Persons celebrating an Anniversary in August 2007

In this year’s August three birthdays are waiting for us, for the first time in this column and moreover celebrating an anniversary is our Dutch member Ton (A.P.J.) de Vreede from Capelle aan den IJssel, a town situated in the province "Zuid-Holland": he turned 60 just on the first day of this month. We only know about his chess activities that he is a committed collector.

A special anniversary occured in the circles of the French collectors when Jean Mennerat – our eldest KWA member – completed whole 90 years on August 11th. Unfortunately we didn’t hear from him for quite a long time, we hope and wish that he will still be able to pursue his hobby for as many unclouded years as possible. Our readers will find a photo of him at Harald Balló’s web page Chapais' verkanntes Manuskript or Un Manuscrit Méconnu: Le Manuscrit de Chapais respectively, as an additional reading to our former appreciations (2004, 2005) we can offer a review on "Chapais" published some time ago in the magazine EG [No.145 (Vol. IX) July 2002]: an excerpt from the introductory paragraph (p. 591) as well as the review (by John Roycroft; p. 631-633).

In the last years (2004, 2005) we have illuminated the life and the work of the well-known arbiter Geurt Gijssen as well, on August 15th he could look back on 73 years. The Dutchman – often referred to as a "rules guru" – still appeared last in our Dutch Trilogy (30/11/2006), meanwhile a page has been written about him at Wikipedia which offers a résumé with further sources and links and which also goes into recent events like the spectacular world championship match in Elista 2006 where Geurt Gijssen had to cope with unusual critical voices.

Congratulations!

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