90-year-old loves her Scrabble, good or bad
[attach]6056[/attach]Apart from the clack of scrabble tiles and the occasional murmur of scores quietly being added up, the room is silent.
The only indication that today’s meeting of the Toronto Scrabble Club is marking a milestone for one of its members is a solitary balloon taped to the back of Shirley Drucker’s chair.
Drucker confidently lays her word on the board. She smiles, hits the clock that times the game and starts picking her new tiles.
It’s a process she’s repeated thousands of times in her 37 years with the club, only today was different.
Today, the club was marking her 90th birthday.
For Drucker, spending time playing scrabble is something she looks forward to.
“I don’t care if I’m good or I’m bad,” she says. “I love it.”
Playing for as long as she has, Drucker certainly isn’t a bad player, tallying the highest single word score in her first game with the word “impacted”.
And as much as the club has played a big role in Drucker’s life, she’s had an equally large impact on the club’s members.
“She everyone’s bubbie,” says club member Lisa Kessler. “She’s just a lovely, wonderful, warm lady. It makes me happy that she’s here.”
Drucker was born in Sudbury in 1922 and moved to North York with her late husband Fred and their two daughters in 1969.
“She’s awesome,” says daughter Elizabeth Spivak. “She’s just a trooper. She had cancer three years ago and she pulled through, no problem.”
Scrabble keeps Drucker sharp and is her main social activity.
“It’s fabulous that she’s at this age,” says Spivak. “She looks great and she’s still doing what she loves and she’s not slowing down.”