MY MEMORIES

Charles Glenn Petersen

1969 - College Years III

Bridge

One of the guys that worked in the group was a bridge player and an amateur photographer. His wife became blind from an eye disease and when he found out I had a sailboat he asked if I would take his wife for a sail. She wanted the sensation of gliding through the water. I had met her and she was a remarkable woman so I agreed. We took the sailboat up to a small lake north of Ames and she and I went for a sail. He took a picture of the two of us while we were sailing. He developed the film so that there were no gray, only black and white. It looks like a pen and ink drawing. I have had it on my office wall ever since.

Another story about this woman. We had a small party at our house, maybe 8 people. This guy and his blind wife came a little early and once in the house she gave me her walking stick to store in the closet during the party. Since she had been a sighted person most of her life she didn’t wear dark glasses and her eyes were always open and appeared to be focused on whomever was talking. Later in the evening we moved from the living room to the dining room for coffee and dessert. When it was time to leave I got her walking stick out of the closet and gave it to her. When she unfolded it, and tapped her way out of the house, everyone in the room was stunned. She had spent an entire evening with a group of people and no one realized she was blind. I call that remarkable.

Twice this same guy took me to play duplicate bridge with a club in the Ames area. It was a complete disaster for me. I was so used to playing social bridge that the strict rules and different strategy of bidding was foreign to me. At one of the tables I bid and one of the opposing players raised his hand and called out loudly, “Director”. I was being called on the carpet for doing something not within the proper guidelines of duplicate bridge. To this day I have never played duplicate bridge again.