c. 2007 Religion News Service

TRENTON, N.J. _ It’s Tuesday night and Laura Logue is at the bingo. She’s here every week, at the bingo hall right next to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Holy Trinity _ the same hall she’s been at these past 43 years, downstairs, where they used to let you smoke while you played, and where her friends still gather: her granddaughter, her neighbors, the whole loyal lot.

“I just won a whopping $13,” she’ll tell you in a voice raspy from too many cigarettes.

She’s 83 years old, her hearing is iffy, and you have to shout to get your ideas across.

“You wanna save money?” she asks, red-ink dauber in hand, as the voice of the bingo caller upstairs reads the next number over a loudspeaker. Logue pauses, lets her rasp sink in: “Don’t take up bingo.”

Pretty soon, Logue won’t.

“NEXT TUESDAY _ DEC. 11 _ LAST BINGO!” a sign in the wood-paneled hall reads.

The end, Logue knows, is inevitable. “It used to be crowded,” she says, as the voice of the bingo caller fills the hall.

“B-12.”

“O-75.”

“O-69.”

“It was a good bingo,” she tells you. “Sometimes it was hard to get a seat. So many people would come.”

Logue gapes out over the bingo basement. Chair after chair _ table after table _ is empty.

There are a lot of empty bingo tables at a lot of bingo halls across the state, where bingo revenues have dropped $7.7 million in the past four years, says Jeff Lamm, spokesman for the state Division of Consumer Affairs.

The roughly 8,000 New Jersey bingo operators brought in $57.5 million in revenue in 2003. That number plummeted to $49.8 million last year _ a 13 percent drop in four years.

Lamm blames the decline on a fall-off in disposable income. Bingo games, he says, are probably as much a place to socialize as an opportunity to win money.

Dave Dubnanski, Holy Trinity’s vice president, remembers the glory days of bingo: Big crowds, big cash, big profit.

That was before slot machines, before Atlantic City took off and seniors _ those bingo stalwarts _ abandoned church basements for the promise of more lucrative one-armed bandits. A state smoking ban and a switch in game regulations didn’t help either, he says.

“The perception was it was bringing in money, but when you look at the overhead and the state of New Jersey’s cut, there was a minimal amount of profit or no profit at all,” he says.

Still, Dubnanski _ who’s been calling bingo the past year _ is going to miss it. “It’s a culture,” he says. “With bingo, people are in this comfort zone.”

Upstairs, where the money gets counted, Michael Martynenko, 83, in brown sweater with brown checkered shirt, opens the cash box. Born in Ukraine, Martynenko survived Nazi Germany and fled to the United States in 1949.

Above his head, a chart on the wall shows bingo attendance steadily sinking.

“I don’t like,” he says, when asked of the game’s imminent end.

His son, Mike Martynenko, 56, helps keep track of the profits.

“Years ago it used to be $300 a night; $600 to $700, that would be a high night. Now, it’s $50 to $100 a night, if that,” he says.

This year, the church will make a little more than $3,000 on bingo, he says. The past several years, it was $6,000. Go back 10 years, it was easily $20,000 or more.

“It’s really dwindled,” he says. “Attendance is down. If we go below 50 players, we’re in trouble.”

On the bingo floor upstairs, Mary Lee Leszczuk sells admissions. There are 44 players tonight, she says.

“We used to have 200,” she says. “It’s sad. We’ve lost a lot.”

A poor man’s casino, she calls the game. Still, Leszczuk wishes it didn’t have to end.

“There’s a certain feeling at this bingo … ” she says. “But I’m a relative newcomer. I’ve only been coming 17 years.”

Mary Ann Robinson has been coming 43 _ since the doors first opened in 1964. She tapes her paper game boards together, to make it easier to check the numbers all at once. The big jackpot _ $250 _ has been hers only twice.

“It’s luck,” she says. “I’ve been coming here all this time and only two wins.”

Shirley Phillips has been coming 20 years with her friend Barbara Zimmerman. After this week, when the last bingo number is called at Holy Trinity, she plans to go to Tuesday night bingo at St. Raphael-Holy Angels parish in Hamilton instead.

“We’re not gonna stop going,” she says. “This is our addiction. Not drugs or booze but bingo.”

Rose Zerrenner worked the bingo since she was 15, since her mom, Mary Scabarozi, started the game back in the ’60s.

“We’d walk around, sell food all night long,” she recalls. “I’ve been here since we opened. My whole life’s been in this church.”

Over the loudspeaker, caller Jean Halko keeps a slow, deliberate pace.

“You find yourself daydreaming,” she says as the numbers echo throughout the hall.

“O-66.”

“B-2.”

“G-11.”

Somewhere, someone shouts the word that ends the game.

“That’s a bingo,” Halko says.

(Jeff Trently is a staff writer for The Times of Trenton, N.J. He can be contacted at jtrently(at)njtimes.com.)

Photos of Bingo at the Trenton church are available via https://religionnews.com.

KRE/DS END TRENTLY