Shelbourne Richard Lyman was born at the Brooklyn Jewish Hospital on October 22, 1936 and passed away at the age of 82 on August 11, 2019 at the Wilson Medical Center in Johnson City, New York just one week after he was diagnosed with cancer.
Lyman loved nature and lived with his family and dogs on a 100-acre farm in upstate Windsor, New York. His ashes were spread near a creek on his farm where his first dog, Chipper, was buried and the ashes of one of his good friends were also were spread.
The nephew of Harry Lyman, the Dean of New England Chess, Lyman grew up playing chess in Boston before moving to New York and becoming a master, but it was the Fischer-Spassky match that made him famous.
Lyman stood in front of the camera narrating, analyzing and discussing the games in a homespun way that viewers found endearing and likable and it was Lyman’s personality and style that had as much to do with chess club memberships multiplying overnight as it was the fact that an American was playing for the World Championship.
Speaking of the match Lyman said, “chess is a dramatic event. You could hear the swords clang on the shields with every move. They went at each other. The average person is turned onto chess when it’s presented right. Trying to figure out the next move is a fascinating adventure—an adventure people can get into.” And that is why he was so popular.
While passionate about chess, he also liked to talk politics and tell jokes. Lyman held a master’s degree in sociology from Harvard University and taught sociology at the City College of New York for three and a half years.
Shortly after the 1972 World Championship was over he began writing a syndicated column about chess and he also hosted a two-hour broadcast covering the 1986 World Championship.
As a player, Lyman won the Boston Championship as a teenager and at the age of 27 he won the Marshall Chess Club Championship. At one point, he was the 18th-highest-ranked player in the United States.
Fischer died in 2008, Larry Evans, who helped Fischer write My 60 Memorable Games passed away in 2010 and William Lombardy, Fischer’s second during the 1972 match died in 2017. Pal Benko, who yielded his place in the 1970 Interzonal to Fischer passed away in 2019 and with Lyman also passing away last year, it was the end of an era.
The following Lyman game was played in the American Chess Congress that was held in Hollywood in 1954. The tournament set a new record for prize money distributed.
Originally billed as the United States Open Championship, the tournament committee, headed by Herman Steiner, insisted that it be conducted as a series of rated class tournaments while the USCF insisted it should be one big section with no discrimination as to ratings.
As a result of the disagreement the USCF withdrew it's sanction and awarded the US Open to New Orleans when the Louisiana Chess Federation and the New Orleans Chess Club stepped in with a generous bid.
This official US Open tournament caused controversy when just before the tournament the Louisiana State Legislature passed several very restrictive segregation laws which made it illegal in Louisiana for the Open to accept entries from black players.
There’s no doubt the laws passed by the Louisiana State Legislature were in reaction to the US Supreme Court’s May 17th unanimous ruling that racial segregation of schools was unconstitutional.
By the way, Linda Brown, the Kansas girl at the center of this Supreme Court ruling died at age 76 on March 26, 2018.
 |
| Linda Brown |
These laws clashed with USCF policy of not discriminating based on race and made it impossible to accept entry from black players for the Open. The USCF claimed notice of the new laws came to late to change the locale or even notify members of the restrictions.
The USCF decided not to cancel the event because “the Federation has never believed in principles that cost somebody else money! The organizers in New Orleans had acted in good faith in preparing for the Open Championship; they had expended money, time, energy, and ingenuity in promoting the event. The unfortunate situation created by a few rabble-rousing politicians in the Louisiana Legislature made the promoters in New Orleans equally the victims of its fanaticism. Injustice to the negro chess player would not be ameliorated by imposing an equal injustice on the innocent promoters of the U.S. Championship in New Orleans…" The USCF’s statement about costing somebody else money probably should have read “costing us money.”
In any case, there was a good turn out and the official US Open was won by Larry Evans and Arturo Pomar ahead of Robert Steinmeyer and Arthur Bisguier who tied for third.
Ironically, the Hollywood committee finally decided to hold an open after all and it was also agreed that the players would all participate in one big section; there were 74 entries.
Top Scores:
1) Arthur Bisguier 11.5-2.5
2) Larry Evans 1.0-3.0
3-4) Nicolas Rossolimo and Herman Steiner 10.5-3.5
5-6) Arturo Pomar and James T. Sherwin 10.0-4.0
7-9) Isaac Kashdan, Jack Moskowitz and Dr. Peter Lapiken 9.5-4.5
10-15) Harry Borochow, Irving Rivise, Kenneth Grover, Shelby Lyman, Olaf Ulvestad and Amos Kaminski 8.5-5.5
 |
| Henry Gross |
No comments:
Post a Comment