There’s more than one way to play bingo, according to participants in Greenbelt’s two Labor Day weekend bingo events.
The “old way,” said Mary McGrew, 80, a retired procurement officer, requires colorful ink “daubers” to mark squares on paper bingo cards.
The Ladies of Charity of St. Hugh of Grenoble Catholic Church, which hosted bingo for 30 years at the Greenbelt Labor Day Festival, used daubers during their four-day bingo fundraiser this year in the parish’s Grenoble Hall.
An alternate way was on display as Greenbelt Youth Baseball hosted its own four-day bingo fundraiser on Festival grounds for the first time. Players in front of the Community Center marked their cards with pinto beans.
“Then there’s the side show that takes place,” said Bernadette Thomas, 53, an assistant controller. “Every year some kid runs by and yells bingo.”
Thomas has been playing bingo in Greenbelt for over 25 years.
“It’s a whole world of very serious bingo players,” said Lei Zong, 44, an engineering manager and one of a team of volunteers who worked all summer toward last weekend’s Greenbelt Youth Baseball bingo. “I feel like after this they really should make a Netflix show.”
Proceeds from St. Hugh’s bingo will fund the parish’s food pantry, which serves 50 to 60 families weekly, said Mary Ann Tretler, 68, president of The Ladies of Charity.
Patrick Keaton, 45, a project manager and Greenbelt Youth Baseball treasurer, said the league will use its proceeds for equipment and field improvements. The league aims to update aging batting cages and is working with the city to acquire storage space at multiple fields.
Both events took a lot of planning to overcome challenges.
The Ladies of Charity decided to hold its bingo in Grenoble Hall due to the challenge of recruiting enough volunteers, said Tretler.
The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic compounded some elderly and disabled parishioners’ concerns about extreme heat and accessibility at the Festival site. Hosting bingo in St. Hugh’s air-conditioned hall helped The Ladies of Charity get enough help to run the event.
“There’s enough of us who want to attempt to get back to some normality,” Tretler said.
Zong said experienced bingo volunteers mentored Greenbelt Youth Baseball parents on topics from how much petty cash to have on hand to the application process for county permits.
Sara Mazursky, 46, a deputy director at Johns Hopkins, and Clark Rushing, 39, an ecology professor, were playing 18 cards between them Saturday afternoon at the Festival while they waited for Anya Rushing, 39, who works for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to join.
The Rushings lived in Greenbelt for a decade before moving to Georgia four years ago. Before the pandemic, they traveled back to Greenbelt annually for the Festival.
Clark Rushing, who had yet to win at the Festival, said, “I’ve paid my dues. It’s my turn.”
Within an hour, the Rushings had won.
Keaton said players lit their cards with phone flashlights Friday evening because league volunteers forgot to arrange lighting for the tables in front of the bingo booth.
But in front of the Community Center Saturday night, at long tables lit by string lights, bingo players leaned intently over cardboard cards, on loan from St. Hugh’s.
“This is the opposite of the Wild Wild West,” Keaton said. “This town is big enough for the both of us.”
Stephanie Quinn is a University of Maryland journalism graduate student writing for the News Review.
