May 2018 - 26

Mother Lode
Bridge moms do it with heart

BY SUE MUNDAY

Move over, stage moms; step
aside, soccer moms. This month, we
celebrate bridge moms.
Many, many people count bridge as
among the richest inheritances they
received from their mothers. Some
kids picked up the game when Mom
needed a dummy, others when their
mother needed a fourth, and still others when Mom needed a partner; some
players were drawn to the game because Mom made it so appealing, while
others, it turns out, started playing in
direct defiance of their mother's edicts.
Meet Gail Greenberg and Laurie
Kranyak, great bridge players as well as
winning moms.

If you ban it, they will come

If bridge greatness could be genetically engineered, world champions Jill
Levin and Brad Moss got a head start.
Their mother is ACBL Bridge Hall
of Famer Gail Greenberg, a multiple
world-gold medalist and North American champion 17 times over.
Although the family played many
games, Gail adamantly did not want
her children to learn bridge growing
up.
"I think that young people's priorities
should be on their studies, their friends
and sports," Gail says. "I've seen many
brilliant people get off track because of
bridge."
Perhaps it was the forbidden nature
of the game that made it attractive to
young, headstrong Jill.
Jill says her first lessons were
through osmosis. "Mom taught out
of our house. We were around bridge

26 Bridge Bulletin May 2018

players all the time. Also, we played
other card games - I learned to count
cards playing hearts."
Gail remembers: "When Jill was 9
or 10 years old, she came home from
school one day and, with her hands on
her hips, stomped her foot and said,
'Aha! We're having an afterschool
bridge activity, and you can't stop me
from playing.'"
In high school, Jill wanted to go on
expensive ski trips. As chance would
have it, the chaperones for the trips
needed a fourth for bridge. Though she
still had no formal teaching, she felt

"We're having an
afterschool bridge
activity, and you
can't stop me
from playing."
- Jill
she had picked up enough to finagle a
deal that allowed her to play bridge and
ski free.
"I came home from one trip," Jill
recalls, "and gave a hand to my mother.
'My partner opened 4♦. Should I have
bid 5♦ or 6♦?' 'Neither,' my mother
said. '4♦ is a weak bid.'
"'Well, that is not how we play it,' I
retorted."
Jill says it was at that point her
mother relented and agreed to teach
her. "She couldn't have her progeny out
there playing strong four-bids."
Jill's first memorable tournament
experience playing with her mother
was at the Southeastern Regional.

"I had taught 7-year-old Brad how to
count points, and if they added up to
12, to open one of his longest suit. At
some point during the tournament, I
opened a little light. Brad came up to
the table, looked at my hand and loudly
announced, 'You told me I needed 12
points to open.' Our opponents took
this unauthorized information well."
At the 1995 Summer NABC, Jill and
her mother paired up to play in the
Wagar Women's Knockout; their team
won the event. They went on to win
the women's team trials the following
spring. The death of one of the team
members meant a reconfigured
structure going into the World
Olympiad in 1996: Jill and Gail were
teammates, but not partners, when
they took the World Women's Team
winner's podium in Rhodes, Greece.
"My mother also captained our
Venice Cup-winning team in Shanghai
in 2007," Jill adds.
Jill says her children, Shane
Blanchard, Justin Blanchard and
Andrew Levin, "weren't much
interested in bridge when they were
growing up." But she beams with
motherly pride as she discusses
Shane's accomplishments, including
an NABC title in the North American
Pairs, Flight A, in 2011.

By example

Pennyann, two years younger than
Jill, respected her mother's bridge ban.
Gail still opposed her children learning bridge, when along came Brad,
eight years after Penny. "So naturally
that's what I wanted to do," Brad says.
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of May 2018
