Persons celebrating an Anniversary in January 2006

The first greetings of the year go to our country’s representative of North America – Andy Ansel celebrated his 45th birthday and the New Year’s Day simultaneously. His "retrograde move" from California back to the East coast was officially forced, surely a sad loss too for the Mechanics’ Institute Chess Club. Andy’s activities as a chess columnist – especially in Squares – are common knowledge, once more we refer to our member publications. Additionally he distinguished himself as a reviewer of chess books, particularly for GrandMaster Square, but also for Chess Today he contributed reviews now and then. Andy has told about his own collection in the a.m. column, meanwhile some of his chess memorabilia can be admired online, you will find the selected items at Andy Ansel's Collection [PS (2006-02-10): Meanwhile this link is broken.].

Bernhard Schippan comes next on our birthday list, our member from Bochum completed the sixth decade of his life on January 9th. Since decades Bernd has also been active as a collector of autographs, it’s going the round that he once even managed to enter into a short correspondence with Bobby Fischer. Only for a few years he has also devoted himself to collecting chess books: the "trigger" was certainly a visit to his fellow club member Hans-Jürgen Fresen ...
As a chess player Bernd Schippan is a really strong amateur (Elo about 2240) who gained many titles at a local level: thirteen times alone he won the club championship of his SV Bochum 02 (which he joined in June 1971). In the meantime he is only a non-active member as he prefers to compete in the regional league playing now for the SK Herne-Sodingen 1924.

On January 17th we could send congratulations to the Far East, our "Chinese-German" Jörg Abramowski celebrated his 45th birthday in Beijing. Coming from the Ruhr area (Essen) he ended up – caused by his occupation – in the Middle Kingdom where he is employed as a trainer by DaimlerChrysler. As such he is naturally endowed with a lively nature, many of us met him shortly after his joining the KWA at our Amsterdam general meeting and will confirm that he became effortlessly integrated into our association.

Peter Verschueren from the North Dutch town of Kudelstaart is the last one of our birthday quartet, he turned 45 on January 22nd. As far as we can extract from internet sources he is active as a chess player (rating > 1800) in his "Schaakclub Aalsmeer". He told us to be a professional in database administration, so we can still hope to win him over as a companion for the development of our BoC. We couldn’t find a photo of him but there is a funny caricature in the Archives of the SC Aalsmeer – please scroll down there!

Congratulations!

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