Colorado Springs Bridge Center, battered by pandemic loss, looks to rebuild ranks

Mar. 12—The words and the names had been tumbling around Howard Donaldson's mind for days.

The newly elected president of the Colorado Springs Bridge Center wasn't sure exactly how he'd string together all his thoughts, but he knew he'd figure it out before the time came for him to take the mic and deliver a brief memorial address ahead of Thursday's game at the clubhouse on North 17th Street.

This is where COVID-19 is thought to have entered Colorado in a "superspreader" event almost three years ago, stealing into a weekend tournament where about 100 people — most of them retirees from Colorado Springs in their 70s and 80s, some in fragile health — had gathered to eat potluck and play a game where they spend hours sitting a few feet from one another, four-to-a-table, swapping stories about grandkids and travels and passing cards back and forth and around the room.

"Even before the pandemic, our population was a vulnerable population," Donaldson said. "In retrospect, you ask if we had known and closed the center, would that have saved lives? But we didn't know what we didn't know. At that time, nobody did."

The state's first pandemic death, on March 13, 2020, was an 83-year-old club member who played in that tournament, Feb. 29 and March 1, and a number of games the following week before she started feeling sick.

How could Donaldson mark the anniversary of the worst episode in the club's 45-year history, of a virus that caused the deaths of at least 10 club members and sent dozens more to the hospital, and still end on a hopeful note?

Treading that balance is part of the bridge center's story now, as it is for everyone who survived.

"I only had one person who told me ... that we should put this behind us and move forward. I agree with that. Let's put it behind us and move forward, but let's not forget what happened, or forget our responsibilities," said Donaldson, 77.

"I think this is something we don't ever want to lose sight of. I'm a firm believer that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.

"And, as you know, COVID isn't over yet."

As of early March 2023, the U.S. was nearing 1.1 million deaths from COVID-19, with almost 14,000 of those deaths occurring in Colorado. While infection and mortality rates are far below what they were when things were at their worst, during the early months of the pandemic and the later surge of the omicron variant, people are still contracting the virus, and each day about 300 Americans still die from it.

The number of victims age 65 and over more than doubled between April and July 2022. Deaths among that demographic have dropped slightly since, but remain the highest of all populations who contract the virus.

The bridge club's population is older. Beloved members have passed away for reasons other than COVID, and "we've had to deal with that, which is never easy," said David Loring.

COVID, however, represented a different kind of loss and lasting trauma.

"Forty people went to the hospital, 20 went to ICU. And six died. Those are hard numbers," Loring said, of the aftermath of the initial outbreak in 2020.

The virus would contribute to the deaths of at least four more club members over the following three years.

Colorado Springs Unit 360 of the American Contract Bridge League is one of the largest in the state, with a pre-pandemic roster of around 400 members who met at a big blue clubhouse tucked behind a shopping plaza on the city's west side.

Unlike most clubs, the members of Unit 360 own the building, a fact that turned out to be a game-changer during the club's extended shutdown, from March 2020 to July 2021, said 68-year-old club member Jeffrey Rapp, who also runs weekly games at the center.

"I think it's one of only three units in the country where members own the building," said Rapp, who said that translates to lower overhead and lower table fees for members, $5 or $6, versus at least twice that much elsewhere. "And there have been quite a few bridge clubs that have gone out of business in the last three years because they were not able to continue their funding and had to surrender their lease. That wasn't an issue for us."

That doesn't mean members weren't worried about its future.

At one point during the closure, Rapp said, "it was not clear ... if there would ever be enough interest in reopening the club for the members' fears of returning to play face-to-face and spreading the disease again."

Those extreme fears turned out to be unfounded, but there's no denying membership is down, he said. Attendance at weekly games is a fraction of what it was before the pandemic, when the space was so packed that recruitment was never a priority.

"We are making ends meet — with everything now being more expensive — but it's tough. We had to raise the table fees by a little bit," Rapp said.

The good news, Donaldson said, is that things — health, and attitudes — seem to have turned a corner.

"There are a lot of people who can attest to having experienced some significant losses and they soldiered through, so to speak. They persevered and became resilient to continue with the game they love," said Donaldson. "And they came back here to do it."

Tom Goings is one of those people. He said he worried he might never be able to play at his local clubhouse again, initially because doctors told his daughters he probably wouldn't survive COVID.

The 80-year-old spent more than two weeks on a ventilator after being diagnosed in the weeks after he played at the clubhouse in the ill-fated tournament in late February, 2020. His family was told he had only a 10% chance of recovery.

"Almost all my organs shut down. I don't remember a thing about that until they took me off of the ventilator," said Goings, who was in the hospital for two months.

Despite lingering kidney problems that may or may not be due to the virus, Goings said he's feeling good. Especially now that he's able to enjoy face-to-face bridge again, at the center where he both plays and directs multiple weekly games.

"Bridge is such an amazing game," Goings said. "I couldn't wait to get back out and play again."

When the center reopened in July 2021, it did so with a strict set of rules.

For starters, there are no longer pot-luck-style community feeds. The big picnic table just inside the front doors is now filled with bowls of individually wrapped snacks.

Everyone entering the building is required to show proof they've been vaccinated.

Donaldson said he's reached out personally to "maybe 15" people who chose not to return to the center, to ask what it would take to get them back.

"You know what the answer is? Get rid of the vaccine requirement," he said. "That's something the board may eventually discuss, but I don't think that's something we're ready to do and I don't think it's something we should do ... especially given the history."

Unit 360 is now turning to its next existential crisis, at a time when bridge as a pastime, in person and virtually, appears to be losing its steam.

During the shutdown, many members took up online bridge — one reason some members may be less driven to return to in-person play, said David Loring, Unit 360's hospitality director.

"Probably 95% of people who play bridge online never played until COVID happened," Loring said. "When COVID started (online bridge) just went through the roof. But even those numbers are down."

Other possible reasons for low attendance are more temporary in nature, said club member and bridge teacher Ann Parker.

"All these people I know had big plans for travel before COVID that all had to be canceled. Now they're going. So that might be another reason our numbers are down," said Parker, 71. "You get to a point where you're retired and there's only a window of a few years when you're healthy enough to travel and enjoy life to the fullest, and a lot of the people at our bridge club are in that age bracket now ... so they're traveling and enjoying life and doing things they haven't been able to enjoy for the last three years."

Parker said she suspects some members who've chosen not to return simply lost the skill, and craving, for socialization.

"There are some people that still haven't come back, because they lost that habit of being with people and enjoying being with people," she said. "Before we had a lot of new games a week. Now I think we're down to maybe five, six, seven games a week, and they're not nearly as well attended as before. I don't know if it's because people are still afraid, or if they've just lost that habit."

She and fellow club member John Dukellis are doing what they can to bring those numbers back up, teaching beginner classes at the club and on-site at a local senior center.

Parker's got a beginning bridge class starting Monday at the clubhouse, with about a dozen students signed up so far. One of those wannabe bridge players is retiring a week after Parker's class ends at the end of May.

"He wants to have something to do at that point, so he can jump right into playing bridge after retiring," Parker said.

A grant-funded beginning bridge class is due to start up at Fort Carson in May.

"We're doing many different things to try to bolster our community and get people to enjoy this great game," said Parker, about a game fans say keeps their brains, and spirits, thriving. "And hopefully get them out to enjoy this great game here at our center, with our great community."

About three dozen members of that community turned out to play in the Thursday afternoon game where Howard Donaldson had planned to deliver his "brief but dignified" address.

In the end, that duty passed to Rapp, the game's director.

Donaldson and his wife recently learned they'd contracted COVID-19 somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere, during a cruise to Antarctica. He'd been on the mend, but then his cough and congestion flared up again.

"Out of an abundance of caution, I'm making the difficult decision to stay home," he said, Wednesday evening. "I think that's the only responsible thing to do."