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World Champ Chess Player Makes Home in Santa Rose Fri, Jul 11, 1947 – 11 · The Press Democrat (Santa Rosa, California) · Newspapers.com
The Press Democrat Santa Rosa, California Friday, July 11, 1947 - Page 11 — World Champ Chess Player Makes Home in Santa Rosa — George Koltanowski, world champion blindfold chess player, yesterday returned to Santa Rosa to make his home here.
Impressed by the “City Designed for Living” when he visited it in February during his seventh transcontinental tour, the mental genius and his wife has occupied an apartment in town and are looking for more permanent quarters.
The renowned chess master plans to make Santa Rosa not only his home but his base of operations for future nation and world-wide exhibition tours, he declared. One of his first projects, how that his recent tour has been completed, will be to finished the final chapters of his book, “In the Dark.”
His recent tour included Canada to Colombia, South America; from Montana to Corpus Christi, Tex.; from Sequim, Washington, to Deep River, Conn., to California—135 cities in all.
On February 24, Koltanowski gave one of his famous exhibitions under the sponsorship of the Santa Rosa Chess Club, and was so favorably impressed with the city and its people that he determined to return here to become a permanent resident, a wish fulfilled by his arrival yesterday.
Koltanowski won the world's blindfold chess championship in Edinburgh, Scotland, September 20, 1937, with 34 simultaneous games, winning 24, drawing 10, without a single loss. Some realization of the tremendous magnitude of this undertaking is gained with the understanding that over 1,000 chessmen were in action, every intricate move followed by memory alone. Koltanowski is internationally known as a mental genius as well as a chess master.
Born in Belgium 43 years ago, he learned to play chess from his father at the age of 14. He was educated in the schools of Belgium and speaks and reads seven languages, including very excellent English. He came to this country before World War II and has since become an American citizen. He has done much to popularize chess through the United States, especially among young people, for he has been a great debunker of the long graybeard, solemn idea of chess.
Mrs. Koltanowski is a charming, petite lady, a perfect complement on tour, but they hope now to make Santa Rosa their permanent home and take an active part in civil life.
