Ann Parker was already on the move, arms propelled by emotion and muscle memory, when she caught herself.
“This is OK, right? she said, a question to the universe and also to Tom Goings, who’d just arrived at the Colorado Springs Bridge Center on Tuesday, July 6, the center’s first day of in-person play since March 2020.
Going’s answer came in the form of an embrace, between two friends who survived what so many others had not.
“I’m glad to be able to do it,” said Goings. “I need it.”
The bridge center on North 17th Street is where Parker and Goings — and hundreds of Springs residents, most of them retirees — gathered for years to play the game they love with the friends they love.
It’s also where COVID-19 found a foothold and claimed its first victims in Colorado, after a weekend tournament attended by a member who unknowingly had the virus led to a super spreader event. Six members died, and dozens more were sickened and hospitalized.
“She had no idea she had it. She had no idea she was exposing all these people to it. All this happened before anybody knew anything that was going on,” said Parker, who was among the 40 people she knows who were diagnosed with COVID-19 after attending the 2020 tournament, which ran from Feb. 29 to March 1. “Nobody has any animosity toward her in any way. We all feel just terrible that she was taken. We just feel terrible that it happened at all.”
Tuesday’s reopening, after 481 days, was a bittersweet event for the more than 90 members who showed up — to play bridge, reunite with old friends, and remember those who had been lost.
“We’ve waited a long time and this is a festive occasion, but there’s also a lot of sadness,” said the center’s vice president Howard Donaldson, addressing the nearly- packed house before the start of play. “It is sobering to know that people who were our partners, people who were our friends … people who were spouses of our members, won’t ever form a partnership and play with us again.”
Colorado Springs Unit 360 of the American Contract Bridge League is one of the largest in the state, with a big blue clubhouse perched on a hill behind a shopping plaza at the tip of N. 17th St.
For members, including 74-year-old Bill Curtis, the sense of ownership is real, and it runs deep. Members pay dues, and also spend time cleaning and on upkeep.
“Back in 1977, people donated basically to build this building. A lot of bridge clubs will charge you 10 or 20 dollars to play. Here, it’s 5 or 6 dollars, because we own the building,” he said.
Like many of his fellow bridge players, Bill Curtis found his way to the game when he was in college, and got hooked.
One thing he loved about it was that when he was in the military, or later traveling the country for his job, he knew he could go to almost any city and find a bridge club. It was an instant community, and healthy competition that kept him on his toes, mentally.
“If you can play hearts, spades, pinochle, you can play bridge … but that doesn’t mean it’s easy,” he said. “There’s always something more to learn.”
Bridge is a complex game with complex rules that can vary from match to match.
In competition the first step is full disclosure, “so your opponents have a right to know what rules you’re playing,” said Springs’ bridge aficionado Sharon Kruse. “That way everybody has equal knowledge of what’s happening.”
Kruse and her husband, Dennis, had played social bridge on and off for years, but things got more serious after Sharon retired from teaching in 2005. She and a friend began playing duplicate, competitive bridge, and eventually Sharon lured Dennis into the fold.
“At one point, we were supposed to play in a team game. It was very snowy weather that day, our partners said, ‘We’re not coming,’” Kruse said. “We both looked at our husbands and said, ‘Will you play?’ My husband said, ‘I will if he will’.”
Sharon and Dennis Kruse had played at the center ever since, racking up the master points that separate the experts from everyone else.
The games were exciting and a “good way to keep the brain from getting lazy.”
They were also something the couple bonded over.
“We would talk going to bridge, we would talk going home from bridge,” Kruse said.
Days after a hand, when Sharon would have that “a-ha moment” about some misstep she’d made during play, Dennis was there to hear it and help her talk it through.
“When you’re playing with a spouse or somebody you live with, you have a greater opportunity to reaffirm the rules that you’re playing and how they work,” she said.
Sharon and Dennis had been following the news last February and knew that COVID-19 had made its way into Colorado. The threat, though, still seemed far enough away.
“We were hearing stuff that it was up in the mountains at the ski resorts, it was in Denver, but never did it ever cross our minds that it was already here in southern Colorado,” she said.
She didn’t participate in the tournament, Feb. 29 and March 1 — a competition among intermediate level players and newcomers — but she drove Dennis to the center both days because he was having trouble with his vision and his new contact lenses hadn’t yet arrived. That Sunday, Sharon spent some time waiting inside for him while the games wrapped up.
“I didn’t want to wait in the car because it was cold. I had snacks off the table, I talked to people, I gave people hugs,” she said.
Bridge has rules, coronavirus doesn’t.
The following Thursday, 68-year-old Dennis said that he wasn’t feeling well.
“He said, ‘I went for too long a walk today, and I’m tired,’” Kruse said.
That weekend, he was feeling too ill to attend his granddaughter’s or his son’s birthday parties. On Monday, Dennis was still coughing, and getting worse.
“We thought it was the flu, but Tuesday he went to the doctor and they said it wasn’t the flu. They gave him some medicine and sent him home,” said Kruse.
Wednesday, Dennis was admitted to the hospital.
“We never once thought COVID until we got to the hospital,” she said.
Dennis never got out. He died March 19, 2020, at a time when it was still possible for his loved ones to be by his side.
“I was blessed because I had family here in town. They had been in the hospital with me on the 19th when Dennis passed away,” Kruse said. “I had support during that quarantine immediately following my husband’s death, whereas a lot of people weren’t lucky enough to have that kind of support at that point in time.”
Of the more than 100 sympathy cards she received after Dennis’ death, “many, many, many” were from people at the bridge center.
“They were there for me, telling me how sorry they were and how Dennis had affected their lives. They talked about his smile,” she said. “They’re just an amazing group of people that had everyone’s best interests at heart all the way through.”
Like many bridge center members, Sharon Kruse turned to online, virtual games and competitions during the shutdown, to “help her get through the day.”
“It was emotional, but it was also a lifesaver to be able to continue to play bridge, and to be able to communicate with people I knew from the bridge club, and be able to have that normal outlet,” she said. “It got me away from sitting and feeling sorry for myself …
“In my heart, I know that it’s what my husband would have wanted me to do.”
She wasn’t sure how she would feel walking into the center for the first time since losing her husband and bridge partner.
At one point, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to do it.
“I was very nervous, because when they first shut the bridge center down and everyone was thinking things would be open again by summer … I had several conversations with my children, about how I didn’t want to walk in there by myself,” Sharon said. “I wanted them to come with me and walk in there.”
After more than a year, though, the moment was one she refused to miss.
It’s what Dennis would have wanted — for her, and for his beloved bridge center.
“I got tons and tons of calls, from out of town newspapers … and in my mind everybody wanted me to say something negative about the bridge center, they wanted me to place blame somewhere … but no one is to blame for what happened,” she said. “Everybody did what they love to do, the people that played in that tournament did it because they love bridge.”
That’s why they came out on reopening day last week, but it wasn’t the only reason.
“It’s so good to see you!”
“You’ve been in my prayers.”
“I’ve missed you so much. I’ve missed this so much.”
Play wasn’t set to begin until 12:30, but the players showed up early — with lunches, with their knitting — so there was plenty of time for reunions, and hugs, and also to sign the health and vaccination declaration form now required of everyone who enters the center.
By the time Howard Donaldson took the mic to welcome everyone back, the newly-paved parking lot outside was full and almost every table inside occupied.
“I want to thank everyone for signing forms we came up with, so you know that our purpose is to take care of one another … to be careful and keep our eyes on the path and learn from what happened in March of 2020,” Donaldson said. “We can’t forget the fact that we had fifteen more members at the start of the pandemic than we do now … and six of those members, we lost to COVID.”
He then read the names of the members ACBL had lost during 2020. The group observed a long moment of silence.
And the games began.
This content was originally published here.
