After four different careers, Al Peponis found what he really loves to do
Published in the December 24, 2014 – January 6, 2014 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Robert Airoldi
Photo by Robert Airoldi
Bridge instructor Al Peponis in his northwest Morgan Hill home.
Al Peponis has retired from four different careers and has embarked on his fifth. This one, he said, may be the most enjoyable, however it’s surely the less lucrative. But at the age of 71, he’s enjoying life now more than ever.
The married father of one now plays and teaches bridge, and he’s steadily improving.
“It takes time to learn to play the game well and even longer to play it well,” he said.
And while he learned to play the game in college, he didn’t play much and work, family and life took precedence.
That work began right out of college when he landed a job as an auditor with the United States Treasury Department. He would routinely go into banks to determine if their customers’ deposits were safe.
“That was the best business education training ground in the world,” said Peponis, who held that job from 1969 to 1974. During that final year while working for the U.S. Treasury, he was introduced to computers, which were in their infancy. During a one-year training period, he learned more than the basics.
“They took someone who knew very little about computers but liked them and turned him into someone who could do almost anything on a computer,” he said. “I learned all levels of computers.”
During that time he wrote programs for Bank of America and advanced from a senior programmer to a low level systems engineer and became a computer auditor and examiner for several different companies.
From there he went to a pharmaceutical company then to Amdahl Corporation as the manager of their financial systems.
Then, in 1984 he was laid off from Amdahl. During the preceding years he and his wife had been investing in real estate and made more part time with their investments than they had working. So, in 1985 after he was laid off, his wife, who was working full time as a teacher, told him to take a year off. He got his real estate license in San Jose and went to work, selling real estate until he went into the mortgage loan industry and got caught in the collapse of 1991.After the early ‘90s market collapse, he got into the vending machine business when he bought two small vending machine accounts that he turned into a full time business. In 2008, he sold that business.
“I started thinking, ‘OK, now what am I going to do?’” he said. He got bored just sitting around the house watching television, so after a friend of his asked him to play bridge — which he’d learned in college — and he began playing again.
Now he and his bridge partner, former Live Oak High School Coach Norm Dow, play regularly.
The two of them saw a flyer at the library offering lessons so they jumped at the opportunity to hone their craft.
“We took all three courses,” Peponis said. “That was 27 lessons.”
When they looked for a place to play — that was 2009 — they found a place in Gilroy for beginning players.
“We won our first Duplicate Bridge tournament and Norm and I have played together ever since,” he said.
When asked what it is that he loves so much about bridge, Peponis said the brain is a muscle that constantly needs attention.
“You have to exercise it,” he said. “My brain is constantly going. I’m ‘alive.’ I love the interaction, the play.”
But, Peponis said what he really enjoys is the teaching aspect.
“I enjoy that more than playing,” he said. “It’s wonderful to see people advance.” He recalled a woman from San Jose who could barely count the 13 cards in her hand.
“Now, she is my most improved student. She does a fabulous job.”
CLASSES
• Play of the hand – 10 Mondays at 7 p.m. starting Jan. 5.
• Defense – 10 Mondays at 7 p.m. starting April 6
– All classes are free and held at the Morgan Hill Library, 660 w. Main Ave.
• Contact Peponis at (408) 779-7122, email [email protected] or visit www.southcountybridge.com.
