First Moves
Remembering Jerry
“I will be the man yet that shall make you great.” ~Falstaff in “henry IV, part II”
By JONATHAN HILTON
I was paIred wIth a man named Jerry hanken at the 2004 King’s Island Open as my “punishment” for having a measly 1/4 heading into the last round. as a 14-year-old obsessed with ratings, I was hoping for a quick victory against a floored master. when it was time for the round to start, I set up the pieces as quickly as I could, played 1. d4 against an empty chair, and started the clock. Fifty minutes later, an ill-tempered senior citizen rolled up to the board in a scooter. he banged out his first eight moves and offered a draw. I brushed it off. he became determined to beat me, and it was only after six hours of shuffling wood back and forth that he was again willing to split the point. Furious, he grunted, “Young man, when you turned down my draw offer like that, it was an insult to my ‘manlihood’!” (although this word is not in the dic- tionary, one can imagine that it is a cross between “man- hood” and “manliness.” when Jerry talked, he frequently coined neologisms.) he then wheeled over toward the top boards, still talking in a loud voice. a floor director tried to escort him out. “I’m the tournament reporter! You can’t kick me out!” he shouted. puzzled, I packed up my set and left. I must have changed a lot physically
over the next two years, because when I faced Jerry a second time at the 2006 King’s Island Open, he didn’t recognize me. he looked different himself: he was walking with a cane and he had lost a hundred pounds. I outplayed him in the opening, but when the tide turned against me in the middlegame, I offered a draw. “You’ve had your fun, now it’s my turn!” he declared. after he finished me off, we went to the skittles room and analyzed late into the night. he was in a cheerful mood and he recounted stories of the “old days” of chess in Cincinnati, my hometown and
14 Chess Life — January 2012
the site of the tournament. I was 16 at the time and had published a handful of chess articles, and Jerry took an immediate inter- est in mentoring me. he gave me his phone number and I promised to call him some- time the next week. a few months’ worth of phone calls later, we were best of friends. everything about chess changed for
me when I started calling Jerry. Before, chess had been about the game—tactics, calculation, opening theory, and the like. after, I associated chess with a bewilder- ing array of other subjects. Chess was about love, literature, obsession, history, politics, and emotion. But most of all, chess was about people. Jerry drew me into the world of chess personalities and
Jerry and I made a bizarre pair. I was
“Young man, when you turned down my draw offer like that, it was an insult to my manlihood!”
politics. to Jerry, I was more than just an aspiring chess player. I was also a bud- ding chess journalist and politician. Under Jerry’s mentorship, I began writ- ing tournament reports for Chess Life and became a UsCF delegate. when his fingers became too weak to type, we started collaborating on his articles. he would dictate to me over the phone and I would try to clean things up afterward. Often, I ghostwrote parts to fill in the gaps. as a result, my writing improved rapidly. I quickly became entangled in the complicated world of UsCF gover- nance, too. during the confusion of 2008, the better part of our conversations began with him saying, “now I’m not supposed to tell you this, but ...” It seemed impor- tant at the time, but I don’t remember much of what it was about, now.
young, a bit stuffy, and professional in most of my interactions. Jerry was elderly and untamed, larger-than-life, and a bit rough around the edges. I was at the height of my chess career and was also in the best physical shape of my life. mean- while, Jerry’s body was falling apart and his game was, too. he was floored at UsCF 2200, but his eLO rating—which he referred to as his “picture of dorian Gray,” meaning that it reflected his true strength—had dropped to about 1900. Jerry, who sensed that his demise was not far off, often remarked that life had cheated us out of many years of friend- ship by causing us to have been born so many years apart. Outside of the chess world, the passers- by might have guessed that he was my grandfather. at tournaments, we would
always eat out. he was feisty and always pestered the wait- resses about the food, the lighting, and the seating arrangements. I always tried to leave big tips as an apology
of sorts. at Foxwoods 2009, Jerry rented a slick jet-black scooter with the capac- ity to go up to 14 miles per hour. In the middle of a crowd of people, Jerry got an idea. with a mischievous grin, he held out his cane in front of him like a lance. “Beep beep!” he chirped, “Old man, com- ing through!” before pulling down on the throttle. the crowd parted as Jerry, mas- querading as don Quixote, rode his shiny black stallion at full gallop. he swung his lance to and fro as the men scattered and the women tripped over their high heels on all sides. I chased after him, and security did, too. we made it to the elevator before it caught up with us. six months later, on October 1, 2009,
Jerry died. I had been in nicaragua when his condition had deteriorated; when I started college at University of Cincinnati
uschess.org
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