Editorial

Compliment any businessman on the success of his company and he’s quite likely to say the folks working for him are chiefly responsible for the quality of the product or service he provides. Often, there’s a lot of truth there. But that hardly means the person at the top has been sitting on his or her hands all the years the company doors have been open. Such is the case with Alpha-Omega, the subject of our special section in this edition. For as most people in coin-op know, its leader, Frank Seninsky, has been a guiding force not only in that organization, but in the trade itself.

Frank has been deeply involved in the nuts and bolts of amusement machine operations and sales most of his working life. But where Frank has also excelled has been in the politics of the trade along with educational efforts such as the Foundations University, all of which have earned him the title “Sage of East Brunswick” from yours truly. (He’s also been writing helpful articles on everything from route operations to arcade and FEC setup and management for this and other trade journals for years. . . and his blog is also well-respected.)

Then comes his association work at AMOA and the old IALEI arcade group (he was once president of both). Some folks have wondered what he does in his free time. Why do I have the idea he doesn’t have any? Maybe because the games business has been his hobby, if not his passion. Frank certainly has that about all things coin-op. Everybody wants to make a buck, but how many are actually passionate about the way to do that? We all know about the guy who likes to say he never worked a day in his life because he loved what he did for a living. Sounds like Frank.

I once made up a fable about the word “passion” which went like this: “Twenty students graduated from an east coast school of engineering. Nineteen of them went to work for various cities and towns designing sewers and electrical grids, laying out roads, repairing bridges. The other one built the Golden Gate Bridge. Why? Because he wanted to. Passion!” Are there others in this business blessed with such a drive? Michael Getlan, Gary Stern and Eugene Jarvis come to mind, but I’d better stop there before I forget to mention a few dozen others I’ve met and admired.

Congratulations to everyone at Alpha-Omega on their 50th year in the coinbiz. And special congrats to the folks like Joe, Jerry and the man himself. Like that bridge in San Francisco, you’ve shown a lot of people how to do things the right way.

– Eddie Adlum