ALBERTA ALBERSHEIM

Mrs. Walter J. Albersheim

Alberta Albersheim, born 1906 and died1996, was second in the Fall National Women's Pairs 1958. The contestants play for the Whitehead Trophy. From 1969 through 1971 the event was contested as a three-session championship. All contestants must be women and the event is played as the North American Championship. It was played at the Summer NABC between 1930 until 1962, when it was played at the Spring NABC. The Whitehead Trophy was donated in 1930 by Mr. Wilbur C. Whitehead of New York, who was a great bridge authority and a member of the team that won the Vanderbilt Cup in 1928, the first year it was in play.

1958		1. Betty Nail, Phyllis Novak
		2. Alberta Albersheim, Mrs. M. J. Root

Alberta Albersheim was a major committee member for Boston NABCs in 1970, 1981 and 1990, but is perhaps best remembered for her bridge success after she was virtually blind. Alberta Albersheim carried her own boards with giant symbols from tournament to tournament.

Her partner and opponents called off their cards as they were played, and Alberta Albersheim trained herself to assemble a mental picture of the hands as she committed each card called to memory. She was a regular partner of Ethel Keohane and a Diamond Life Master who won more than 8,000 masterpoints. She was a longtime member of the National Goodwill Committee.

Alberta Albersheim was an attorney and her husband, Dr. Walter Albersheim, was an electronics engineer. They had two natural children and adopted six foreign children who came to the United States to study.