Introduction

Continuing with my scanning of Vol. 2 of Dad's chess diary, let's go back to the beginning of the binder. It has one blank sheet before the first coversheet.

	The cover sheet is dated April 8, 1937 and signed with Henry's elegant signature. Interestingly, April 8 was on a Thursday in 1937.
	On the obverse, a quote from Napoleon.
	There follows a handmade and signed interior title page.
	Another quote, this from Anthony Santasiere, an American master from the 1920s to the 1950s.
	A photograph of Henry taken Thanksgiving, 1938. (Thanksgiving was Nov. 24 that year and I assume this was taken sometime between the 24th and 27th.)

Chess in Kansas City?

I know that people are out there blogging about everything under the sun, but I think I've got a topic that's a little new and different. This blog is mostly for family and friends, but there are bound to be a few people out there interested in Depression-era history, the history of chess, and Kansas City history.

What, you may ask, is all this talk about history? Isn't this a blog about chess in Kansas City?

Well, yes, its a blog about chess in Kansas City, but its about chess my father played in Kansas City from 1937 until 1940 when WW II intervened.

Its all beautifully documented in a chess diary I found while unpacking Mom and Dad into their new assisted-living facility. There, on top of the box for his beautiful ivory chess set that he brought home from England during the war was a faded S. S. Kresge Co. collegiate binder that contained Vol. 2 of his chess diary. I'm starting in the middle and skipping right past Vol. 1 (but we'll get to that eventually). I'm going to gradually scan a few pages a week and put them online until the entire corpus is digitally conserved.

So here's the first installment--a game with the famous Master (Grandmaster IMHO despite never holding the title), Israel Albert Horowitz from Jan. 17, 1940. The match lasted 5 hours and when Horowitz offered my dad a draw it was accepted--he had an early class the next day.

From the scan (200 dpi jpg) you can get a feel for the fragility of the faded old pages and the character of the binder (Model 3070, made in the U.S.A.). The pages are 5½" by 8½" and the pre-printed score sheet shows indications of the time: a misprint on line 13 and, it being just days into the new year of 1940, "39" scratched out.

Just a few pages earlier in the diary, there is a small note at the top of a page, "War ruins chess! (among other things)." Truer words could not have been written and within 12 months, Henry was drafted and Pearl Harbor would be bombed.