Linda and Dave Oliver began playing duplicate bridge soon after they married after experiencing a terrible car accident (a drunk truck driver headed the other way jumped the cement lane dividers on a bridge). During their convalescence they joined a group that played at the Submarine Base Officers’ Club in Groton, Connecticut. It was a wonderfully collegial group (run by Becky and Dwight Ellis) and generated great memories. Unfortunately, after their physical recovery, it was time to raise two children and establish themselves professionally (Linda as an attorney, Dave in the Navy).

In their forty-year careers, all the little slips of paper that had recorded the partial black master points from the sixties were lost in the detritus of moves (California (three times), Washington, Hawaii, Japan, Mississippi, Virginia (three times) and Connecticut (twice)). However, they still retained their original member numbers and when they retired to Humboldt Country (where their sons and grandchildren now live), the Oliver’s began playing at Mark Phelp’s Sequoia Club in Eureka.

There were new bidding systems to learn (when they began playing the Dallas Aces didn’t exist and the Italian Blue Team had only made the news) and years of rust to chip away, but finally, at the recent Chico Sectional, both qualified as Life Masters, their identical point totals reflecting their fifty-seven years of partnership in life and at the bridge tables.