People featured in this column have been selected randomly from the telephone book.
DEARY - At 93 years old, Katherine Campbell still plays bridge and says longevity is kind of like being dealt 13 hearts - a product of chance.
"Fat city," is how Katherine describes such a bridge hand. And the U.S. Census Bureau describes Katherine as being among the 1.9 million Americans surpassing nine decades of life.
What's more, "over the next four decades, this population is projected to more than quadruple," the Census Bureau reports this week. The report came out, by the way, on the same day Katherine was about to play another weekly round of bridge with three friends.
"I'm the oldest," Katherine says proudly, pointing out that Wilma Sitz, Violet Jensen and Agnes Jain are all young enough to be her daughters. "It's a lot of fun. Everybody brings something to add to the lunch. We usually start playing when they get here. And then we usually eat about two hours into playing."
Playing cards, Katherine confides, has always been one of her favorite pastimes, especially after her husband of 61 years, Frank, died several years ago. In a way, she says, Frank came into her life because friends stacked the deck.
"I changed my clothes, combed my hair and went over to their house," she recalls of what amounted to a blind date. "And I met Frank. We were married very soon after, like three or four weeks."
As she folds the 13 hearts back into the deck of 52 cards, Katherine suggests love, when it's mutually given and received, is life's greatest reward. And becoming a widow might mean losing the man, but not the memories. Perhaps that's why she fills her day, not just with card games, but also stories of romance.
"I read a lot of those," she says of the paperback works of fiction. "I finished one last night." The book, titled "Rainbow's End," is described by the publisher as a "heartwarming inspirational romance." Katherine describes the novel as being part of a genre that keeps her linked to the past.
"Oh, it takes me back to when I had a husband," she says. "It just brings back good memories, what it's like to be loved."
A retired school teacher, Katherine suggests love becomes harder to find in a world that increasingly lacks acceptance. "I would like people to be more tolerant of each other," she says. Bickering has become the norm and its hard, Katherine says, to read, watch or listen to the news.
With Thanksgiving around the corner, she suggests counting blessings and being thankful should not be the prerogative of just the elderly, but a staple of all generations. As one who taught grade school for four years in Clarkston and 25 years here in Deary, Katherine says children are eager to consume not just knowledge, but social behavior that helps ensure a civil society. She says discipline has always been a cornerstone of learning and both the schools and homes could afford recouping a measure of decorum.
"I was strict," Katherine declares without hesitation. "They goofed around, but not so I couldn't control it. You don't learn without discipline."
Bridge is the same way. You can't win without a measure of discipline and cooperation. The game is played with two partners teaming up against two other partners. The teammates sit across from one another and those steeped in the game, Katherine suggests, become like married couples - communicating in ways that, teamed with the luck of the draw, lead to success and winning.
So Katherine will spend Thanksgiving with family. She has one daughter, three grandsons and two great grandsons. Katherine will also be counted among those 90-year-olds who, according to the Census Bureau, will comprise 10 percent of the population by the year 2050.
The trick to joining such ranks, Katherine says, is a bit like dealing with the cards you're dealt. "And then, the idea is, if you could not have any of the trump cards, then you can, oh gosh ...," she says. The rules of bridge, kind of like life, can get a bit jumbled.
"But I'm a great bridge player," she jests. "And now, I'm always the oldest."
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Johnson may be contacted at djohnson@lmtribune.com or (208) 883-0564.
