December 2025 Newsletter

December 1, 2025    News   

Double Down:

Cards at Silveridge

By Dale Dauten

“Luck is just probability smiling for the camera.”

Unknown

 

We recently had the chance to visit with Jeanette Laitner, a familiar face in the park’s Card Room. That’s her on the right in the photo below, setting up with Irene Renn. We know how popular card games are at Silveridge, so we were eager to hear more.
First, let’s start with a list of the games currently on a weekly schedule: Dominoes, Cribbage, Euchre, Hand & Foot, Mah Jongg, National Mah Jongg, Samba, Texas Hold ‘Em, and Triple Play. (Bunco will start up again in January. Check for updates on Cribbage, Pinochle and others.)

 

Jeanette informed us that if you’re new to the park, the games are always open and new players always welcome. As she put it, “just show up.” However, she pointed out the signup sheets on a bulletin board in the hallway alongside the Activities Office. These, she explained, help with planning and set-up, and gave the example that sometimes one of the games she leads, Triple Play, requires adding tables; and, as part of her planning, she organizes the game so that each player gets a different partner each time.
If you haven’t been a card player and think you might want to take it up, Jeanette tells us that they have folks happy to do some training. (She suggested that the easiest games for a beginner to pick up would probably be Bunco or Hand & Foot.)
We also like to learn a little about the people who help keep the park’s activities humming along, so we asked Jeanette to tell us about herself…

 

The People of the Park

A VISIT WITH JEANETTE LAITNER

By Dale Dauten

“Life is like a game of cards.

You can’t control the hand you’re dealt, only how you play it.”

Unknown

You could say that Jeanette Laitner is on her fourth life. The first was as a farm kid, growing up beside two brothers and two sisters on the family’s wheat farm near Grant, Nebraska. Then she was off to college in Kearney at what is now part of the University of Nebraska. However, one summer, coming home to Grant and taking a waitressing job in a local café, she met the cook, James Dugger, and they fell in love. And that led to her second life: the young couple married and moved to Omaha and opened Dugger’s Café. He was Cook; she was Manager/Bookkeeper, and for 20 years they served up homestyle meals, becoming best known for their French dip sandwiches, finger steaks and sourdough pancakes. Along the way, they had four sons. Those times ended only when James fell ill and passed, and Jeanette decided to go in search of something new.
That eventually led to her third, and most surprising life: as a hypnotist. That transformation transpired when Jeanette was leading a singles group in Omaha and met her second husband, George Laitner. He was a retired teacher/administrator who took up hypnotism and it led him to a second career as a hypnotherapist. Jeanette joined in, and together they had a thriving practice. Jeanette told us that she had all types of requests from people, which she summed up as “do better or stop doing.”

George and Jeanette Laitner
Mostly they helped people quit smoking or to lose weight, but they also had athletes at all levels who wanted to improve. Jeanette said of those clients, “The sportspeople all came back and said they did better, even the wrestlers, but especially the golfers.” (Some of you reading this might be thinking that you need to book an appointment, but Jeanette has retired from that life and now only does self-hypnosis.)

 

That brings us to Jeanette’s fourth life, her current one. Sadly, she lost her second husband, George, to cancer and that meant she was open to something new. The impetus for the next change came when her son Lorin announced that he needed to move to Arizona. The two were so close that Jeanette’s reaction was, “If you’re moving, so am I.” Jeanette also had two snowbird friends who were regular visitors to the Valley and had urged her to try it, so the idea of moving held extra appeal.

 

She went online and came up with five options for parks and told Lorin to check them out when he was in Arizona. He narrowed her list of five down to two, but told her, “I think you’d like Silveridge better.” She booked a place and soon became a fulltime resident. And that’s how it happened that you are now likely to spot her in the Card Room five days a week.