Persons celebrating an Anniversary in June 2009

This month we will start with our member Matias Jolowicz – on June 2nd he could look back on 6 whole decades. You may find a short presentation of him at his homepage and regularly meet the doctor who is active in the chess association of Salzgitter at the German championships of physicians where he reached a respectable 10th place this year (with 157 participants – see the pictorial report at the DSB web site). By winning the 35th 'Alpenpokal' [Alps Cup] in Oberstdorf-Langenwang at the beginning of this year he was able to notch up a nice success as well. Naturally he was "mentioned" long ago by his professional colleague Helmut Pfleger in the Deutsches Ärzteblatt – we recall the column Ein guter Rat - verlieren Sie gegen Dr. Jolowicz! [A good piece of advice – lose against Dr. Jolowicz!] (May 15th, 1998).

Roger Klittich is also with us again, on the following day he celebrated his 73rd birthday – only 2 ½ weeks before the 55th auction of his antiquarian bookshop (on June 20th) which will already be history with the publication of this column – and hopefully has been a success again! The next auction is intended to take place on November 20-21, 2009.

Leonard Raymond Reitstein – in our column since 2006 – completed his 81st year on June 6th and naturally belongs to the (currently 9-headed) circle of our honorary members. We are pleased to say that he finished his project last year – the bibliography of South African chess, and that he has put free copies for our members at our disposal: once more a hearty thank you to South Africa!

Roelof Jansma makes his debut in our column as a new member, he celebrated his 63rd birthday on June 9th. As recently reported, he represents one of our latest institutional members as the curator of the Alexander Rueb chess collection – here again the link to our web page.

Two days later Maria Carmen Romeo Pérez celebrated her birthday (her number of years ending in a zero), she was mentioned for the first time in our tributes of last June (2008). She belongs to the group of authors having contributed to the Festschrift für Egbert Meissenburg – Schachforschungen last year; with that her essay Alfonso X the Wise: The Law of Gambling Houses and Chess has been published in printed form. In the meantime her article on the Schacs d'amor manuscript and its three authors has come out in Spanish as well ["La Valencia literaria del siglo XV, el manuscrito de Schacs d'amor y sus tres autores"], see the last issue of Scacchi e Scienze Applicate (p.19-26) for that, and again the goddesschess web site for an English version.

Our Danish member Claes Løfgren had his special day on June 19th, we congratulate him on his "55th". Together with his Nordic chess friends he has frequently attended our events (last still in Brunswick and Dresden 2008) and therefore you will find him quite often on our pages. Nevertheless we will not be able to add so much to his first presentation of June 2005, but in my search I came across a correspondence chess game of Claes which has "immortalized" him in a CC game collection and which shows his playing strength in correspondence chess (at a time when chess computers were still less helpful): see Claes Løfgren – Chris van Dyck (XV World Championship), the annotated game (draw in move 44) is included in Alex Dunne, Modern Postal Masterpieces (1994), p. 97-100 – most collectors will have this book on their shelves.

As a (relatively) new member we welcome Matthias Limberg, we still remember his joining the KWA at our last general meeting (Dresden 2008). He celebrated his birthday on June 19th as well – with currently 32 years he belongs to the youngest companions in our association. In chess he is active as a collector and as a player and youth trainer for his Oberhausen club SV Schwarze Dame Osterfeld 1988.

This time our French friend Alain Fayard concludes the selection of our birthdays, he completed half a century only one day later. He was only briefly mentioned in our column 5 years ago, in the meantime Alain has given up his adopted country Italy and long since come back to Paris. Before his time in Rome he had made a name for himself particularly as a chess editor for many years (for Le Matin, later on Europe Echecs), and he has also been included in the Publications of our Members as a book author (Joël Lautier joue et gagne). He joined in our yearly meetings at Amsterdam 2005 and La Tour-de-Peilz 2006, and it was purely by chance that we spotted him in Wijk 2007 as a participant in the Open.
In their Almanach des échecs. Informations 1988 (Éd. Payot, 1989), p. 27, Christophe Bouton and Jean-Pierre Mercier have reported about the end of Alain's chess column in Le Matin – the passage is quoted below:

La mort d’un journal… et d’une chronique
Le quotidien Le Matin met la clé sous la porte. Notre confrère Alain Fayard cesse de faire la seule chronique d’échecs quotidienne en France. Joueur de niveau international, Alain Fayard (petit-fils de l’éditeur) avait commencé en mars 1979, à 20 ans, sa rubrique d’hebdomadaire, elle ne devint quotidienne qu’en 1986. De nombreux joueurs achetaient Le Matin pour les nouvelles internationals et françaises, parties, portraits de champions régulièrement donnés dans la page «jeux» du quotidien de la rue Hérold.
En 1986, notre ex-confrère avait saisi l’opportunité de la télématique en déclinant sa chronique sur le service minitel du Nouvel Observateur. Mais l’année 1988 ne lui sera pas faste. Le Nouvel Observateur Télématique rompra, au mois d’août 1988, sous la pression du mensuel Europe Echecs – que Fayard avait pourtant initié à la télématique –, les accords passés avec celui qui fut le plus jeune chroniqueur de France.

Congratulations!

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