Howard Rossman

My father loved to gamble.  As the youngest of three brothers, by eight years, he learned that his siblings had worn holes in family strictures, leaving him a pretty wide opening.  He told stories of shooting dice in back alleys of late ‘30’s Atlantic City; of stopping during the war in a dusty desert gambling town that became home to his passion, Las Vegas.  Later, Saturdays would find him gambling at golf and then sitting around a gin table with friends, seriously engaged.   

When his grandchildren started to learn that money could buy things, he would bring out a deck of miniature cards and play a game with them at the end of our frequent Sunday brunches.  If he won at golf or gin the previous day--and often when, I knew, he didn’t--the deck would appear, and he would give each kid the chance to draw a card, paying the value of the card chosen. 

If you didn’t like the first draw, you had the option to draw a second; but, and here was the catch, you had to accept whatever the value was of that second card.  And despite, or maybe because of, his soft heart and love for his grandchildren, he didn’t waver.  If you returned a 6 and pulled a 2, you got two bucks.  Period. The excitement was palpable and the memories indelible. 

I believe to this day that this little game taught them all something about themselves and about risk and reward. When he died and my siblings and I were faced with that awesome task of choosing what to keep and what to give away, I saw the cards and thought, How lucky I’ll be to play this game with my grandchildren someday.