2020 – Page 3 – ACBL District 4

Peggy Sander – Junior Master

I first played bridge in 1997 after my father and father-in-law both passed away. We wanted an activity we could do with our mothers.So we took night-school classes of bridge. Those classes gave us the basic skills to be able to play social bridge.
However, I only played for a few years. Other than our mothers, not many people I knew actually played bridge.

Then in the summer of 2014 some friends mentioned they were taking bridge lessons from a great teacher in Ocean View. I’ll have to admit I was a bit skeptical about taking lessons. Why would I need lessons? How hard could bridge be? I knew the basics. What else would there be to learn?

However, I decided to try these lesson. What a huge awakening! First of all, Dini Romito is a fantastic bridge teacher! She knows her stuff and presents it in a fun and challenging way. I am still amazed at all she knows and all I have yet to learn. She is kind, encouraging and very supportive!

In October of 2014 she suggested I join the ACBL. I had started playing duplicate in Ocean View and Rehoboth Beach, DE. She didn’t want me to lose the points I had earned.
I’ve had some wonderful partners who have helped me along the way. I didn’t earn those points by myself. Everyone I’ve partnered with has been kind and willing to share their knowledge and love of the game.

I have become obsessed with learning more and more about bridge. My bridge library currently contains 14 books. I read a little from one book, then switch to another, gathering information from well known experts.

One of the things I love about bridge is that you continue to learn every time you play. I still make lots of mistakes. However, I am starting to see them as I make them. Now I need to work at seeing them before I make them!

I never dreamed I would have so much fun and enjoyment from playing bridge.

Jane Ball – Gold Life Master

It has been fun. Some of the highlights are:
• My favorite partner getting deported.
• Driving the wrong way on the turnpike – thank you, Daisy.
• Getting a police escort when we were lost and late for a sectional.
• Taking Hugh Kelsey to brunch at the country club.
• Caddying when Terence Reese was playing.
• Getting rear-ended in Seattle with the English ladies bridge team in the back of the car.
• It is exciting to watch someone as brilliant as Meyer start to swing when he decides we need some good results.
• Losing a partner when I told her the double was ‘do something intelligent’. She took it personally.
• Retiring from bridge at 18 when I realized none of the bridge players in the bar at The London School of Economics ever graduated.
• Playing with a pickup partner at Lancaster and getting him his first gold points when Bobby Levin opened 1NT with a singleton, giving us a top on the last board.

I am surprised by how much I am enjoying teaching bridge. We have fun and laugh a lot. Easier to teach adults bridge than to teach adolescent boys math on a Friday afternoon.

One of the memorable things was playing on bbo with Jerry Blumenthal when he was in Jefferson for several months. It was a lifeline to the world. As sick as he was he sometimes played 55 boards in a day. We ‘talked’ even when we didn’t play.

My next goal is playing in the platinum pairs.

Lyn Widmyer – Junior Master

Now that I am retired, I am spending a lot more time playing bridge. I learned the game decades ago because my mother believed knowing how to play bridge was as important to succeeding in college as good SAT scores. She adored the game.
I always helped Mom prepare when it was her turn to host the bridge ladies for an extravagant lunch and an afternoon of play. My job was to iron napkins and tablecloths, wash the good crystal and polish silver.

Based on my childhood experience, I came to associate bridge
with liquor, linen and lasagna. Add a few glasses of wine and/or sherry and it was amazing my mother’s bridge group was coherent enough to actually play bridge.
When my mother sent me to bridge lessons, she hoped it would help me find social success in college. I found other interests in college and put bridge on hold.
Fast forward to 1990 when I started playing bridge with a small group of ladies in Charles Town. Naomi Moses, my bridge span into the modern era of bidding, invited me to join her group for an afternoon of play. I welcomed the invitation and decided to skip breakfast to save room for a lavish lunch a la my mother. I arrived at Naomi’s home and viewed the kitchen table, adorned only by two decks of cards and a score pad. No buffet. No lasagna. No silver cutlery. The only food was a bowl of cantaloupe squares pierced with toothpicks.
I could barely hear the introductions of the other players over the rumblings of my empty stomach. These ladies were far more interested in teaching me “weak two bids”, “negative doubles” and “strong artificial 2 club opening” than feeding me. I loved it. Unfortunately, working full-time and raising a family cut into my bridge time.

Now, freed of work and young children, I am back at the bridge table. There is quite an active group of bridge players in the area, ranging from weekly bridge games among friends to more structured, duplicate games in Martinsburg, Charles Town and Shepherdstown.
I am one of the youngest players at my regular bridge game in Shepherdstown. No matter—these ladies are sharp! Recently, my 93-year old partner (who has been married longer than I have been alive) reminded me after we failed to make our bid that the Jacoby transfer convention is still on after an interference bid by the opponent.
I nodded to give the impression I knew what she was talking about.
In Charles Town, I have played with a hero of World War II, Fred Mayer. Or as he is referred to in Wikipedia, “Frederick Mayer (spy)”. During World War II Fred parachuted into Austria, then posed as a German Army officer to learn about troop movements near Innsbruck. He was captured and tortured by the Gestapo. Fred was freed in 1945 by American troops and later awarded the Legion of Merit and a Purple Heart by the United States Government. What an honor to sit at the bridge table with an American war hero.
My mother insisted bridge would help me socially in college. That never happened but her investment in lessons is paying dividends now that I am older and retired. Playing bridge has introduced me to a wonderful new group of friends and acquaintances.
Best of all, knowing an opening bid of 2 No Trump promises 20-21 points is considered far more important than knowing how to iron linen napkins or polish silver.

Lisa Godin – Junior Master

My bridge life began a few years back when a friend of mine asked if I wanted to learn how to play the game with her by taking lessons. We decided to take lessons at the local Women’s club and learned just enough to be dangerous. Luckily, a friend of ours, Sally Manning, was kind enough to put a game together once a week and we continued to learn this crazy game of Bridge and become even more dangerous..to ourselves, that is!

Eventually, schedules conflicted with fun time and Bridge went to the back burner, but I was addicted. I found the Bridge Doctor website and started playing online. While some folks had no patience for my inexperience, others noted my drive to excel and helped me learn along the way and I will be forever grateful to all of them. After jumping into the shark waters, getting chewed up, spit out, and used to mopped the floor, I finally started to really understand the game…a little! I bumped into Sally months later and she convinced me to play at the Williamsport Bridge Club on the day that the amateurs got together. I braved going to the club and continued to enjoy the game for yet another year while playing with a variety of folks and learning even more insights to the game of Bridge. However, my hunger to excel got the best of me again and I finally decided to take the plunge and go back into the shark waters. This time it was at our local Bridge club on the days that our better players got together. Again, the folks were extremely supportive and I eventually became a substitute for the better players. I am currently still a sub for the club and welcome every challenge that comes my way.

While I started later in life to learn the game of Bridge my goal I to rise to the top of the player board. My drive is fierce; the game so humbling; I may have to attend Bridge Anonymous for counseling.

Natalie Weinstein – Life Master

My husband died in 1995 very suddenly and right before my eyes. I was in shock and became very anxious which spiraled into a deep clinical depression. A friend of mine, who was also going through problems of her own, decided to get a few women together to socialize, be together, and maybe help each other with our grief. She knew enough bridge from playing in college and decided to start to teach the others in our little group. I don’t know how much I really learned that first year, but it helped to be with friends and have to direct my mind to focus on something else rather than my problems. After a while we all started taking bridge lessons from Jane Segal. When I moved to a new home a couple of years later I met other people who played bridge and eventually started playing duplicate. I have to say that Bridge helped me focus and was a wonderful distraction. I set a goal to become a Life Master and am so happy to have reached that goal.

Paul Ohlbaum – Silver Life Master

I am truly excited to attain the rank of Silver Life Master in bridge.

My entry into the world of duplicate bridge began some nineteen years ago upon my retirement from optometry. My wife and I would take long walks together and as we walked, she’d explain various conventions to me. And so began our lives as bridge partners and eventually certified bridge teachers both at home in Utica, NY and on ten bridge cruises.

While competitive running (I’ve run six marathons), and autocross racing continue to be two of my avocations, at the age of eighty-one, I know that bridge will keep me challenged long after I drop running and car racing!

Jim Allen – Life Master

I achieved Life Master mostly by playing in club games weekly
in Lansdale and Pottstown. For the last eight years I partnered with my mentor, Dick McDowell, just about every time. He taught me the importance of bidding consistently. Mitch Snyder convinced me to become a Director in Lansdale, and that experience, along with directing the game in Pottstown with Dick McDowell for 6 years, taught me the intricacies of the game. I met Irish Murphy at the Pottstown club and we started going to Regionals together last year. We always found our playing partners at the partnership desk and they were always great teammates. I earned the last of my gold points at the Regional in Cape Cod at the end of April.

4 THE LOVE OF BRIDGE

Yearly Archives: 2020