His coach Eugene Salome hailed him as the next Bobby Fischer when O'Donnell was in high school. Perhaps not quite - but good enough to beat me in the final round of the state junior championships. My excuse was that I had learned the game not quite 12 months earlier.

Same person? If so, that would place him in the class of individuals who have won championships of multiple states.

If you have a minute to look, you might also enjoy the amusing picture(s) of Leon Stolzenberg on page 14.

I think he won a national tourney mid-seventies and was on the cover of Chess Life, also? He seems to have come into his own after I became inactive in 1973.

Not sure how he wound up in Michigan. He was a Physics major but I believe changed to something else his junior year.

He settled in the Ann Arbor area, so there may be some connection to the University of Michigan. In my active days, Ann Arbor wss consistently one of the strongest chess centers in Michigan, though the best players were generally adults rather than students.

Eugene Salome was very big on him early on. I later became great friends with Eugene - quite a renaissance man! A bit about him on the Robert Wendling page.

I had two wins against Traibush but threw out all my games when I moved to Hawaii in 1979. I do still have a handwritten article Wendling did on the Ponziani. I've never before-or-since seen such tiny handwriting! I also have a large box of 'Bookford's' Syzygy books from the 70s-80s-90s.

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