Ms. Becky wrote:My good friend Al Darrow, checker historian par-excellance would like to offer "Milton Loew" as his answer to this fine "Checker Trivia" question. Refs. Ryans Checkerist Volume 1, page 70 and Volume 5, pages 8 and 9.
Absolutely right!
Young Milton won the NY City playgrounds tournament for juveniles for the second time in a row in 1939, deating his oppent Vincent Arroja clearly by 3-0 and also swept the "adults playground champion" Aaron Weinberg easily away.
But:
the NY Park Dept. revoked the title, because of alledged "professional play".
Miltons answer was:
"I am no professional. I play the game because I like it. The Park Dept. canned me because I was too good for the rest of the kids. I murdered them, checkeristically! Somebody should take up a collection for the Park Dept., so that they can hire a real professional like Newell Banks or Willie Ryan. Then the kids would really learn something about checkers - and fast!"
After WW II Loew (the name sounds like the German word for "Lion" btw.) became a world-class player and finally won the US Nationals in 1960.
On page 70 of the American Checkerist, Vol. I there is a wonderful picture of Loew at that time, and you can see why Ryan said:
he had "more traps to spring at y'a then freckles on his face - and that's something!"
Very well done!
Greetinx from old Europe
Ingo Zachos