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And the ringer is....
Jan. 1st, 2021 01:52 pmOn December 27th I posted this list of people whom I'd been in very close proximity. I've actually shaken hands with most of them or had the opportunity to - except for one ringer.
Hillary Clinton (Politician)
Anatoly Karpov (World Chess Champion)
Garry Kasparov (World Chess Champion)
Walter Cronkite" (News Anchor for CBS)
Leslie Nielson (Famous Actor)
Dan Rather (News Reporter)
(all of the names lead to their Wikipedia entries for more information)
Hillary Clinton was the First Lady of the United States for eight years while her husband, Bill Clinton, served as President. She later served as a Senator for the State of New York, as the Secretary of State, and ran for President in the 2016 election cycle.
There's an excellent new/used book store in Tempe, Arizona called Changing Hands, and there's a Trader Joe's in the same plaza as a bonus! A friend told me that Hillary Clinton was doing a book signing there one evening, so we drove across town, bought two copies of her autobiography in hard back, waited in line, got them signed, exchanged some words, and shook her hand. Seemed a nice lady.
Anatoly Karpov has an unusual distinction: he is the only world chess champion to gain the title without having to win a game against the current title-holder! He went through a candidate cycle to play against then-champion Bobby Fischer in 1975, but Fischer wanted a ridiculous requirement: the winner would be determined by the first player to WIN TEN GAMES, ties not counting! And if the score ended up tied at 9-9, Fischer kept the title! The organizers said no, Fischer had a hissie fit, and they stripped him of his title and awarded it to Karpov!
Karpov is undeniably skilled, he lasted 102 months as the world's highest chess rating, third longest stretch.
I used to work chess tournaments, and was a certified tournament director. Anatoly Karpov was a guest at a large tournament that I regularly worked in Las Vegas, the U.S. Open. Brilliant speaker, very nice guy. Met him, I think I shook his hand. Can't remember if I got him to sign my autograph book, I hope I did!
Garry Kasparov needs little introduction. Pretty much a chess god, Karpov and Kasparov had quite the rivalry for top dog which Kasparov ultimately won. Chess is a younger man's game, it is extremely physically taxing when you're playing at the top levels. And Kasparov brought physical fitness into chess: he's a madman for playing tennis and keeping in shape. There was one particularly grueling match series between Karpov and Kasparov that was ended because of the health of the two: both had lost 10 kilos of weight!
Karpov was ranked number one in the chess world for TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY FIVE MONTHS! He retired in 2005.
There was a smaller tournament in Peoria, Arizona. I think it was a state junior tournament. They actually managed to get Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion, to come! He played a simul tournament, where he simultaneously plays something like 16 boards against locals. The person conducting the simul always plays white. What Kasparov didn't know was one of the games was rigged. One of the high school students, Anne Marie (IIRC), was phenomenally good at chess. Her coach trained her in a game that Kasparov almost lost when he played white. Anne Marie was, of course, playing black. So Karpov walks around the board, making his opening move, zip zip zip. Anne Marie makes hers. Karpov makes his, walking around, zip zip zip. Anne Marie makes hers. This continues. As the games deepen, Karpov has to slow down and think a little. Most of the games start resolving: Karpov's FIDE chess rating is in the 2600s (peaked at over 2900), no one is remotely close to him. But he starts spending time at Anne Marie's board. Very few people are in on the joke. Eventually he's spending A LOT more time at Anne Marie's board than at any other! And finally he recognized the game she was playing, and I think he laughed. She did finally lose to him, but she expected that.
Anyway, I don't know what he's like in normal circumstances, but he was a bit of a jerk to the tournament organizer. I don't know if there was something going on or what, but that was my impression. I know he's a major pain in the side to Putin, and I give him major chops on that. He's currently living (sort of in exile) in France. While I don't recall meeting him directly or shaking his hand, I was definitely in very close proximity to him and have photos of him doing this simul. But they're on film, and there's no telling where the negatives are.
Walter Cronkite (I misspelled his name originally) was known as Uncle Walter by most Americans, and also called "the most trusted man in America". He was the voice for CBS News for absolute ages. He grew up in literal mid-America, born in Missouri in 1916, and started out in radio. He reported on sports and eventually worked his way up to news and in to television. He reported from Europe during World War 2 and from the news room during Vietnam. He reported on the Apollo launches from a specially-constructed broadcast studio built at the Florida launch center.
After he retired from news, he wrote a memoir in 1997, A Reporter's Life, that I highly recommend. He did a book signing for it in north Phoenix, and I bought three copies of the book for me and two friends, and patiently waited in line for him to sign them. I thanked him for his broadcast years and told him how much I enjoyed and appreciated his work. I remember him smiling, but I did not shake his hand because he looked exhausted and did not look well at all. A month or so later he had triple or quadruple bypass surgery.
Leslie Nielson's career as an actor/comedian/producor spanned sixty years! Not bad for a Canadian! (sorry, couldn't resist) His first appearance, or non-appearance, was doing a voice-over, the next year had him in the lead role in the 1956 film Forbidden Planet. He also played the captain in The Poseidon Adventure and did the full gamut of television: MASH, Alfred Hitchcock, Wild Wild West, Man from UNCLE, Kung Fu, Columbo, Fantasy Island, Streets of San Francisco, SWAT, Gunsmoke, The Big Valley, Hawaii Five-O, etc. He worked hard. 24 years after Forbidden Planet, he appeared in the first Airplane movie and that pretty much dictated the trajectory of his career from that point forward.
He retired, or perhaps it was just his residence later in life, to the Township of Paradise Valley, a little area squeezed in between Phoenix and Scottsdale. When he came out with his sort of biography, The Naked Truth, he also did a book signing in the Phoenix area - I can't remember where that one was, but I went to a signing and got the book, his signature, and got to shake his hand.
Dan Rather was Walter Cronkite's successor to hosting the CBS Evening News. CBS, at the time, had a mandatory retirement policy at age 65. Walter stepped down, Dan stepped up. Cronkite continued doing special reports and did a science show, which was always an interest of his.
Dan Rather was born in 1931 in what was then very rural Houston, Texas. And I also highly recommend his book, What Unites Us. A memoir/sort of autobiography that also reflects on the country and a lot of our problems. Dan became interested in news reporting early on, progressed from reporting for papers to radio to television, eventually moving to CBS News and becoming the anchor, as I said, when Walter Cronkite retired. He served briefly in the Marines and reported directly from the Vietnam war.
Rather served as anchorman for CBS News for 24 years. His last broadcast was March 9, 2005 after he became enmeshed in something known formally as The Killian Papers, informally as Rathergate or Memogate. One of his producers got ahold of papers from President George Bush's commanding officer of the Texas Air National Guard, Lt. Col. Killian, which reported Bush's lack of fitness to serve. The problem is that the papers were written with a proportional font, characteristic of Microsoft Word, not in a monospaced font that you'd find in a typical military typewriter of the 1970s. The story released on 60 Minutes Wednesday on Sept. 8, 2004, CBS retracted the story 12 days later and fired the story producer Mary Mapes and asked three other story producers connected with this story to resign.
This tainted Rather's career with CBS, who later cut short his contract in late June 2006 before it was to expire or be renewed. Rather filed a lawsuit which was rejected by the court and later rejected on appeal. He has since found a home at AXS and continued reporting and writing.
As much as I would like to, I have not personally met Dan Rather and to the best of my knowledge have not been proximate to him.
So Dan Rather was the ringer, and no one guessed him!
Hillary Clinton (Politician)
Anatoly Karpov (World Chess Champion)
Garry Kasparov (World Chess Champion)
Walter Cronkite" (News Anchor for CBS)
Leslie Nielson (Famous Actor)
Dan Rather (News Reporter)
(all of the names lead to their Wikipedia entries for more information)
Hillary Clinton was the First Lady of the United States for eight years while her husband, Bill Clinton, served as President. She later served as a Senator for the State of New York, as the Secretary of State, and ran for President in the 2016 election cycle.
There's an excellent new/used book store in Tempe, Arizona called Changing Hands, and there's a Trader Joe's in the same plaza as a bonus! A friend told me that Hillary Clinton was doing a book signing there one evening, so we drove across town, bought two copies of her autobiography in hard back, waited in line, got them signed, exchanged some words, and shook her hand. Seemed a nice lady.
Anatoly Karpov has an unusual distinction: he is the only world chess champion to gain the title without having to win a game against the current title-holder! He went through a candidate cycle to play against then-champion Bobby Fischer in 1975, but Fischer wanted a ridiculous requirement: the winner would be determined by the first player to WIN TEN GAMES, ties not counting! And if the score ended up tied at 9-9, Fischer kept the title! The organizers said no, Fischer had a hissie fit, and they stripped him of his title and awarded it to Karpov!
Karpov is undeniably skilled, he lasted 102 months as the world's highest chess rating, third longest stretch.
I used to work chess tournaments, and was a certified tournament director. Anatoly Karpov was a guest at a large tournament that I regularly worked in Las Vegas, the U.S. Open. Brilliant speaker, very nice guy. Met him, I think I shook his hand. Can't remember if I got him to sign my autograph book, I hope I did!
Garry Kasparov needs little introduction. Pretty much a chess god, Karpov and Kasparov had quite the rivalry for top dog which Kasparov ultimately won. Chess is a younger man's game, it is extremely physically taxing when you're playing at the top levels. And Kasparov brought physical fitness into chess: he's a madman for playing tennis and keeping in shape. There was one particularly grueling match series between Karpov and Kasparov that was ended because of the health of the two: both had lost 10 kilos of weight!
Karpov was ranked number one in the chess world for TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY FIVE MONTHS! He retired in 2005.
There was a smaller tournament in Peoria, Arizona. I think it was a state junior tournament. They actually managed to get Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion, to come! He played a simul tournament, where he simultaneously plays something like 16 boards against locals. The person conducting the simul always plays white. What Kasparov didn't know was one of the games was rigged. One of the high school students, Anne Marie (IIRC), was phenomenally good at chess. Her coach trained her in a game that Kasparov almost lost when he played white. Anne Marie was, of course, playing black. So Karpov walks around the board, making his opening move, zip zip zip. Anne Marie makes hers. Karpov makes his, walking around, zip zip zip. Anne Marie makes hers. This continues. As the games deepen, Karpov has to slow down and think a little. Most of the games start resolving: Karpov's FIDE chess rating is in the 2600s (peaked at over 2900), no one is remotely close to him. But he starts spending time at Anne Marie's board. Very few people are in on the joke. Eventually he's spending A LOT more time at Anne Marie's board than at any other! And finally he recognized the game she was playing, and I think he laughed. She did finally lose to him, but she expected that.
Anyway, I don't know what he's like in normal circumstances, but he was a bit of a jerk to the tournament organizer. I don't know if there was something going on or what, but that was my impression. I know he's a major pain in the side to Putin, and I give him major chops on that. He's currently living (sort of in exile) in France. While I don't recall meeting him directly or shaking his hand, I was definitely in very close proximity to him and have photos of him doing this simul. But they're on film, and there's no telling where the negatives are.
Walter Cronkite (I misspelled his name originally) was known as Uncle Walter by most Americans, and also called "the most trusted man in America". He was the voice for CBS News for absolute ages. He grew up in literal mid-America, born in Missouri in 1916, and started out in radio. He reported on sports and eventually worked his way up to news and in to television. He reported from Europe during World War 2 and from the news room during Vietnam. He reported on the Apollo launches from a specially-constructed broadcast studio built at the Florida launch center.
After he retired from news, he wrote a memoir in 1997, A Reporter's Life, that I highly recommend. He did a book signing for it in north Phoenix, and I bought three copies of the book for me and two friends, and patiently waited in line for him to sign them. I thanked him for his broadcast years and told him how much I enjoyed and appreciated his work. I remember him smiling, but I did not shake his hand because he looked exhausted and did not look well at all. A month or so later he had triple or quadruple bypass surgery.
Leslie Nielson's career as an actor/comedian/producor spanned sixty years! Not bad for a Canadian! (sorry, couldn't resist) His first appearance, or non-appearance, was doing a voice-over, the next year had him in the lead role in the 1956 film Forbidden Planet. He also played the captain in The Poseidon Adventure and did the full gamut of television: MASH, Alfred Hitchcock, Wild Wild West, Man from UNCLE, Kung Fu, Columbo, Fantasy Island, Streets of San Francisco, SWAT, Gunsmoke, The Big Valley, Hawaii Five-O, etc. He worked hard. 24 years after Forbidden Planet, he appeared in the first Airplane movie and that pretty much dictated the trajectory of his career from that point forward.
He retired, or perhaps it was just his residence later in life, to the Township of Paradise Valley, a little area squeezed in between Phoenix and Scottsdale. When he came out with his sort of biography, The Naked Truth, he also did a book signing in the Phoenix area - I can't remember where that one was, but I went to a signing and got the book, his signature, and got to shake his hand.
Dan Rather was Walter Cronkite's successor to hosting the CBS Evening News. CBS, at the time, had a mandatory retirement policy at age 65. Walter stepped down, Dan stepped up. Cronkite continued doing special reports and did a science show, which was always an interest of his.
Dan Rather was born in 1931 in what was then very rural Houston, Texas. And I also highly recommend his book, What Unites Us. A memoir/sort of autobiography that also reflects on the country and a lot of our problems. Dan became interested in news reporting early on, progressed from reporting for papers to radio to television, eventually moving to CBS News and becoming the anchor, as I said, when Walter Cronkite retired. He served briefly in the Marines and reported directly from the Vietnam war.
Rather served as anchorman for CBS News for 24 years. His last broadcast was March 9, 2005 after he became enmeshed in something known formally as The Killian Papers, informally as Rathergate or Memogate. One of his producers got ahold of papers from President George Bush's commanding officer of the Texas Air National Guard, Lt. Col. Killian, which reported Bush's lack of fitness to serve. The problem is that the papers were written with a proportional font, characteristic of Microsoft Word, not in a monospaced font that you'd find in a typical military typewriter of the 1970s. The story released on 60 Minutes Wednesday on Sept. 8, 2004, CBS retracted the story 12 days later and fired the story producer Mary Mapes and asked three other story producers connected with this story to resign.
This tainted Rather's career with CBS, who later cut short his contract in late June 2006 before it was to expire or be renewed. Rather filed a lawsuit which was rejected by the court and later rejected on appeal. He has since found a home at AXS and continued reporting and writing.
As much as I would like to, I have not personally met Dan Rather and to the best of my knowledge have not been proximate to him.
So Dan Rather was the ringer, and no one guessed him!
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