James Pechac has died

The entire chess world will be saddened to learn that Jim Pechac died
on July 8, 2004, apparently of cancer. He was 56.

Pechac was a chess enthusiast and long time chess organizer in Central
Ohio. He was also a numbers guy who served two years as VP of Finance
of the United States Chess Federation.

His devotion to chess was such that it is mentioned in the second
paragraph of his obituary published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Although Pechac was a nice guy who was well liked and popular among
chess players, he will not be well remembered in chess, because he was
in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Pechac made a blunder more serious than leaving his queen en pris when
he joined the evil Redman Gang in 1999. The Gang was determined to
destroy the United States Chess Federation and used Pechac as its
foil.

Pechac, their numbers man, reported that the federation had returned
to profitability. In fact, however, the USCF lost more than one
million dollars while Pechac was VP of Finance.

When Pechac ran for re-election in 2001, he was defeated. When the new
group took over, they found a secret file folder with tens of
thousands of dollars of unrecorded invoices.

This was not Pechac's fault, of course. He naturally assumed that the
figures given to him were correct. He did not work in the office, so
he had no way to know that the numbers being spoon fed to him were all
false.

Two years later, Pechac publicly apologized for his mistakes and
admitted that he had committed serious errors and that the voters were
correct in not returning him to office. No other member of the Redman
Gang has made any such admission, especially not Redman.

To his credit, Pechac did look at the numbers and study them
carefully. This is in sharp contrast to the current VP of Finance, who
does not look at the numbers at all.

Sam Sloan

P.S. With my jinx, perhaps this will bring him back to life.