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Overlooked an article in the March 23 issue of the ACBL about a partnership in North Carolina and spread to 38 million AARP subscribers.

The story starts out stating that one of the core beliefs of the AARP organization is that “improving the quality of life as we age, and the game of Bridge offers mental  stimulation and social interaction.” While the brainchild of this idea was formed in the North Carolina AARP offices by Lisa Riegel, a lobbyist for AARP, she believes an opportunity is at hand to learn something new, stimulate the brain and have fun at the same time, a win, win, situation. Amazingly, a sound and innovative reasoning for teaching young people, which we might add is the greatest idea since white bread.

So Lisa put together the team of Larry Cohen and Michael Berkowitz, who teach the game of bridge published in the AARP magazine.  For anyone interested in learning more, contact larryco.com.  The course is open to the general public.

Cohen suggests that “there’s no reason we can’t be introducing bridge to even thousands of new players if we get this right.”

Duplicate bridge is played in Austin at the Mower County Senior Center on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Both sessions start at 11:30 a.m. Players come from Mason City, Iowa, Rose Creek, Albert Lea and Austin.

Tuesday became a red letter day as per our scorekeepers, they have never announced a three way tie for first place.

They were:

• First place (tie with scores of 41) Lorraine Quinlivan and Barb Rofshus (Albert Lea), John Leisen and Rick Stroup (Rose Creek) and Vandy Newman and Ron Peters (Austin).

• Fourth place: Barb and Orrin Roisen

Wednesday winners were:

• First place, Gail Schmidt and Dave Ring

• Second place, Tom Flaherty and Stan Schultz

• Third place, Barb and Orrin Roisen

• Fourth place, Barb Rofshus and Paul Hanson