract Bridge League Archives
Pennsylvania's Peter Pender got his start in figure skating at the Philadelphia Skating Club and Humane Society. His first success came at the age of thirteen, when he won the juvenile boys event at the Eastern Championships in Boston. Two years later, Peter won the silver medal in the junior men's event at Easterns and made his debut at the U.S. Championships, placing seventh in the novice men's event. In 1954, he finished fourth at the Easterns in the junior men's event and at the U.S. Championships finished seventh in junior pairs with Susan Sterne and second in the novice men's event under Tim Brown. In 1953, Peter won the senior men's and pairs events at the Middle Atlantic Championships in New York, finished second in the senior men's event at the Eastern Championships and passed his seventh and eighth figure tests. In 1954, he medalled in both senior men's and pairs at the Easterns and finished seventh in the junior men's event at the U.S. Championships. Peter turned professional in 1957 and began teaching skating while studying law at Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges. In the late fifties and sixties, he taught skating at Gordon McKellen's studio school in Reading Pennsylvania and in Vancouver, British Columbia. At summer schools in Lake Placid and Esqimault, British Columbia, he taught alongside legendary coaches like Gustave Lussi, Jean Westwood and Osborne Colson. Though he was a very accomplished skater and coach, Peter's achievements in the skating world were really very secondary to his successes in another field: competitive bridge. He amassed no less than thirteen wins at North American Bridge Championships from 1958 to 1987 and was one of one hundred World-Class Masters in the game. He won the Grand National Teams competition for the Albert Morehead Trophy four times, the North American Vanderbilt Knockout Teams event twice and was a recipient of the Reisinger Trophy and The Romes Award for the Best Bid Hand Of The Year. Internationally, he won the Bermuda Bowl and the Pan-American Invitational. In 1977, Peter bought Murphy's Ranch Resort in the Northern Californian town of Guerneville and transformed it into Fife's - the first LGBTQ+ resort in the Russian River area. He passed away on November 18, 1990 at the age of fifty-four. In his will, he left $2.26 million dollars to the American Foundation for AIDS Research. It was the largest donation to the organization by a single donor at that time. He also left bequests to Continuum, an adult day health facility for people living with AIDS in San Francisco and the Triangle Institute, a LGBTQ+ health and activism organization.
Jeremy Flint and Peter Pender. Photo courtesy American Contract Bridge League Archives.
Peter's obituary from "The New York Times": Peter A. Pender, one of the world's leading bridge players, died Sunday night in San Francisco. He was 54 years old. He died of complications from AIDS, his lawyer, Roger Sleight, said. Mr. Pender and his bridge partner, Hugh Ross of Oakland, Calif., were important members of a California foursome that was highly successful in the past decade. The team won a string of national titles and one world championship, the Bermuda Bowl, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1985. There they barely defeated Brazil in the semifinal but easily defeated Austria in the final. A year ago the foursome formed the nucleus of a United States team that finished second to Brazil in the Bermuda Bowl in Perth, Australia. Mr. Pender won many national titles and the McKenney Trophy in 1966, awarded for the best overall performance in a calendar year. He was also coach of several national teams, a commentator at world championships and a member of appeals committees. Mr. Pender, a native of Philadelphia, attended Harvard University and was a successful competitive skater. For many years he owned and managed a resort in Forestville, Calif. He had no immediate survivors."
