PASSINGS: Marshall Miles

Marshall Miles

Attorney and bridge champion

Marshall Miles, 86, an attorney and champion bridge player best known for his 1963 book “All Fifty-Two Cards” and other writings on the game, died Feb. 5 at Redlands Community Hospital of complications from a heart attack, his family said.

“He really has contributed to all aspects of the game,” Linda Granell of the American Contract Bridge League told the Riverside Press-Enterprise when Miles was named to the league’s hall of fame in 2005. “He is a world champion player, an outstanding author.”

Miles won seven North American titles, most in partnership with fellow bridge expert and author Eddie Kantar. Miles also was part of the victorious senior team at the 2004 World Bridge Games in Istanbul.

Over more than 50 years, he wrote 11 books and many magazine articles about bridge. He was known as an imaginative player and said his favorite part of the game was bidding.

Most of his first book, “How to Win at Duplicate Bridge” (1957), was written during his spare time while serving in the Army after World War II. “All Fifty-Two Cards,” another early book, remains required reading to move up to intermediate tournament play, according to the hall of fame.

Marshall Lauren Miles was born Dec. 16, 1926, in Loma Linda to a dry-goods merchant and his secretary wife. At 15, Miles was taught to play bridge by a friend of his mother.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1948 from what was then Claremont Men’s College, he served in the Army and Navy before earning a law degree from UCLA in 1954. For more than 40 years, he practiced law in San Bernardino, retiring in 1997.

Times staff reports

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