All the Presidents Men

Delving through the minutes we decided to pay tribute to the members that helped to keep the momentum going within the club throughout the years.

Please bear with me until I complete this and apologies to those missed.

The first recorded AGM was on December 7th 1944 and the minutes recorded the following members in the key roles:

President: Mr Arnold L Friends
Chairman: Mr George Plater
Secretary: Mr E Hutton
Treasurer: Mr J E Gibson

It it interesting to note that there were also 4 additional committee members mentioned. Dr R G Tate, Mr J Plater, Mr F Burnside and Mr J P Jobling. It was decided that the session subscription fees should be set at 5 shillings and that the intention was to run two chess sessions per week on a Wednesday and Friday night. I suppose in those days the competition for our free time was less. Today we have hundreds of TV channels and lots of other distractions which seem to take us away from the challenge.

Mr Friends remained as President until 1947 and then handed over the reins to Mr JC Bishop, an esteemed schoolmaster in the area, who acted as president and then Chairman until around 1974.