IFGA People

By Charles Pratt

At the Michigan Midyear meeting and show I believe we all saw IFGA at a turning point. Alan Opdyke and Paul Gorski, working with many other IFGA members are ready for change, and are beginning it. They have recruited me to work with the website, and to publish an electronic bulletin. At the membership meeting I saw many of the delegates ready to yank our sleepy old but much loved association into the future, both technologically and organizationally, as fast as possible.

Assisting and advising Alan and Paul are a small group of the people most active in IFGA, including Tom and Pat Allen, Stan and Ethel Shubel, Jim Alderson, Steve Kaufman, Joe Grimes, Rick Grigsby, and Mike Khalid. If fact every IFGA officer I talked with seemed to feel we have to make major changes and are 100 per cent supportive.

One of the major benefits of this eBulletin is the chance to publish full color pictures of guppies. But it also gives us an opportunity to show you the people who make up IFGA. Since this was the Midyear IFGA meeting, there was an association business session as part of it. This means many of the most prominent people in our hobby were there. Here is your chance to see some of these people:

Stan Shubel has raised some of the best guppies in the world for many years. He was photographed here preparing his entries for the Michigan show. By my count he won 23 awards in that show, including 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd in Best of Show Tank and 1^st, 2^nd, and 4^th in Best of Show Delta.	Stan is IFGA Judge number one. That was a record, and he must have set another record in this show!
Alan and Lynn Opdyke were also photographed preparing their entries for the show. They took prizes with their fine full bodied red deltas. With Alan very busy as IFGA President, it is really great (and somewhat amazing) that he can also continue to show winning fish at the same time.	I suspect Lynn is his secret weapon as she is very involved with the fish and IFGA.
Jim Alderson is shown as he prepared PowerPoint slides for his part of the Judging Seminar. Dr. Alderson serves on the IFGA Judging Board and is a veterinarian presently serving as Dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine at CalPoly-Pomona. Alderson is well known for his red deltas, but in addition has won many awards for guppies in other classes.
Here is one of Jim Alderson’s slides. It sets forth the ideal proportions for Dorsals in the Male Delta, Veil, and Swordtail guppy with examples in inches of those ideal proportions. Want to know more about judging guppies? You can order the IFGA Judging Handbook here
Tom Allen, former IFGA President on the left with Mike Khalid, who has been Editor of the IFGA Bulletin for many years. Tom and his wife Pat won 1^st and 2^nd in Bronze Delta, and 1^st , 3^rd and 4^th in Bronze Tank in Michigan. Mike is well known for his Yellow Guppies and won prizes in both the Yellow Delta and Yellow Tank categories.	The writer would like to extend his personal appreciation to both Tom and Mike. Both of them have dedicated enormous amounts of time and effort to IFGA over many years.