John Christman - Club Owner

I grew up in Clinton, Maryland, a little suburb of Washington, D.C.  I was a member of our high school bridge club, whose last meeting I attended sometime in 1967, when I graduated.  I started my college career at Georgia Tech in Atlanta.  My fraternity offered a major in party bridge.  I nearly flunked out of my academic pursuits, weighed down as I was by card playing- especially with my intensive minor in partying. 

In 1970, I moved back to Washington, married Nancy, and continued my studies (Physics, not bridge) at the University of Maryland.  I graduated in 1973, a time when many physicists were out of work.  I decided I needed a real profession, enrolled in the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery and moved to Baltimore for four long years.  No one played bridge there: chess was the game. 

By 1977, things had picked up for aerospace workers, so I worked for my old engineering friends and found a part-time position as a dentist.  I was much happier (and better) at engineering than dentistry.

Within a year, Martin Marrietta recruited me to work in Orlando.  Nancy and I moved here in 1978.  All this time we’d been playing party bridge- never seen a duplicate bridge game. 

Then, in 1980 I got a temporary assignment to Fort Huachuca, Arizona.  This little, one-road town didn’t have much, but it boasted a duplicate bridge club.  We joined and played every week.  We were probably just about to get some masterpoints when, after a year, the job ended, and we returned to Orlando.

I continued to work for Martin Marrietta for seven more years, near the end of which time Nancy and I got divorced.  She had been my only steady bridge partner.  I immersed myself working as an independent software engineer, buzzing through some ten years until I decided try playing at OMBC in March of 1997.

Phone Call:   Ring-ring-ring

Voice:   Hello, Bridge Center.
(I didn’t know Naomi Ellis then, but she had answered.)

Me:  Ahh.  Hi.  I’d like to play some bridge.  When do you have games?

Voice:  Well, how many masterpoints do you have?

Me:  (silence, considering a fib.   Long pause.)

Voice: It’s OK.  If you don’t have too many points, you could try playing in the Monday game.

Me:  Oh, gooood!  Yeah!  No problem!

I showed up the next Monday.  I’ve been playing every week since then.  It took me more than a year to get the 5 points I needed to graduate from the 0-5 game.