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IN MEMORIAM: Milton Bradley, “An unstoppage passion for go”

Longtime go organizer, author and teacher Milton Bradley passed away Saturday after a long illness. “Milt's passion for go was unstoppable,” said American Go Association President Allan Abramson, who had played a weekly game online with Bradley over the last year. "We hope that the enormous amount of energy he put into encouraging go players is inspiring to a whole new generation of teachers. Milt will be missed." An avid chess player, Bradley’s interest in go was sparked “after I read the first few issues of the American Go Journal at the Marshall Chess Club in 1950,” Bradley told the EJ earlier this year. “At that point I immediately  -- instinctively, it seems -- grasped go's depth and profundity,  as well as its great superiority to chess, which until then had seemed to me to be the perfect game.” One of the AGA’s earliest members – he was AGA member 157 – Bradley’s 60-year go career highlights included playing Edward Lasker in 1952, and Honinbo Kaoru Iwamoto 9P several times in his simuls at the NY Go Club in the late 1950's. Bradley – a mechanical/industrial/quality control engineer – had “a passion to make go both more popular and accessible,” and his efforts not only included teaching over 1,000 beginners, but unique promotional ventures like “playing go in the front window of the Takashimaya Department store on New York's prestigious Fifth Avenue,” (he's at left in the photo) and several years penning a go column for the national Mensa Bulletin. He was also a prolific author, whose titles included Go For Kids, New Go Proverbs Illustrated and his free online Improve Fast In Go. Click here for more on Bradley’s long and fascinating career, including photos and links to his publications.