I started playing bridge in college over 50 years ago, played online on and off. When I retired I decided to try my local bridge club at the JCC in Wilkes Barre just to have some fun. In the past fifteen months I have made many new friends and learned a lot about bridge but I have a long way to go. I would like to thank George Marcy, Beth Rosenthal and George Mansour for their guidance and help in learning the game. I look forward to years of fun and competition.

My parents played bridge, but I played my first hand in the Fall of 1969, when I was a freshman at Florida State University. The game fascinated me to the extent that two semesters later, the University sent me packing, as I had not been attending classes and had failed them all. I was an A student in high school, and this understandably baffled my parents. I was just too young, I guess, and it was the first time away from home.

A year later I joined the U.S. Air Force, where I served for the next 10 years. I started playing more regularly during that time and became an ACBL member in the mid 70s. Still, in retrospect I played very badly, as I did not really take the game seriously. By the 1980s I had returned to university and had stopped playing altogether. I did not pick it up again until I was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in the mid 90s. Three of my friends and I used to go to a bar where we played rubber bridge while we ate peanuts and threw the shells on the floor like all the other patrons. As before, I played indifferently and without much skill or passion, and afterwards I again stopped playing for another long stretch.

Fast forward to the Fall of 2017, when on a whim I played my first time at Valley Forge Bridge Center. VFBC is a fairly tough room most days, and it did not take me long to discover just how badly I still played. I am a lifelong scientist and academic and, as so often happens when I become interested in a new activity, my OCD kicked in full steam ahead. Since then I have taken a deep, scholarly dive into the game. I spend at least an hour every single day, often more, studying the game. I have accumulated about 150 books that I read and reread endlessly, working out many of the examples and quizzes presented.

Bridge has opened up a completely new chapter in my life. I just turned 68 and am approaching retirement in a couple of years. My personal life has been tumultuous at best, and this year I achieved bachelor status for the third time. I am not too proud of that. I wouldn’t say I have been unlucky in love, just not good at it. Only last year I at times reflected on what my future might bring, and whether I was destined to live life out more or less alone. I have those concerns no longer. I have met the most interesting, kind, and generous people at the tables. I have been blessed with new and deepening friendships, and I play with a variety of wonderful partners with a broad range of experience. Sometimes I am the mentee, sometimes the mentor. Give a little, get a little. Bridge has also given me a renewed commitment to what to me is most important in life, that we treat all others with care, kindness, and a deep reverence for their inviolable human dignity.

Bridge is the most sophisticated, multilayered, and difficult game I have ever encountered, and while I am continually reminded that after all, It’s only a game, it is so much more than that. This journey can be intimidating, but among the mundane and sometimes even discouraging results, from time to time there is a gleaming success that is inexpressibly rewarding and encouraging. Not the least of these occur when partner makes an exceptional play. I expect to be thoroughly challenged, entertained, and engrossed for as long as cognition remains intact. But as I have mentioned above, it’s the relationships I have been so grateful to have found that are the most rewarding.

My parents taught me how to play when I was in my early 30s, but I didn’t try duplicate until a few years later. While many of the people in the club were lovely and welcoming, unfortunately there were enough players who made the experience unpleasant my wife and I stopped playing duplicate for about 20 years.

I went back to duplicate about 7 years ago when my wife got interested and opened her own club, called Ami Bridge in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, that focused on creating an atmosphere where players at all levels would feel comfortable and welcome. I really started enjoying the game and appreciating the competitive and social aspects. Even though I’m still working full time, I played consistently and enjoyed using tournaments as mini-vacations – and now 7 years later I’ve qualified as a LifeMaster.