Persons celebrating an Anniversary in June 2007

Only two birthdays are to be noted at the beginning of summer, this time we start in Brunswick where Roger Klittich celebrated his 71st birthday on June 3rd. There was a detailed appreciation of his "70th" still in last year, naturally he is the focus of the passionate collectors’ attention anyway owing to the regularly occurring chess auctions of the House Klittich-Pfankuch: the forthcoming June auction should be a meeting of chess bibliophiles once again (please take notice of our announcement on this matter).

Leonard Raymond Reitstein from Cape Town who looked back on 79 years only 3 days later (and therefore has the "80" in his sights) made his debut in our column one year ago. We may add now that Leonard was quite close to correspondence chess as well – he edited a booklet South African Correspondence Chess Championship 1950-52 [Betts #25-196] and he was an active CC player himself. Obviously he had his peak in the 60ies when he took part in the 5th CC World Championship 1965-68 though he couldn’t reach the finals (his last rating is 2320, taken from the ICCF rating list 2005). In 1982 he also made a catalogue of his chess library [Lusis #22].
PS: Moreover the National Library of South Africa is situated in his home town housing the "Alain White Problem Collection" as one of its special collections. Its formation was already recorded in 1957 in the first problem book published in South Africa: Some Problems For My Friends by Donald G. McIntyre, a current link to the library gives at least a short summary.

Congratulations!

PS: You will find all previous birthday greetings in our archives!