The Setting Trick

Episode 62: Patty Tucker, Youthful Enthusiast.

Patty Tucker might be responsible for creating more new bridge players than anyone on the planet. From developing teaching materials and running a non-profit to her new endeavor - getting bridge to be part of the curriculum in schools - Patty channels her love of the game into energy to keep it alive.

How bridge changed Patty’s life at age 11, finding her niche.

The origin of Atlanta Junior Bridge, how the camps became the Youth NABC.

The challenges of school systems and connecting with teachers.

A teacher in Lebanon KY inspired Patty’s new endeavor, Jump Start Bridge, resulting in 40 kids learning bridge via an afterschool program.

Patty’s amazement at the lack of knowledge of what bridge is; finding a way to spread the word via conferences, including the International Society for Technology and Education, which included tech giants like Microsoft and Google, reaching over 12,000 attendees and raising visibility.

Patty keeps learning: What to do differently for future conferences.

On feeling overwhelmed or “out of her element” with the enormity of the tasks of marketing her plan.

Don’t tell Patty, “It can’t be done.”

How bridge can connect people, creating lifelong friendships, even if you only see one another three times a year at NABCs. Kids deserve that too.

Patty’s three wishes (OK, only two).

How Patty learned to play bridge, and a story of a defining moment in her bridge life.

Why John will never be Goodwill Member of the Year.

Patty’s legacy.

How not everyone is cut out to be a bridge teacher.

Patty’s third wish.

Patty’s pre-game ritual and advice.

Links:

Atlanta Junior Bridge

https://atlantajuniorbridge.org/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFmp595UdNs

Jump Start Bridge

https://atlantajuniorbridge.org/jumpstart/

The Power of Bridge in Schools

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J8A-za2Wpc

Transcript:

John McAllister: Hi, my name's John McAllister and I am here with a good friend, Patty Tucker, who has one of the strongest resumes that I've ever seen in all the guests that I've had on this show. She is in the Hall of Fame, the American Contract Bridge League Hall of Fame. She's a Grand Life Master with, how many North American titles do you-

Patty Tucker: It's just one.

John McAllister: Just the one, sorry.

Patty Tucker: I'm working on the second one. I'm working on the second one.

John McAllister: And ACBL Honorary Member of the Year. Goodwill member of the year. Started Atlanta Junior Bridge. Anyway, this... Patty, it's a thrill to have you on here.

Patty Tucker: Well, thanks for having me, John.

John McAllister: We tried to do this once before and we had some technical difficulties, so we're back at it. It's good to see you. You're wearing a shirt for those, watching the video that says Jumpstart Bridge, which is a new initiative that you've started recently. What are you doing with Jumpstart Bridge?

Patty Tucker: Well, jumpstart Bridge is an initiative of Atlanta Junior Bridge, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. You kind of mentioned that. Atlanta Junior Bridge started in 2006, and we were kind of chartered to teach bridge to kids in Atlanta at no charge. We didn't want them to have to pay. Everyone knows, I've probably told everyone, I learned when I was 11 and bridge kind of changed my life. It was my niche. I had friends and I did things. I was in drama. I did track. I mean, I did things in school, but I was always felt a little out of step maybe.

And bridge was it for me, bridge was the thing that was the thing I could do well, the thing I enjoyed, and I wanted other kids to be able to do that and especially in today's climate or whatever, even in 2006, the emphasis, I think in a lot of the schools is on sports and band and that type of thing. They didn't even have in 2006, for instance, robotics or LEGO camps or any of that. So, we were kind of on the cutting edge of offering something a little bit different and we wanted anybody to be able to do it.

Some of the schools that we went into, into Atlanta, and some of the places were places that people would say, "Well, everybody can afford $20," but honestly, there's a lot of places that really can't. $20 is a luxury. It's not just something that you go throw on the table. So, we wanted to make sure that that was never going to be a problem, that there was never going to be a question of someone not being able to do bridge because they couldn't pay for it.

And then the first summer we got like 10 summer camps. We taught 150 kids bridge, and then two years later we did the first Youth NABC. But what we could never do was break into the schools with schoolteachers. We had some afterschool classes and things like that. I even did one before school class, two of them. But what would happen is, is it wasn't consistent, for one thing. The kids at after school, sometimes they get picked up for doctor's appointments or things, the morning class, sometimes they'd have assemblies that the kids were required to do. And it just felt not cohesive enough. It felt like it was kind of hit or miss, whether all the kids, and as you know in the very first steps of bridge, you miss one or two classes in you're first getting that bulk of knowledge and your toast. Trying to come back and catch up is really hard.

What we tried to do was get schoolteachers involved. We were never very successful in that. So we kind of put it to the side and we did our own thing and we started teaching at Bridge Clubs and all of that kind of stuff. And that worked out well. We had the first Youth NABC, which ACBL now does every year. So that's been really successful. But then the pandemic hit, and to be quite frank, Atlanta Junior Bridge over the last probably six or seven years has gotten smaller and smaller because we don't have that core of bridge teachers that are willing to donate their time and go in and teach the kids. It's really a huge give on a bridge teacher's part to get really involved in a school and do it consistently year after year after year after year.

I mean, we had teachers that did it for five or 10 years. Some of them retired, they just can't do one more year. We lost a few to illness. Carolyn Eckert from Alpharetta was one of the teachers that was there from the very beginning and unfortunately passed away. And we had a couple of others that passed away and some just retired. So I kept going. And we still had a class on Saturday afternoons, and we still had sometimes one table, sometimes four tables. And that's a little bit of the problem too, is that the kids have other activities that they're doing, and for kids, the parents have to bring them to class. They can't just decide, I want to go play. So the pandemic hit. I started teaching online and I got to thinking about, well, what can we do because we're not going to have this core of bridge players that are going to be available year after year after year to teach.

And one of the other things was, now am I running on, I'm sorry, but you know how I get when I start talking, one of the things also was, is that the kids that we taught in the school system, we couldn't really connect with because we weren't allowed to send things home with them. That had to go through the principal, whether it went home or not. The teachers are the ones that would have to arrange field trips and things like that. So we had them in the class and we could talk to them in the class, and a few would come to our tournaments or things like that, but we'd never had that day that we saw them every single day or every single week. And school teachers have that. School teachers can send things home. School teachers can arrange afterschool activities or trips, field trips or things like that.

So I've thought from the very beginning that we needed to get school teachers involved, just how do we do it? So the pandemic hit, and a lady from Lebanon, Kentucky, called me and said that she had two little girls she was teaching bridge to, and her principal wanted her to add two more people and two boys.

John McAllister: Was she a teacher? This woman was a teacher?

Patty Tucker: She's a school teacher, but she played social bridge. There was not any... It was all social bridge in her town that she lived in. And she had just kind of learned from those other people in the social bridge club. So she says, "Is there anything that we can do, 'cause I don't feel..." She was thinking, if I'm going to have two more, maybe I should have a few more than that. But she didn't know really how to teach bridge. She had learned just from other people, and she was not confident that she had every piece of it in place.

So we talked to the ED Foundation, and what we came up with was Jump Start Bridge, which is that I went to Lebanon. I taught 14 school teachers the basics of bridge, using the material that I used with the kids the next two days. So two days of training teachers and then two days camp with the kids. And then the last day I stayed and did Learn Bridge In A Day for free to kind of raise money for the bridge club. And they have 40 kids in bridge club for the last two years. And she said that more want to join every day and they have to turn them away, she said, I don't have enough teachers.

John McAllister: Oh my goodness.

Patty Tucker: I don't have enough people. So they went from four to 40 and they've kept them this entire time and the kids are having a great time. So I thought, well, great.

John McAllister: What's the format? What's the format of the 40 kids? And it's part of their school day?

Patty Tucker: No, it's an afterschool program. But the original kids that were in the original camp, excuse me, the original class she taught actually come twice a week. They come in the morning one day, so they get a little bit more.

John McAllister: They're the advanced ones?

Patty Tucker: They're a little further along. And then the rest come on the afternoon. So I looked at that and I said, well, here's something that worked. So I tried to do that with bridge clubs. I tried to reach out to ACBL members and clubs and offered that Atlanta Junior Bridge would, I'm donating my time, but that Atlanta Junior Bridge would pay all the expenses for me to come. If you can find a school or have a connection with the teacher, I can come do the same thing.

One of the things that the teacher in Lebanon was able to do was tap into continuing education money in the school system. Apparently there's some continuing education money for school teachers, and her principal applied for the funds. It was kind of towards the end of the year. They had some funds still left. So the teachers actually got some funding for them to learn bridge.

So I had a lot of bridge clubs that were really interested. I tried this for a year, and they were interested in doing it, but they couldn't make the schoolteacher connection. They said they would go to a school and they try and get an appointment, and of course they can't. They're busy. I mean, all the principals, all the teachers, I mean, they're overloaded, especially during the pandemic. Just so many things to do and so many things to learn how to do. So that didn't work. So then I said, okay, Because you know I don't like to give up. I said, okay.

John McAllister: Indefatigable.

Patty Tucker: I said, "Let's try this." So I decided what needed to be done was we needed to go directly to the school teachers, because they're the ones that are there day after day after day. And then Atlanta, a lot of the schoolteachers are required to sponsor a club, some kind of club, whether it's a reading club, a knitting club, some afterschool kind of activity. That's part of their job description. So I said, okay, well, we can't get to them 'cause we can't get those appointments. And a lot of people really, I was amazed. I'll tell you about ISTE in a minute. I was amazed how many people really, really don't know what bridge is. I mean, really don't know even that it's a card game.

John McAllister: You were surprised about that?

Patty Tucker: Yes. I mean, I thought they'd at least know what it was. So I decided we would go to the teacher conferences, and I talked to Denise Harlem, who had worked with the Orange county, excuse me, Orange New Jersey school system. She and Barbara Clark have been working together for years up in that area, and they have two or three schools that they work with and have been doing so for several years. So they've been very successful. So she said, "well, I think you ought to go to ISTE. That's where you need to go. ISTE-"

John McAllister: Denise said this?

Patty Tucker: Yes. It's the International Society for Technology and Education. We do have technology now that would allow us to teach them with technology and to play. I don't think that that is our, I didn't think at the time, and I still don't think that that's our best venue to try and push this.

John McAllister: You were at the conference in the last couple of months?

Patty Tucker: At the end of June, but apparently what she said was, ISTE is where everyone goes, this is the biggest conference in the world. Teachers go to ISTE. That's the big conference. So I said, okay. And we did. It was, I won't say not successful. I'll say I felt like it was successful from several standpoints. From one, it was huge. My feet can tell you how huge it was. I mean, Microsoft was there, Adobe was there, Google was there. All of these huge, huge major corporations were there. There were thousands and thousands and thousands of people. I don't know what the last count where they had estimated it would be 12,000 attendees.

John McAllister: Wow.

Patty Tucker: We had several people stopped by our booth, which was tucked away, not in a corner, but we were a 10x10 space. We weren't the corner of one of the main aisles, the big five spaces. We had put together, I had gotten the videos of the kids from Providence, NABC, the Youth NABC, and we put together a clip of them answering some questions about bridge. It's actually on the Jump Start Bridge website, so it's kind of cool.

John McAllister: We'll link to that.

Patty Tucker: And Shark Bridge, they created a mini bridge contest. So my idea was that we would run a contest the three days of the conference, a school teacher could view the QR code, go in and play four mini bridge hands, and whoever had the best score would win a gift card and their name would go in the pot for a grand prize drawing. So Baron Barclay and Shark Bridge and Atlanta Junior Bridge all went together and we put together a gift package. That didn't work as well as I wanted. I'll tell you why in a minute. But we had about 200 people leave workforce, leave their information with us.

And I will tell you this, I sent a blanket email out when I got back, just not as specific to an individual person, an email campaign. "It was great to see you ISTE. I hope you are thinking about doing bridge." Gave them the links. I had a 52% open rate. Industry standard for that, for an email campaign, for an education email campaign is about 25%, and I had a 52% open. So that tells you that... And the header in it was: Jump Start Bridge from the ISTE Conference, so they knew what it was, and 52% of the people opened the email. That tells me that there is some interest out there in something new. And I had probably, of those 200 leads, I have about 30 or 40, maybe 50 that I think were really interested.

I'm now trying to, I'll tell you about that in a minute too. But anyway-

John McAllister: Got to keep track of all these in the minute stuff.

Patty Tucker: The contest was interesting because I thought four hands, I mean, we talked about that. Should we do one hand, two hands, four hands, eight hands? And we said four.

John McAllister: It's a lot.

Patty Tucker: Well, we said four, that'd probably be about 30 minutes or so, right? No, no. I need to make it one. I need to make it, do one hand. Have it that they can do more if they want to. But play one hand. We had a brochure about what the rules for Mini Bridge were and that high card wins and all of that. And we had some computers and some iPads set up in the booth where we could go and show them, but it was too busy. There was too much to see at ISTE. We had, again, about 30 or 40 people who stopped and actually had conversations with us, really talked to us. I gave away over a thousand brochures. I know that because I know how many I took and how many I had left.

John McAllister: That's impressive.

Patty Tucker: But if nothing else, John, just if now somebody in Hoboken walks into a school and says, "I'd like to talk to you about bridge," and it happens to be somebody that was there at ISTE. "Oh, I know what that is." I mean, if nothing else, getting visibility, 'cause we're invisible. We're invisible.

John McAllister: Did any of the kids from Lebanon, Kentucky go to the Youth NABC this year?

Patty Tucker: No. Lebanon's a very small community. If you took the three major cities where Bowling Green and Lexington and Louisville and made a triangle, Lebanon's, right smack dab in the middle of that triangle. They're a hundred miles from any of those big... It's a small, small community. But they are going to play in Louisville in the Spring.

John McAllister: Oh, the Spring NABC is in Louisville.

Patty Tucker: Well, it's the Spring NABC, but they're going to go play over the weekend, so I'll get to see them. So that'd be nice. They send me pictures all the time and little videos and "Ms. Patty, hello." I send them books and stuff like that. So I've kind of adopted them, I think.

John McAllister: Have you been there just that one time?

Patty Tucker: I've only been there the one time, but I've given the teachers links to, I have a whole thing of videos, different topical video things, and I've given them links to that, and I send them books and cards and supply. We share. But I've kind of kept in touch with them for sure. So that's good.

But what I found out in ISTE was I, two things. One, I decided we needed a bigger booth. What I need to do is set up a card table with cards on the table with people playing with cards in their hand, because they would walk up and they would be looking up at our banner, which has kids holding cards, and they would go, what is Jump Start? What is bridge? What kind of bridge is this? The fact that it's free because they can get stipends from ACBL, they can get books and materials, and Atlantic Junior Bridge will give them supplies, when I told them, "Well, it's a free program." "Uh huh. Right." "No, no, it really is free." Well, what's free? Your supplies, the books for the kids. I'll get on the Zoom and keep you going. Everything's free. All the materials are free. The PowerPoint for the class, the teacher manual, the workbook, everything is free and you can earn a stipend for sponsoring a bridge club.

But just the concept of that we're offering something that's free is really hard for them to take in. They're waiting for the other shoe to drop. They're waiting for there to be something else. So I think we are going to redo a little bit of our banner to emphasize the free part, maybe big red letters instead of green. Need to have a bigger booth so that they can actually sit down and maybe they'll have time to play cards.

The next place we're going is the National Association of Gifted Children. That's in November in Orlando. That I think the gifted conference, I expect will get a lot of people that are interested from that. They have more control, the gifted teachers do, in the things that they offer the kids, we can actually maybe even get it as an elective in one of their classrooms. They have more control over what they offer.

And then in February of next year, end of February, 1st of March, I'm going to the National Association of Independent Schools, which think, charter schools, homeschool networks, private schools, and of course they have a lot more say over what they put in as well. They're also smaller. The gifted conference, they're expecting around 2,500. The independent schools about 35 to 4,000, 3,500 to 4,000. So I won't have as much pulling of their time. They maybe won't be pulled away so much. So I have a lot more confidence, I guess that those will probably generate more leads-force, more concrete leads. So that's the plans. We're going to still have the Shark contest online, but we're only going to make it one hand. It's not going to be four, and see how that goes.

But one of the things is, even of the people that I got the list from, oh, now I have to fess up. This was poorly done on my part. So we did a card. They could drop their business card in or they could fill out a card, and I asked for their name, what they did, teacher or administrator or whatever, their school, the name of their school, and their phone number and their email address, right?

John McAllister: Yeah.

Patty Tucker: Okay. Well, I didn't ask for their city and state. So I got back-

John McAllister: Oh, you didn't know what time you could call them?

Patty Tucker: Well, no, no. I got back. So I'm trying to now find of the teachers that were really interested, I made notes on their cards, important or really need to talk to this person. And I sent out the email saying, oh, I said, in the blanket email I sent, if you'd decided you'd more information or if you'd contact with a school teacher in your area, please be sure and let me know. I'm sorry, a bridge teacher in your area, I'll let you know. So I had to go through all of the phone numbers and see what area code, what state that area code was in, and then I had to go and put the school's name and put Nevada and find out what city it was in. Because then when I got bridge teachers, I sent out an email to bridge teachers saying, we're doing this and I'm trying to find people in these areas. Tell me what cities you're available in. I could match up if there was somebody in Chandler, Arizona, right?

Of course now part of the problem still is, I can't think of one of the names right now, but we'll say it's Tuba City, Arizona. I have no idea what part of Arizona Tuba City is in and is it close to whatever other city. So now I'm there going on these maps. I've got to get better organized about that. It's amazing how much trouble I created for myself.

John McAllister: I'm thinking that what you're doing, I mean, I admire you for doing it, first of all, but it sounds like a big ask. It sounds like a big ask wanting schoolteachers to teach bridge.

Patty Tucker: Okay, so there's also videos of the material. So the way that I set it up in Lebanon was there's a video that goes with it. There's a workbook that the kids use, and then they play cards, and there's videos that go with it. So what could happen is, is a school teacher could learn with the kids, maybe that's not the best thing, but almost every school, even the smaller schools have white, what do you call them? Smart boards now, right?

John McAllister: I don't know what that is.

Patty Tucker: So a smartboard is like a big computer monitor that they could write on their computer screen that would write up there.

John McAllister: Got it.

Patty Tucker: So what they could do is they could play the first five minutes, which says, we're going to learn a good game. It's called bridge. Let's get started. I want you to take the deck of cards that's on your table, shuffle the cards, deal them out one at a time, blah, blah, blah. She can pause the video and then she can get them to do the activity. And the teacher manual that I put together, it has what supplies you need and kind of an outline of what you're doing in that class. And then it has a timing outline. This is going to take about five minutes in case they need to break it up. And then there's a script, there's an actual script of what you would say.

And what I tell them is, obviously, you're not going to memorize this script and say these things, but this is kind of the sense of what you want to get across to them and what the learning points are, what you want them to walk away from after you've done it. I actually had, before I even went to ISTE, and while I was making all the promotional material up, I had a meeting with some local schoolteachers here in Atlanta. A lady I teach, the daughter just graduated and taught her first year of school this last year. So I got them together at lunch and I said, this is what I'm doing. What are the things that would be attractive? I told them how the teaching material was set up. I said, what do you think about that? Is that something that you could use or would you feel too awkward?

Her comment was, "Well, they've got so many new things that they're trying to get us to introduce and teach. We're kind of just reading from a script anyway." So she said, this wouldn't be any different than what we're already having to do. The offer is still on the table also, and I actually had a lead with three different district officials, the people that were the head of their district. So the offer is also still on the table, which I told them about, is that I could come in and train your teachers and then have a summer camp where they could work with the kids. That's how we did it in Lebanon. The next two days, the teachers actually, as I was teaching, worked with the kids at the table. So they kind of got a feel for the questions the kids asked and that kind of thing. That I'd be willing to come in, no cost to them, train the teachers, teach the kids, and get them started. They have the option of both of those things.

And Orange, they're putting together their new school year, and they're talking about me coming in and doing the teacher training, and Atlanta Junior Bridge will sponsor that.

So somebody asked me, they said, well, what if you go to the gifted conference and you have 20 places wanting you to come? And I said, then I will find a way to go to 20 places. I really care about this. This is not a, well, it might be an aberration, but it's something I care about a lot and I want it to happen. So whatever I need to do to make it feasible or help get it through. The energy's there, so we'll see. So what have I left out? Probably nothing. Have I told you my life story yet? Maybe I should tell you the rest of my life story.

John McAllister: Well, I want to know, think about the Youth NABC, which you started. Do you think that was inevitable, or you think you needed to... Because think how valuable that is. That has become a staple of the summer nationals.

Patty Tucker: Okay. All right. So what I will tell you is this, when I started Atlanta Junior Bridge, they, and this is a universal they, told me it would not work. It won't work. You're not going to find 200 kids that want to learn how to play bridge. You're not going to do it. And there were. And when I told them I wanted to do a Youth NABC and invite kids from all over the country, they said, they won't come. It won't work. And it did. We had 200 kids at the first Youth NABC. So we had people coming from Hawaii, from Montauk, Canada. I'm not sure if we had anybody from Alaska at the first one, but they came from all over the country to Atlanta for the Youth NABC. And some of them were three or four kids. I mean, the majority of the kids were from Atlanta.

We had, I think 149, but eight came from Hawaii, six came from Montauk, four came from... We had two from California. But they came, they wanted to come. The kids deserve just as much as we do, the ability to get with their friends and visit and play bridge and have fun. And they're going to make friendships they'll have for the rest of their life, John. Just like we do. I mean, I have people that I consider really, really good friends that I see three times a year at the three North American Bridge Championships. That's it. But I feel close to them. So they say these conferences, they told me there was no use to go to any conferences. Nobody would be interested. Well, you know what? I had 52 people that were interested enough after spending maybe five minutes at the ISTE conference talking to us that were interested enough to at least open the email when they knew what's going to be in the email. I mean, it couldn't have been anything else.

John McAllister: But wasn't it 104, because didn't you send out 200 emails?

Patty Tucker: I had 198 emails and 52% opened the email. So there you go. So what I think is that I think that they're wrong. I think this can work. We can make this work. But it's like everything you do in life, the first time that you tried to, maybe you're a car salesman, the first time you tried to sell somebody a car, maybe they didn't buy it, maybe the second person you tried didn't buy it. So did you quit. Did quit your job and leave? Yeah, no, you just kept plugging away. You don't always have to do... It doesn't always have to be that the first time you do something, you have it exactly right. If it doesn't work, then what you do is you say, okay, so that didn't work. What's our next step? If it's something you care about, you just find a way to make it happen. You do.

John McAllister: What do you think is the toughest moment in this current iteration of Jump Start Bridge that you've had to weather?

Patty Tucker: Well, probably, okay, so a lot of people helped. ACBL was fabulous in trying to help us get the right look and feel of everything. And Denise Harlem worked really hard. She collected all the stuff, drove there. We had several people, Allison Freeland, actually, her son lived in Philadelphia. And I was talking about how expensive it was going to be to ship everything to the conference. So she talked to her son and he let me ship everything to his house and drove it over. But I think sometimes it feels like I feel out of my element because I'm not a graphic design person.

I can write a factual book about a bridge convention, but finding the words that are the words that will resonate with a teacher, and I don't know if you looked at one of our brochures, but you ought to go look at it. I know the things that are good for kids, the things that are good for teachers, things that are good... I have the information, but I don't know how to put it all together. And I found myself continually, out of my comfort zone, trying to figure out how to do things that I don't really know how to do. So sometimes it just felt overwhelming. It was a big project. It is a big project.

John McAllister: So you got some funds from the ACBL Educational Foundation for this?

Patty Tucker: Yes, the ED Foundation subsidized the booth. So that was great because the booth for ISTE was really expensive. Well, I'll just tell you, the booth itself was $7,500. I mean, think about it, just to get it. Just to get a 10x10-

John McAllister: You can't even fit a bridge table in there.

Patty Tucker: Well, I could have, if the rest of us hadn't been there, if I had just put the table there and left everything out on it, it would've been fine. So they did. And we had donations. I got a lot of donations, smaller, bigger donations from a lot of different people. I had one large donation from a student of mine whose family had a trust. So it was a nice donation, but mostly it was bits and pieces. I mean, not bits and pieces, but you know what I mean, a hundred dollars here, maybe $500. That 500 for me was a big donation. Five hundred's, like, "Woo, $500." I would write home about it. "Hey guys, we got $500. Yay."

John McAllister: Who had the most compelling booth at ISTE?

Patty Tucker: Oh gosh, probably Google. Theirs was really, really good. There was one... You wouldn't have believed all the things they had. You really would not have believed all the... One of them gave away, I can't remember who it was, might've been Microsoft, gave away a freaking computer. A computer. They gave away a computer. I mean, it's like, really? You've got a computer. They had games where the wall light up and you threw a ball, you had a contest, you threw a ball to hit the lights and the lights would move on the booth. I mean, it was crazy. It was absolutely crazy.

John McAllister: It was at the convention center in Philadelphia?

Patty Tucker: Yeah, yeah. It was amazing. It was huge. Oh, and the guy, one of the booths, which was right down from us, poor guys, they were on the end, but they were towards the refreshment stand, they were the people that have the robotic dogs that dance. It's a robotic dog. And it was apparently in the show at the Super Bowl, the halftime show, and it danced at Play Nation, like this. So that, for me-

John McAllister: So were you there-.

Patty Tucker: Huh?

John McAllister: Were you there the whole time? Were you there at the booth the entire time that the conference is going on?

Patty Tucker: You have to be set up the day before or ready to start at eight o'clock, I think, or 7:30 that morning. And you're there from 7:30 until five o'clock. I mean, it's a grueling day. I told somebody, I can't remember who, I said, I've done this and I'm going to do the other two, and I don't know how many more conventions I have left to in me, because this is hard. A couple of the places, oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead.

John McAllister: I was going to say, I used to do investor relations for a hedge fund, and we would go to conferences. And the conferences were really great in terms of meeting clients and developing relationships with clients. So I am a hundred percent on board for conferences as a means of doing what you're doing.

Patty Tucker: Well, I think we have, I have to get some kind of recognition. No bridge player, if they don't know somebody in the school, is ever going to be able to walk into a school and get an appointment if they've never even heard of us. And one of the things that ISTE did do is I think gives us validity. Nobody goes to is ISTE if they're not serious about what they're doing. It's too expensive. You would never, unless you were independently wealthy, and I mean really independently wealthy, it is not something that you just decide, oh, let's go do this. It's not that kind of place.

I had a thought, now I can't remember what it was, but the biggest thing about ISTE is as people were coming down the aisle, there's us on one side and somebody else on the other, it's amazing, it depends on which way they turn their head as they're going down the aisle. I can't tell you how many people were looking to their left or to their left where we were. And as they were starting to get up to us, turn their head to the right and never saw us, and they had this thing where you could rent ads in their magazine or whatever, and I just couldn't make myself do it. I thought, who is going to look at an eighth page ad, a quarter page ad? There were 1300 or yeah, we were on row 800. So there were 13 rows of like 150 people on a row. A hundred people on a row. I don't know.

John McAllister: Wait, there was 13 rows of a hundred people on a row, but you were booth number 800?

Patty Tucker: 800 and, I can't even remember now, 805 or 820 or something like that. And of course, when they come off the escalator, where are they? Actually, there were 16 rows. They're at 1600. So we're all the way at the other end. By the time they got... I don't think we saw a fraction of the people the first day, because everybody started at the beginning and then worked their way down. So I think the smaller ones are going to be better in terms of more conversations with people and more building a relationship or at least building a recognition or something like that. I don't think ISTE was good from that perspective.

It was very good from their perspective of validity, it was very good to see what works and what doesn't work. It was good to see, I mean, people, once they got their face towards us, our banner caught their eye. They were looking at it. People were stopping. We had the interview with the kids with Providence like a feed on the TV that just played continuously the whole time. People stopped to look at the kids. They liked that. So we did a lot of things. We really did. We got a lot of things. They picked up the brochures.

We had lollipops. We thought lollipops would be big, but they didn't like the lollipops as much as I thought they would. But they picked up the pens. Man, they wanted our pens. They picked those up. So I think we did a lot of things right. I think it was good that we did it and necessary that we did it. One of the good things is when I printed all the marketing material, I didn't print just enough for ISTE. I printed for all three conferences. See, I said I was going to go to all three by goodness. By golly, I'm going to them. So that expense is a non-repeatable expense, but just the conference itself and getting people there, I mean, it's just...

John McAllister: If you could have any break, let's say you got a genie that comes up, you rub the bottle, you get three wishes, what are your three wishes?

Patty Tucker: My three wishes?

John McAllister: Yeah.

Patty Tucker: To get a district, a school district to try bridge, to get them to actually sit there and buy into it, and try it for a year. One year.

John McAllister: What would that look like?

Patty Tucker: It would look like having the teachers go to a, what do you call it when they do the training during the summer, out day or, they have a word for it. It's a day that the afternoon is for training and all the teachers are out of the school training that day. So it would be a training session with the teachers and then some kind of fair, rich fair with the kids for the kids that want to learn how to do it, and then either Zoom or continuing ed for the teachers as they want or need it.

John McAllister: I met the superintendent for my county's schools a couple years ago at an event, a groundbreaking ceremony for, I think it was, what was it, Boys and Girls Club. And I spoke to him and I spoke to him about BridgeWhiz and I got his contact information. He said to reach out. I reached out and he put me in touch with his communication person. And we never really finished the thing. There was a possibility that we were going to be on the local news, but it never ended up materializing. So.

Patty Tucker: Well, one of the things that the school teachers that I met with here that I talked to, and the ones that I talked to at the conference and the kids themselves that I've talked to, one thing I think is loud and clear after the pandemic is that they want things that are social activities for the kids, that the kids can do with each other. One of the things that this teachers here that I talked to told me were that the kids coming out of the pandemic, especially the younger ones, like third grade, second, third grade, have really lost the whole year of learning how to socialize with friends and how to behave and... I don't mean that they're bad kids or anything like that.

Those learning, how to behave in public and how to behave with other children and et cetera, et cetera, that they learn in those first couple of years of school is gone. They didn't get it and they need it. Another thing that one of them told me was that there were tons of programs designed for the kids that don't, let me think how to put this, that kids that need help that are behind academically, there's tons of programs to bring them up, but that they don't have programs for the gifted kids, for the kids that are at the...

And I don't know, and I tried to get somebody to research this for me because I don't know how to research it, and I'm not sure I understand it, but there's something called, I want to say, it's metrics. It's what is happening, and there's companies that measure this, is that you have, I'll say normal, but I'm not saying anything bad, just the gifted kids are here in the scoring and the other kids are here and the other kids are coming up, and the gifted kids are kind of staying the same. They're still above, but they're not making this leap. So it's like all the education things we're doing are bringing these kids up. The gifted kids are still having that space, but they're not going up proportionately as well.

So they were talking about that that was a real concern, that they're not challenging the gifted group enough, that there's not enough things that keep them engaged. And one of the things that bridge can do is that. And the other thing it can do, it's an activity that this group and this group both can do at the same time. You don't have to have two separate classes. They can have the same class and just be still playing at a different level. We have that in bridge every time we have a tournament, don't we?

So that was my one wish. My second wish is that I didn't have to continually figure out ways to make everything fit together and work. I felt like I spent half my time like this spreadsheet. Well, and that was my fault. I didn't get the right information. But that's so time-consuming, trying to match up this information and this information.

John McAllister: You didn't feel like you could ask the people to tell you where they lived?

Patty Tucker: I didn't think about it. I mean, I wasn't thinking about that I needed their city and state. I mean, I wasn't thinking about-

John McAllister: No, but I'm saying in the email, you didn't think about just asking them where they lived?

Patty Tucker: No. I could have, but I had already done the work by then, so it didn't matter. So I got it.

John McAllister: Do you have programs coming out of, is there anybody actually replicating Lebanon based on the conference?

Patty Tucker: I have three people that I've connected with the teacher. I haven't heard back yet. And I've got one other lady I really have some hopes with. She is the STEM coordinator for, it's called RESA. It's a Regional Educational Services Agency, something like that. What they do apparently in, and I'm sure they have them in other states, what they have is like rural schools or schools that maybe don't have the money to, they can't all have a health teacher. They don't have in their budget money for a health teacher. So what they do is there's a health teacher that goes to three or four different schools, one this week, one next week, et cetera, et cetera. And so these rural counties kind of pool all their money and have special teachers for specific things that go around from school to school. And she was really excited about bridge.

I called her right before I left for Chicago, and she was on vacation. She had gone on vacation. And this week of course, school started back here in Atlanta. She's actually in Georgia, but South Georgia. So I'm going to get back in touch with her. If we could get one something like that, just one, and it was successful or they liked it, you know that these kinds of organizations talk to other people.

John McAllister: Yeah, that's true.

Patty Tucker: If we could just get one. Just one. So that's what I want. One. I want one.

John McAllister: Yeah.

Patty Tucker: If we can get one, we can get them all or most of them.

John McAllister: How did you learn bridge as an 11-year-old? What was the-

Patty Tucker: My parents played bridge, and they would talk about bridge at breakfast every morning if they had played bridge the night before. And a local player named Joe Sloan was teaching bridge, going to have bridge classes. And I told my mother, I said, "I want to learn how to play bridge." She says, "No, you don't." I said, "No, I do. I want to learn how to play bridge." She said, "Patty, you wouldn't have fun."

John McAllister: Oh my God.

Patty Tucker: So you know me, "I want to play bridge. I really want to go play bridge. Why can't I go play bridge?" Luckily for me, my sister, Penny had just gotten her driver's license. So I finally annoyed my mother so much that she told my sister. She said, "Penny, if you'll take Patty to bridge every Tuesday night, stay with her and bring her home, you can have the car on Friday night to go out with your friends."

John McAllister: Wow.

Patty Tucker: The rest is history.

John McAllister: Wow.

Patty Tucker: My sister, by the way, could be a very, she is a good bridge player, she could be a very good bridge player. She just doesn't never, I don't know. She didn't get the bug the way I did, but she likes it.

John McAllister: What was it like for your parents to see you... It is so much a part of who you are. What was it like for your mother?

Patty Tucker: Well, I think they were proud of me, but they were... Well, okay, I'll tell you a story on myself. Well, not really on myself, but this was a defining moment in my bridge life.

John McAllister: Yeah.

Patty Tucker: I learned, okay, so you know how you do when you first learn? You read every book you can read and anything new that you can try, you want to try it and see how it works. So I happened to read, Lavinthal had just come up out with his book about Lavinthal discards. So I wanted to play Lavinthal discards. So I asked my aunt, Jane, to play. She was going to play with me, and I told her I wanted to play Lavinthal. So we're playing against these people. And it came up and it worked. And the lady went down and I said to aunt, Jane, I said, "Did you see that it worked?" And she said, "Yes." Well, then the lady went and told my father that I had been a bad sport because I had gloated.

John McAllister: Oh, wow.

Patty Tucker: So my father got me to the side, and he said, "This is an adult game. You do not gloat. You do not act that way. And if you aren't going to behave that way, you cannot play anymore." That never did it again. Boy, we have some bridge players that their parents should have talked to. They should have been.

John McAllister: I know. Some people, I was playing in a tournament on Bridge Base yesterday. It's like people are so clueless sometimes. They get a good result. They give them the well done, partner. It's like, I don't know. I mean, you were the Goodwill Member of the Year. I think once a month I do something that disqualifies me from getting that.

Patty Tucker: Well, we can thank my father and mother for me being Goodwill Member of the Year. That was ingrained very quickly with me.

John McAllister: What do you think is your legacy or your greatest accomplishment?

Patty Tucker: Probably Atlanta Junior Bridge. I mean, that's what it all comes back to.

John McAllister: Yeah.

Patty Tucker: I mean the Youth NABC, sure. And this. If I could get this started in the schools, that might be it. And it's funny, I've had people say, well, why are you teaching kids bridge? Why do you want to do that? Why is that so important? Why? And the answer really is, is knowing what the game is and how valuable the game can be and how much it can change your life. Why would you not? How could you justify not doing it? See, that's what I don't get. How can you say as a bridge player, knowing that maybe you got your first job playing bridge or that you've been playing it for 30 years, that you've made friends from all over the world, that it's improved your mind, knowing all of that, how can you justify not wanting to get kids involved? I mean, people involved. So I don't know. I don't mean to be preachy, but that's how I feel about it. I mean, it's not why, it's how could you not?

John McAllister: I had Amaresh who you know, Deshpande, I'm probably saying his last name wrong, but he came here actually right before everything shut down for Covid, and we got into the Boys and Girls Club and got to spend some time with the kids, some kids there one afternoon. And I had a pretty clear realization that as much as I love bridge, and as much as I want these children to learn bridge, it's not what I want to do. It's not what I want to do in terms of being the person that's teaching them. It's hard. It's challenging. And so once people start playing bridge, bring it on. I would love to play and teach them and whatever. But I think it takes a special skillset, patience and desire to really-

Patty Tucker: And I think you're right, and that's one of the things I was talking with ACBL about, is that I've got this list of teachers. So when these teachers call me, how am I going to find somebody to go help them if they want help? And it can't just be somebody who plays bridge because not everybody who plays bridge is a teacher or can be a teacher. Especially not at a beginner level. The last thing, and not to say what they wouldn't have the best of intentions either, but one of the things is what we can't afford to happen, especially in early stages, is for someone to go into a school and it really be awful. And that's another reason, John, to get school teachers involved because they know how to teach and they like kids. Most of them, I think. I hope they do. So I think getting them involved is the best thing we can do. The hardest thing we can do. The hardest thing-

John McAllister: So if anybody listening, go ahead.

Patty Tucker: Go ahead. No.

John McAllister: No, I did it last time. You get to go this time.

Patty Tucker: So what I was going to say, the hardest thing though is getting to these conferences. And I'm hoping that if there's anybody out there that thinks it's a good idea or is interested and it could make a small donation, I would love to have it because it is tax-deductible. Totally tax-deductible. I am donating my time, so I'm not getting paid for this. And we need it. I don't have enough for the... I'm close to enough for the gifted conference. Close. But I don't have enough for the independent school conference.

John McAllister: Well, we'll put a link in the show notes to donate if people would like to do that.

Patty Tucker: I did get a donation to increase the booth size. So I've got that. And I have someone in Chicago who will match funds up to $2,000. She'll give me a donation for $2,000 if I raise $2,000. So I think that gets me pretty much there for the gifted conference, I hope. But I won't have anything left. So if you want me to go to the National Association for Independent Schools, we need to get on the stick. But anyway, I hope people are interested.

John McAllister: So I feel like you've said one of your three wishes. You were in the process... The second one, you're having to figure a lot of stuff out, was one of the-

Patty Tucker: Somebody who can understand, who actually knows how to do this stuff. It's like, I can give you as much information as you want, but can you put it together? Can you put the words together and put the spreadsheets together? I mean, I would never have probably with my temperament, it would be hard for me to totally ever let go entirely of something. But some of this that I spend a lot of time on, someone else could help with that. It wouldn't have to just be me. And then I guess the last wish would be... You did say it was a genie and a magic wand, right?

John McAllister: A genie in a bottle. Yeah, that was [inaudible]

Patty Tucker: Okay. So the last one would be for every child to play one hand of bridge and see if they liked it. Just play one hand of bridge and see if you like it.

John McAllister: Yeah, that's a good wish. Like that one.

Patty Tucker: Because if you do, we've got more. We can always get more hands.

John McAllister: You think the Bridge League has thrived more at times in your life than now?

Patty Tucker: Oh yes, definitely.

John McAllister: Yeah?

Patty Tucker: And not just from a youth standpoint. But I've always thought that what we missed was the social aspect of it. I mean, in the '30s, '40s, '50s, you had bridge parties. I mean, that's what people did. You would go over and have dinner and you'd play bridge. That was your entertainment.

John McAllister: Sounds pretty good.

Patty Tucker: Yeah. But then TV, et cetera, et cetera. And all of a sudden people weren't having parties anymore and people weren't coming over to play bridge as much. And that kind of started it. And then it became, well, we have Club Bridge and Tournament Bridge, which was more competitive. Not more competitive, but more built around the competition instead of the social aspect. I think that's what happened. I think as we kind of moved from the living rooms to the clubs and the tournaments, the competition became more of the thing rather than the social aspect of being with your friends. And I think that's a big part of it, because the social part of bridge is huge. And what people kind of don't get is that, especially our tournament level bridge, well, even our local bridge at the clubs, people just look at the outside, well, you just go play bridge for six hours or five hours and you're done. You go home. But I don't think most of the bridge clubs are that way. I don't think that comes through to the general public.

I mean, John, well, I don't know what you do, but for instance here, there's probably 30 or 40 of us that have kind of a rotating group that you go to movies with and you maybe go out for dinner and you go to the Braves game or whatever. I mean, there's a social aspect to it, aside from bridge, that we all become friends. And I think that happens at the Nationals as well. I mean, don't you know a lot of... People that you've met at the Nationals that are friends a lot about their personal life as well, right? You know who their family are, that they have kids, that they went to Egypt or that kind of thing. It's not just a purely cut and dry, what did you do on this hand, right?

John McAllister: Yeah. Now I just want to talk bridge with people.

Patty Tucker: I don't think that comes through. Huh?

John McAllister: I said I just want to talk bridge with people. We played at one of the nationals, I think it was Denver. We played one-day pairs. And I remember there was a hand where you were in a tight contract and you gave me a wink. I was the dummy and you gave me a wink, and I think you squeezed them to make four diamonds or something like that.

Last question. When you and Kevin won the North American Pairs, did you think you were going to win? Or what was that like?

Patty Tucker: Well, we led from start to finish. When we got ready for the last session, I have kind of a little ritual thing. I always take a nap. I always take a cat nap. And I'll tell you what I did. As I was going to sleep, I was praying to God and I said, "If I lose, I lose. But don't make them beat me. Don't let me give it to them. If they want it, they have to beat me."

John McAllister: I like that.

Patty Tucker: So that's how I felt about it. If I lost, well, hey, if they played better than me, I couldn't do anything about that. But don't let them beat you and you should walk into every game that way. Don't beat yourself.

John McAllister: I'm going to take that on. That's a good one. All right, Patty. Well-

Patty Tucker: All right. Well edit anything out you need to, John. I know I talk too much. I just can't help it. You know I can't.

John McAllister: Well, I'm not saying that, but I appreciate everything you're doing and I'm happy to share your message with our audience and hope that they will introduce what you're doing to the teachers in their lives that they know and the superintendents. And this, I think it's powerful that you have the ambitions that you do. And I think you've been told no before and you've shown that that's not really-

Patty Tucker: That's not something I'm going to hear.

John McAllister: It's only a no until... That's why, I mean, I just think it's great and that's why I wanted to talk to you and I'm grateful. So thank you very much.

Patty Tucker: Well, thank you for having me, John. I really appreciate it.

John McAllister: My pleasure.

Patty Tucker: All right, I'll see you in Atlanta.