| Oct-30-09 | | wolfmaster: Orton to tears. |
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| Dec-03-18 | | Caissanist: Orton was the first husband of the late Ruth Haring, WIM and former USCF president. He posted the following remembrance of her on Facebook: <So sad. I first met Ruth in 1969. Her family had just moved to Fayetteville Arkansas from Alaska. Ruth and her brother Dave were my new neighbors, so I invited them over to play chess. Ruth and Dave were certain that they would win easily, having played in a school tournament in Alaska. They were dumbfounded when I beat them both simultaneously, being a class B player at the time. I got them into rated chess, and their father Robert became the main local organizer. The Harings were a true chess family, with four rated players.Back then Ruth was a hippy chick. We did our first acid trip together. I remember lying under the world's largest dogwood tree on Markham Hill tripping with her. In the 1970s, Ruth was among the top women players. She played in a number of US Women's Championships, her best result being second behind Mona Karf. One year, Ed Edmonson (the USCF) paid for me and Ruth to go to a Women's Interzonal in Holland. We stayed on friendly terms, even though she dumped me for a Greek Grandmaster.> |
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| Dec-03-18 | | Granny O Doul: I saw that there; quite a tribute!
Never met her myself but very sad and rather eerie to see such a flurry of Facebook posting and then just gone the end. |
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Dec-03-18
 | | HeMateMe: "Death of a Chessplayer?" |
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| Dec-03-18 | | Tiggler: I knew Bill Orton in Fayetteville, AR, during the period 1983-1986 when I was working at the University of Arkansas. His chess then was of a swashbuckling style, and he was wont to make scornful comments about timid or formulaic play. Paul Kuroda was another strong player who was also there at that time. |
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Dec-03-18
 | | perfidious: Remember Kuroda turning up at one of the Tanglewood Opens held for several years in western Massachusetts (in either 1979 or '80). Lots of strong players in those, and he was perhaps 2400 at the time. Never saw him again. |
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| Dec-03-18 | | Tiggler: He was a USCF Senior Master, which means >2400. I think Paul quit tournament chess or emigrated (Japan?) not long after, because I looked for him not long ago in USCF ratings, that go back to early 1990s, and he is not there. Very outstanding guy whose Japanese father was a distinguished cosmo-chemist, who analyzed meteors, I think. I never thought to look in FIDE ratings lists. |
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| Dec-03-18 | | Gejewe: <Caissanist> An inimitable tribute..
I happen to have met Bill Orton playing the two Hawaii opens in 1998 (US Masters and US Open). Quite a character, and a likeable guy.
First thing he told us Dutchmen, that he had been in the Netherlands, in Roosendaal in the 1970ties where his wife played the interzonal.
One of our group originates from Roosendaal and had been there daily at the time. So there was plenty to talk about regarding that subject. In the conversations we had with Bill in between the rounds and during some touristic trips for the players, he had two major topics. That's first of all
the Dutch governments attitude toward soft drugs and and a whole collection of (dirty) jokes related to the Clinton & Lewinsky affair. Some conservative
chessplayers around did not seem to like his stories but we laughed our hearts out.
He writes that his former wife was a hippy chick. Well to us at the time Bill Orton seemed to be the ultimate hippy himself ! Great guy. |
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| Dec-03-18 | | Tiggler: Bill Orton was also very lively company when I knew him. He told a lot of jokes, and would loudly proclaim his readiness at all times to smash all comers at chess. At the time his USCF rating was around 2200 and he was as serious about chess as about anything. I played against him three or four times at 30 minutes-game, no rated games, and I actually beat him once. He did not like that. Not in the least unpleasant about it, but one could tell it rankled to lose to such a patzer as me. My rating was in the 1900s. |
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| Dec-04-18 | | Caissanist: The USCF seems to have been going back into their archives and adding all the old rating records to their online database (I recently got put in myself, 35 years after my last tournament). There's now a record for a player named Paul Kuroda, rated 2407, who hasn't played since at least 1990. |
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| Dec-04-18 | | Tiggler: <Caissanist> Thank you for that information about my friend. I checked the FIDE listing and there is no Paul Kuroda there. I hope that no misfortune befell the young man, who would now be in his late fifties. |
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| Dec-04-18 | | Tiggler: In the FIDE list I saw that Bill Orton played in the recently completed Thanksgiving Open in St. Louis, Mo. |
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| Dec-04-18 | | Caissanist: If this is the guy, and my guess is it probably is, then apparently Paul Kuroda is OK: https://www.lvmc.org/webpages/newsl...
https://www.facebook.com/paul.kurod... |
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| Dec-04-18 | | Tiggler: <Caissanist> Wow! Thanks for that great find! That's him and evidently not just fine, but thriving, despite defying misfortune in the high peaks. The photo here https://www.lvmc.org/webpages/newsl... was posted in 2010, when he was ~55 years old. I can hardly believe he was near that age when the photo was taken, however. There is contact info for his company and I plan to contact him and get in touch. I'll give him the url here also and maybe he will post on this page. |
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| Dec-04-18 | | Tiggler: I guess one can see that climbing is a healthier lifetime occupation than playing chess, so long as you don't fall off, get buried in an avalanche, fall in a crevasse, or succumb to HAPE or HACE (deadly altitude ailments). |
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Kibitzing
