Hall of Fame Committee Report By Harold J. Winston (IL)

The big news this year is the move of the Hall of Fame and Sidney Samole Museum from its long time home in Miami, Florida to St. Louis, Missouri, thanks to the generosity of Rex Sinquefield. The Museum will
probably reopen some this winter.  More can be found in my US Chess Trust report.

In 2010, the Trustees of the US Chess Trust voted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame the three persons recommended by our committee who made major contributions to American chess over three different time periods. The induction will take place at the USCF Awards Banquet at the Hyatt Regency Irvine Hotel in Irvine, California on Saturday August 7, 2010, starting at 12 noon.

Our first inductee, Diane Savereide dominated US Women’s Chess in the 1970s and 1980s and won the US Women’s Champion six times. Savereide became a Women’s International Master in 1977. She was the first American woman to attain a master’s rating. She competed on six Women’s Olympiad teams from 1976-1988 and held down first board from 1976-1984 and Board 2 in 1988. She was Board 1 for the Women’s team that placed 4th in 1976. She will be the second woman to be inducted: the first was multiple times US Women’s Champion Gisela Gresser.

Our second inductee, Herman Steiner, not only won the US Chess Championship in 1948, ahead of Isaac Kashdan, but played on four U.S. Olympiad Teams from 1928- 1950, when he was team captain. In the 1945 radio match between the USSR and USA he was the only American with a plus score. Steiner also was a long time chess editor of the Los Angeles Times, from 1932 up to his death in 1955 at the age of 50. In addition, Steiner founded an important chess club in the LA area that became the Hollywood Chess Group and was a chess center in the 1940s and 1950s.

Our third inductee, Jackson Showalter (1860-1935), known as the “Kentucky Lion,” was a rival of Pillsbury and Marshall and one of the top American players in the 1890s and early 20th century. He won the US
Championship multiple times, played matches with the other top U.S. players, and participated in the Cambridge Springs 1904 tournament, where he took 5th place, ahead of Schlechter, Tchigorin, and Pillsbury. Showalter was US Champion in the early 1890s, 1894-97, and 1906-1909.

Savereide, Steiner, and Showalter are all worthy additions to the US Chess Hall of Fame.

I want to thank the other members of the committee: John Donaldson, John McCrary, John Hilbert, Al Lawrence, Shane Samole, Joel Benjamin, Arthur Bisguier, Jeremy Gaige, and Jennifer Shahade.