Persons celebrating an Anniversary in July 2009

Directly on the 1st of July Stellan Persson could celebrate his special day, he then reached the "73". Since November 1998 his Skakhuset has been a pure internet business which he runs from his Danish domicile Vaerlose. An "institution" is also his annual chess book auction at the end of March, this year it was the No. 42 already! Otherwise we would like to refer to the more detailed appreciation of July 2006 on the occasion of his "70th".

Manfred Mädler too is again present in our column, he could look back on a full ¾ century on July 15th. On the occasion of our last general meeting at Dresden and of the following chess olympiad he and his chess shop were many times the centre of attention, we may recall our visit in November 2008 as well as Manfred's talk show during the chess olympiad (see the 3rd gallery in our short look back at the olympiad). His own book on this great event is in preparation, it will hopefully be published still in the course of this year.

In the following we will shortly introduce three new members: Rob Spaans from the Dutch town of Heerhugowaard (West Friesland, province of North Holland) joined the KWA only recently, he turned 44 on July 18th. In this case we readily refer to his nice and substantial web site which dedicates to the history and culture of chess, showing clearly his priorities: www.scacchis.nl/

Last year already James Ward joined our association, with him we can welcome our third member from the "Emerald Isle" of Ireland: he celebrated his 53rd birthday on July 20th – presumably at the Irish west coast in Galway County where his home town is located. His main focus is – apart from chess history – problem chess, including endgame studies. Obviously for decades he has closely been involved in artistic chess as in 1988 already you could find his name in the address list of the "Schwalbe" members (according to W. Dittmann, Der Flug der Schwalbe).

Only one day later Fabrizio Zavatarelli had a good cause for celebration – on the occasion of his 45th birthday our greetings go to Milan. The interests of our new companion focus above all on chess biographies of the 19th century, so he works on Kolisch and sporadically on L. Paulsen, G.H. Mackenzie, Winawer and Charousek as well. According to himself, he additionally pursues "philological studies" on games (with regard to the exact date, place, correct notation …).

Congratulations!

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