| | Norman Peacor
Massachusetts has had its share of politicians who run for national office, but few in chess compare to C. Norman Peacor, life member of MACA, who had a full career as an insurance executive, and, who ran and became the USCF's first Treasurer in 1976. He died at age 84 on July 16 at an assisted living center in Providence, RI, and was buried near his retirement home in Orleans on August 13. Born in Somerville (like Harry Nelson Pillsbury in 1872), he grew up in Stoneham, where he and his two brothers attended secondary school, and then received his BA from Tufts University in Medford and a MS in math from the University of Michigan.
Peacor spent the bulk of his insurance career at the home office of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. in Springfield, rising to become Executive Vice President, with huge civic responsibilities detailed in the July 20 Springfield Republican obituary. No one in the chess world heard about his passing until weeks later because his civic work overshadowed his hobbies and family pursuits. Peacor realized during the "chess boom" of the 1970's that a large part of the "endowment" of most chess organizations was in the life membership funds that turned into investments involving more than 10,000 USCF members and millions of dollars. This has sparked political debates for four decades.
In short, it was sort of by chance that he became involved in chess politics at all, and decided to run for the USCF board in 1976, becoming its first treasurer. Fred Townsend of Connecticut told us this story more than 30 years ago, but only recently relayed this again to current USCF officials, and this is scheduled to appear in October, Chess Life magazine.
Also online is a Peacor family history, and, his relationship counseling the USCF Trust and USCF business office will be more widely known when there is commentary on www.uschess.org, among those who served USCF during the the 1970's and 1980's. What isn't online is his love of games like chess and bridge, or even that he played golf.
Among the chess officials who were consulted besides Fred Townsend were Leroy Dubeck, Bill Goichberg, George Mirijanian (MACA's current president) and Tony Cottell (now of FL, also a life member of MACA), who followed Peacor as USCF treasurer, and valued his counsel in trying to protect the USCF's life membership assets. Most helpful were connections made by Glenn Petersen, Chess Life for Kids editor, who has held a variety of positons in the USCF.
It is hoped that the full obituary of Peacor (and other New England chess officials and players) will be linked from the USCF's "In Passing" memorial section to their respective state chess association websites. Many of the roughly 250 life members of MACA (and many others) are also honored by donations made to MACA's Living Memorial Chess Fund, also described in detail at www.masschess.org.
Paul E. Taylor
Paul E. Taylor, 87, of Warwick, RI, who organized chess educational opportunities for youth to seniors, died Aug. 26, 2011 in Rhode Island. Born in Altoona, PA, he was a 45-year executive for the Brown & Sharpe Mfg. Co. in Rhode Island, retiring as International Marketing Manager for a company still well known in the precision measuring tools industry.
In his retirement, he joined forces with Gilbert Gosselin, father of MACA's Living Memorial Chess Fund, and provided the mentoring to establish scholastic and senior chess activities throughout Rhode Island. He provided the "programs," and MACA provided the chess sets in a long relationship between the states.
Praise of his work can be found at his guestbook at www.murphyfuneralhomes.org from families in Providence, Bristol, North Kingstown, Portsmouth and West Warwick, RI, and his good work will long be a part of www.masschess.org, and its Living Memorial Chess Fund.
James W. Dunion
Few chess players gain multiple college degrees, travel, have a family and serve their country and community in the manner of James W. Dunion, 51, of Dudley who died July 30, 2011, and was laid to rest Aug. 8 in Norwich, CT, with full military honors.
Married in Korea in 1987, he visited many countries as an Air Force pilot, and continued his education at the University of Connecticut at Storrs gaining a masters in math, and was very close to a doctorate from the same institution at the time of his passing. He was self-employed as a high level computer program, specializing in computer security.
He was active in the Masonic order, HAM radio, as a softball coach, a USCF local tournament director, and, sought out MACA's help to establish local library chess programs in southern Worcester County. For a variety of reasons, he did not live to see these chess programs materialize.
A memorial rated tournament was conducted Sept. 18 at the University of Connecticut and the club is supporting chess educational training for his son, William T. Dunion of Dudley.
Volunteers are sought to continue Jim Dunion's work as a chess organizer and director in both Massachusetts and his native state of Connecticut, and MACA will provide the chess equipment if volunteers mentor these programs.
Howard Kaikow
A leader in establishing bibliographic standards for the Internet and the computer industry, Howard Kaikow, 69, of Nashua, NH, a life member of MACA and USCF, died April 1 after a long illness.
Until he was about 35, according to his sister, Rita Kaikow of New York, Howard studied Economics at CCNY, University of Michigan, University of Maryland and University of Minnesota, working at some of these and at University of Chicago and Northwestern University, then coming to New England to work at Data General and later at Digital Equipment Corp., which is now part of HewlettPackard. He set up a chess online discussion group at Digital, according to Bob Messenger, also of Nashua. After he left Digital, he became an independent contractor of Internet technology.
Despite not having a degree in computer science, Howard started working in the computer standards community more than 30 years ago, being self taught. He participated in U.S. and international standards committees (some as chair, vice chair or editor) primarily via ANSI, ECMA and ISO.
He was best known for his pioneering efforts that led to the ISO 9660 standard and its predecessor, the High Sierra format, the underlying file system for CD-ROM still used today.
In 1993 he became interested in using Microsoft Word macros to facilitate commenting on and writing standards, as well as conducting question and answers on a wide variety of Internet terms that are well known today, but only known by a few academics during this era. You can find some of the 1993 work at http://ftp.back2roots.org/padua/text/CDROM-Survey. He had a lifelong frustration with technical manuals, but preached friends and family about reading books for lifelong education.
His chess career goes back roughly 40 years to the Marshall Chess Club in New York City during his undergrad days at CCNY. He gave up correspondence chess when he told friends, "I do not wish to play against a computer," probably the frustration of many other amateurs. His family is donating his chess library to MACA's Living Memorial Chess Fund, and attempting to sell his National Standards web domain as to his wishes.
Thanks to Rita Kaikow for putting Howard's life in computer I-T into perspective, a field that many chessplayers have had keen interest in recent decades.
|