Newspaper Page Text
COMMENTARY
‘Bridging the gap’ with a
card game favorite
When he was young, Jack Feagin
had no use for bridge. It was the card
game his parents played. Back then, in
the 1960s, he thought the game “ridic
ulous.”
But after he went off to college,
things changed. One night, when he
thinks he probably should have been
studying for exams, somebody got up a
bridge game in his dorm and convinced
Feagin to play a few hands. Ide suddenly
realized he needed to know how to play
this game.
“It became an obsession,” the Sandy
Springs lawyer said. “You can get addict
ed to bridge. Each hand is different. It’s
so challenging. Then there’s the compe
tition of it. You meet lots of interesting
people...”
He wasn’t the only one who got
hooked on bridge. When Patty Tucker
was growing up a few years later, she had
quite a different feeling about the card
game she watched her parents play with
their friends. She thought it looked cool.
“I’d hear them talking about hands at
breakfast the next morning... how they
should have played differently, how the
opening lead changed the hand,” she
said. “It just seemed so complex, with so
many parts to it, so many intricacies.”
She took to the game early, when
she was just 11. “I’ve played bridge ever
since. I love it,” said Tucker, who now
lives in Dunwoody. “Everyone should
play bridge.”
During the first 11 days of this
month, there were parts of metro At
lanta where it may have seemed every
one does play bridge, or at least wants
to. Thousands of players from around
the world planned to gather at a down
town hotel during the period from Aug.
1 through 11 for the North American
Bridge Championship, one of the top
competitions in the bridge world.
Feagin and Tucker, now rated as life
masters of the complicated card game,
were in the thick of things during plan
ning for the international gathering.
Feagin chaired the local host commit
tee for the event, the fourth time he has
headed the committee for the nation
al competition, which comes to Atlanta
about once a
decade. Tuck
er ran a por
tion of the
tournament
for play-
ers aged 19
and young
er, the Youth
North Amer
ican Bridge
Champi
onship. She
also taught
a course in
how to learn
bridge in a day.
Both, of course, planned to play in
the tournament. “I like the game too
much [not to play],” Feagin said recent
ly during a chat over coffee at a Sandy
Springs restaurant.
Tucker, too. Now she teaches others
the card game she learned to love as a
child. She wants to see bridge survive
the sea chang
es in how peo
ple spend their
leisure time.
“Think about
how our cul
ture has changed
in the last 30
years,” she said.
“It used to be,
when bridge
was in its hey
day, you didn’t
have hundreds
of stations on
TV There was, I
think, a lot more
social interaction
by having people
over to your house.”
After all, when visitors came, hosts
had to find some way to entertain them.
Bridge offered a natural answer. “There’s
only so much time you can spend talk
ing,” Tucker said. “It’s good to have a
buffer, like a bridge game.”
Decades after Feagin and Tuck
er watched their parents socialize over
bridge tables, the game stilll plays a big
part in their lives. They play often. Both
married people they met playing bridge.
“Seeing people playing bridge tells
you a lot about them. It’s the same as
tennis. [It shows] the way they handle
themselves ...,” Tucker said. “Bridge is
going to make you look stupid. If you’re
a smart person, you don’t want to be
laughed at. The way you handle that says
a lot about you.”
In fact, she says she and her husband
worried that getting married might
break up a perfectly good bridge part
nership. “I think that’s why we waited so
long to get married,” she said one recent
morning at a Dunwoody coffee shop.
“We had a good bridge partnership.”
Still do. Like Jack Feagin and his
wife, they’re still partners playing bridge.
JOE EARLE
Left, Jack Feagin chairs the host committee for the North
American Bridge Championship in Atlanta this month.
Bridge teacher Patty Tucker, right, also will participate.
AROUND
TOWN
JOE EARLE
—
Unique fabrics and personal service
886 Huff Road | Atlanta, GA 30318
www.arteefabricsandhome.com
404-554-1215
Mon.-Sat. 10am - 5pm
*restrictions apply
Your chores
will disappear.
More fun will appear.
Dance the day away or scrub the day away? Hmmmm.
When you live at The Renaissance on Peachtree Retirement
Community you can spend your time however you wish.
Call now to schedule your complimentary lunch and tour.
And get ready to look at your day in a whole new way.
RJ N A
™ ON P
ISSANCE
EACHTREE
3755 Peachtree Road NE | Atlanta
404.237.2323 | renaissanceonpeachtree.com
RETIRE IN STYLE. YOUR STYLE.
Ct A Leisure Care Retirement Community •£=}■
www.ReporterNewspapers.netl AUG.9—AUG.22,2013 | 7
