HOCHBERG ENDORSES BRADY FOR EB
Burt Hochberg, who served as
Editor of Chess Life longer than anyone else, has endorsed Frank Brady, the
first Editor of Chess Life as a magazine, for the Executive Board.
Hochberg's letter, which follows, is expected to be mailed to all USCF electors.
May 18, 2001
This is the first support letter I’ve written for a candidate in many years. I’m prompted to do so because of who the candidate is.
I’ve known Frank Brady well for 40 years. This in itself is no reason for me to support him: if I thought he would be unfit for the USCF Executive Board, I would not be writing this letter. On the contrary, I think Frank Brady would bring clean hands and needed honor and stability to a politically fractious Board.
Frank was the creator and first editor of Chess Life as a glossy monthly magazine, way back in 1960, and it was shortly afterward that I became a USCF member. You might say that Frank was my first mentor, since I myself became Chess Life editor a few years later, a position I held for 13 years (1966-79). Later he continued to inspire me and many other chess lovers with his great but unfortunately short-lived quarterly magazine, Chessworld. Taking also into account his biography of Bobby Fischer, Frank Brady’s contributions to chess are already historic.
In recent conversations Frank expressed his disgust with the nasty politics and backbiting that in the last 20 years have become, it seems, permanent fixtures of USCF governance. I fully share those feelings. His presence on the Board will blow a fresh breeze through the smelly corridors of U.S. chess. Frank has spent most of his life in academia and chairing committees, and he well knows how to work with others, not against them, as some others in academia do, to get things done.
I wholeheartedly support his candidacy.
Burt Hochberg