The author with Jerry Hanken at Foxwoods, 2008.
upon my return, I spent my first couple of weeks wondering why he wouldn’t return my calls. Everything seemed to spin out of control for me when I heard the news. I was living apart from my family for the first time, I was having trouble adjusting to college, and I was beginning to suffer from stress-induced health problems— and suddenly, Jerry wasn’t there to take my calls. I felt disoriented and abandoned. After Jerry’s death, my participation in
the chess world came to a halt. Losing Jerry meant losing both the biggest fan of my chess writing and my strongest tie- in to the world of chess politics. Then, just two months later, I was diagnosed with the same autoimmune disease that ended the world championship candi- dacy of Henrique Mecking in the 1970s. Playing in tournaments became an excruciating exercise: my body couldn’t handle it. Eventually, I abandoned tour- nament chess altogether for less physically demanding pursuits like phi- losophy and linguistics. I lost my interest in politics, too. At
University of Cincinnati, although there never cease to be rumors that I will run for student government, I have always ultimately decided against putting my name on the ballot. Jerry’s drive to fight for “truth” and “justice”—how quaint
uschess.org
those words sound when applied to chess!—never fully rubbed off on me. I would rather work behind the scenes without making a fuss. My chess politick- ing days with Jerry, while fun, were also exhausting and in hindsight probably futile. It is hard for me to believe that, just a few years ago, Jerry was urging me to run for the USCF executive board. It is harder still to believe that, when I was in high school, I used to dream about going into U.S. politics. When Jerry died, I lost those ambitions and have since focused on less draining passions. Perhaps the best thing that changed
about me following Jerry’s passing was my major. By October of 2009, I was still intent on majoring in business. Running organizations and managing teams was the career that I thought suited me best. But while Jerry was alive, he urged me to consider a liberal arts education. Every time he had started talking about the liberal arts, I had always just nodded politely and settled in for another dull lecture about the value of expanding one’s mind. Now, I just wish that Jerry could have lived a year or two longer so that he could have had the satisfaction of seeing me writing papers on Hume or speaking French. Jerry left me with the courage to switch majors, and as a result, I have
studied abroad six times and learned two foreign languages. I would be headed in a much different direction now if my path had never collided with Jerry’s. One lesson that I learned from meeting
Jerry is that, in life, you never know who your friends will be. Jerry opened my eyes when it came to people. The person I took to be a codger and a chess has-been when I was 14—and who, in turn, took me for an obnoxious, disrespectful whippersnap- per—wound up becoming my closest companion when I was 16. (Strangely, Jerry never remembered our first encounter in 2004. I told him about it once, but he didn’t believe me.) It’s a les- son that has served me well. I had to relearn it during my freshman year of col- lege, when the “class C” player who kept asking me to “prep” him for the World Open wound up being my most intimate confidant. And I learned it a third time when the person I thought was my polar opposite freshman year became my girl- friend when I was a sophomore. If I had never met Jerry, I do not think that I would have been open-minded enough to have the friends that I do now. And I have a couple of fortuitous pairings at the King’s Island Open to thank for that.
Read more about Jerry Hanken in the February 2010 issue of Chess Life.
. Chess Life — January 2012 15
PHOTO COURTESY OF JONATHAN HILTON
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