Brian Thomas
Hitchins 1953-2018
Brian was born
in 1953 at Smallthorne. I believe he started to play chess when he was at
Warwick University in the early 1970s but I am not sure and it may be that he
only honed his skills after learning before he went there. He became a
very useful player with his grade rising into the 160s and 170s in the
1980s and 1990s. When he returned to North Staffordshire after
University, he joined the Pioneer Club at Smallthorne which was the home of
Smallthorne Chess Club and when I became more active in the old Stoke League in
1974, he was an established character at all the meetings. During the
middle and late 1970s, he often travelled to the county Congress at Northicote
School in Wolverhampton on our bus, which we took down each day, and became friendly
with several members of our club to whom he was known as "big H" -
particularly amongst the younger ones. I believe that this was how he was
known at his own club. By the late 1970s, he had taken over from Roy
Willis as the Secretary of Smallthorne club and in 1981 he also became the
League Treasurer. He became as dedicated to that job as he was to his own
club and its members.
During the late
1980s, he sometimes came to visit us as he wanted to know how to encourage his
members even more as he was very despondent about some of them leaving to join
other clubs. When he visited us, he always came on the bus and I believe
that driving was never to be one of his accomplishments. During the
1990s, he gradually became more despondent and in 1996, he retired as League
Treasurer and stopped playing.
I never saw him
again until he turned up in 2016, apparently interested in starting to
play again and I was delighted to hear that soon afterwards he joined Kidsgrove
and graced the League once more - albeit with a somewhat reduced grade.
It is with great sadness, therefore, that I hear of his passing and think that
the League has lost one of its greatest stalwarts of the last fifty years.