From Jude Acers/New Orleans:

 

FOR  ALL TIME  The two donors wish to remember 1968-1978  ...THE SAN FRANCISCO LEGENDS..."Motorcycle Max" Burkett’s Kings Bishop Gambit (where it all begins)... Fritz the poet  “you should come to San  Francisco”...Francis Ford (The Godfather).  Eleanor Coppola ,Warren Hinckle (“take lemons and  make lemonade”) and  Cathleen Black    ( City of San Francisco Magazine chess columns)...Pulitzer  prize winner Herb Caen’s San Francisco Chronicle  column replete  with chess blurbs to boot...tragic author  Richard “Trout Fishing” Brautigan in Vesuvio’s...and the red headed artist The Marcia who  found the body deep the woods....THE GREAT BENDIT inventor, chess patron...cigar in hand waving like a torch for emphasis...standing on a Mechanics'  Institute  chair, pontificating  the rules of the electrifying Fischer chess exhibition (April 13,1964 )... “Do not play the same moves as your next board neighbor in which case Mr. Fischer will have  the  pleasure of beating you both with the same moves ”...then watched “in sheer awe, my my”...as THE BURGERMEISTER won a thrilling theoretical masterpiece in 12 moves, securing instant  immortality...far, far from madding crowd mad  men advertising  world  Robert E.Burger knew...  The Rolling Stones at Altamont speedway...astonishing coffee, babes everywhere...the homeless chessplayer in Café Trieste who died of  hypothermia in the middle of a summer nighttime wet fog, quiet, alone, forgotten  in an abandoned schoolyard...The sea, huge waves...that took 6  festive thrill seeking, disbelieving  people off  San Francisco cliffs to their deaths...one by one, each year forgotten by another...off San Francisco coasts...white marker crosses  silently witness to the past...  It can’t happen to me...this can’t be real...it was...the “Great Radaiken” moving a knight like a bishop (CHECK!), roaring 50 miles down the highway with first prize cash plus trophy on the car seat...goodness gracious. How did that happen? ...the No Name Bar, Alcatraz one  boat away...  The Clement street Mixer rock bar...featuring a visiting  policeman  with the superman t-shirt beneath his police uniform...  FERLINGHETTI AND SHIG  aside their City Lights bookstore cash register...telling  Berkeley Barb  publishing colossus   Max Sheer “this is Jude...his chess games are in  books downstairs”...  Sheer whispering the horrifying memory...traumatized  man pops into the office, an eyewitness account of the first Manson murder on Haight street  three blocks from Burkett’s place...witness almost incoherent with fear...put up in  hotel overnight...more details in the morning... the Berkeley Barb  will publish it...gone at dawn.

On behalf of two anonymous donors please  find enclosed THE 2015 MR. HENRY GROSS "SAN FRANCISCO  LEGENDS”  tourney first prize award...it is given to especially honor MR. JOHN DONALDSON, DEAN EMERITUS OF AMERICAN CHESS...in the truly  grand tradition of Hermann Helms (1870-1963)  Isaac Kashdan (l905-1985) and I. A.Horowitz (1907-1973)...Mr. Donaldson met the myriad  sometimes heavy blows of life in truly  magnificent gentlemanly fashion...emerging  promotionally triumphant for decades...now widely viewed the greatest Mechanics' Institute (57 Post Street -fourth floor, San Francisco) Chess Director ever seen...a world renown International Chess Master and International  arbiter of the highest standard...Mr. Donaldson’s prize decisions are final...                                                                  

     The donors wish to  briefly mention THE SAN FRANCISCO LEGENDS  (1968-1978), a truly epic, indeed sometimes unbelievable era raging night and day...often within blocks the Mechanics' Institute building...

     The Legends are...A  STREETCAR like no other, hang outside, hang on naturally...at the bottom of the  hill...fishing boats where Marilyn and Joe DiMaggio snuck away...the cable car guy saw them...clang clang clang...Reading Jack London’s eyewitness fearsome clock...the earthquake, minute by minute...incredulous London  being invited in FOR A  DRINK by a magnificent mansion owner, both men well knowing  in 15 minutes flat it will all be gone...that must have been some drink as they watched  silently and totally alone...mansions pop in thunderous fire explosion one by one toward you until SHOWTIME...  Beginning precisely at the Mechanics' Institute location....  London’s breathlessly riveting walk of death... 

     THE   WATER  MAN...the  chess ”irritators” who somehow managed to defeat everyone now and then...Blohm, “Thorn Thornally”, Spencer, Kane, historian  Benson...Raymond, Grey...      EPIC  MEMORIES  BROWNE    AND RAQUEL, world junior champion JULIO KAPLAN  AND SUE...  The problem endgame chess wizards C. BILL JONES...(with   Verne  pouring the tea in San Jose) and the great BILLS ’NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF A KNIGHT’ with fun sidekick Subu the Indian...

BLACKSTONE...Mary “Pawn Endgames” Lasher...  Fischer, Buff and Biyiasis playing baseball  in Golden Gate park...Buff’s  chess  class at Enrico’s on Broadway...the entire Coffee Gallery wild child crew especially Janis and the atomic waitress Sunshine (the only survivor)...  Ralph and Sue, memorable Coffee Gallery musicians who shoot up heroin, needles. rubber bands on the arm in their kitchen and invite a bewildered Louisiana boy to partake...life and death on the line...slip out courteously...no but thank you...  Gone...  In another kitchen a man with a machete, angry at losing two chess games cuts CHESS  OPENINGS Theory and Practice by Euwe and Horowitz  almost in half...   Coit Tower which fortunately cannot talk and legendary Fischer opponent Gil Ramirez who fortunately can... THE  CARADIAN chess patron Fettucine and Stu, captains of DYA**  Disco on Columbus Avenue...greeting Brando, Michael Douglas, Joan Baez, and yes...Silman on the same night.  The Swiss American Hotel.  Carol Doda. 

     The Rincon annex US postal warehouse (chessplayer survival)...you are reading CHESS FROM MORPHY TO BOTVINNIK by Imre Konig when, unbelievably,  he passes  between two  lockers  lunchbox in arm...into the night...   Mayor Joe Alioto quietly riding around at dawn on a deserted Sunday morning...     North Beach street, alone, haunting...  The triangle building  with the entire Godfather series crew...the film APOCALYPSE NOW  which closed it all...and  almost killed them all...  The “believe it or not”man of chess  Irving Chernev outside the Café Trieste...he wrote LOGICAL CHESS MOVE BY MOVE...he came to die on Chestnut street...but certainly not before one last jam packed chess lecture  at the Marina public library...  The Cleveland Jones Three rock group at Sgt. Peppers  Club...paid $100,000 a year to pack them in and they did. Others talked, they made the cash...  CJT’s anti-Vietnam War concert, their open mike night at Fillmore West with wild west animated annotation by multi millionaire promoter BILL GRAHAM standing there t-shirt, jeans and sneakers as always...  ”Hey buddy...get in line...no gate crashing”....see that beautiful girl putting clothes on the line... her name is Claire...quick...get  chess expert  Dr. Kent Bach, Professor of philosophy at San Francisco State to cross the street and meet her...he does and marries her...  They are off to see world chess champion Boris Spassky in Vancouver...another case solved through chess...  The certified 4 million sales of Richard “Trout Fishing” Brautigan...it hit him like a bomb.  Finally...hands down the greatest of them all...the  pyramids, the triad....Koltanowski and his staggering  50 years plus San Francisco Chronicle chess columns, his Presidio Chess Club blindfold chess exhibitions...   ”SUPERVOLK” WITH 200,000 CHESS MILES ON THAT OLD JALOPY...held together with crazy glue...he brought chess to every hamlet, prison, fire station, police station and college...he came, he saw, he parked, it happened...  GUTHRIE "MrCalifornia Chess Reporter “ McClain    (where it all ends)...#######################