The Santa Fe Bridge Center has officially dedicated its new building to Leonard Helman — rabbi, attorney and longtime devotee of the cerebral card game.

First lady Barbara Richardson, Mayor David Coss and an internationally known bridge columnist were among those speaking at Saturday's dedication ceremony.

Helman, 81, and disabled by Parkinson's disease, began his remarks to more than 100 people by joking that he's "often thought about arranging my own funeral so I can enjoy it."

For us, bridge is "the game of life. ... It's more than a pastime. It's a passion," the Gold Life Master told the group.

The Leonard A. Helman Bridge Center, a 2,200-square-foot prefabricated building with a kitchen, two bathrooms and one large room that can accommodate more than a dozen games at once, is in the Thomas Business Park at 3827 Thomas Road, south of Airport Road.

Members of the 200-strong club donated $200,000 and loaned it another $240,000 for the project, according to Neil Hunter, president of the Santa Fe group, known as Unit 383 of the American Contract Bridge League.

Helman's $50,000 donation was five times more than anybody else's, Hunter said, joking, "That's how you get your name on a building."

Helman's nephew, Steven Abramson of San Francisco, recalled a train trip he and his brother made from their home on Long Island to Hartford, Conn., to visit their grandmother. When they arrived, their Uncle Leonard, who was living there, "immediately grabbed us and took us to our first bridge tournament," Abramson said.

Among the bridge notables attending the opening were Jay Baum, the Memphis-based chief executive officer of the American Contract Bridge League, and Jerry Fleming, a Los Alamos resident who becomes national president of the league next year. But there were no bridge celebrities more sought after than Phillip Alder, a bridge columnist for The New York Times and other publications.

Alder, who is from Britain but now lives in Florida, said he once shared a room with Helman and a "bar mitzvah boy" while visiting an editor of a bridge magazine in Sydney, Australia. Another time, Alder said, Helman and an Australian rabbi teamed up with two Roman Catholic priests at a bridge tournament on Norfolk Island north of New Zealand.

James "Jim" Joy, president of the center's board of directors, said he met Helman at the club's former rented building on Cielo Court shortly after moving to Santa Fe three years ago after 26 years overseas with the U.S. Foreign Service. "He made a point of saying something nice to us," Joy said. "It made us feel welcome. I learned later that was typical of him."

Paul Grace, president of the Beit Tikva Congregation where Helman is the founding rabbi, praised him as someone who treats busboys the same as governors. "If a person could be compared to a bridge hand," Grace said, "we're in the presence of a grand slam."

Contact Tom Sharpe at 986-3080 or tsharpe@sfnewmexican.com.