Lansing State Journal from Lansing, Michigan • Page 73

Family Diary Youth, 15, to Seek World Chess Title Brooklyn The Perils of Thirteen By.JEANETTE GRIFFITH When Libby told me she didn't want a party for her 13th birthday I couldn't believe my ears. She paused in her drying of the dinner dishes. "I'm a little too old for that sort of thing," she said carefully. Girls my age don't have parties any more." "Nonsense!" I laughed. "People are never too old for birth-d a parties.

And besides, I wasn't thinking of anything very grand perhaps just a few of your friends over for hamburgers. Then after you have your ice cream and cake you can roast marshmallows in the fireplace." "Thank' you, but I don't want a party. Please." Both her face I i BUlMaMMBMa--. ir. ftg snapped pictures a few feet from the altar despite the couple's desire that there be no publicity.

Cecile Dionne, who can be seen over Allard's right shoulder, was next to wed and the iirst to bear a child. AND FOR LIFE Annette Dionne made news Oct. 11, 1957, when she became the first of the quints to marry. This picture of her wedding in Montreal to Germain Allard was taken by one of the many photographers who entered the church through a back door and -i- 1 Doings of Dionne Quints, Now 24, Still Make News AMERICAN PRODIGY Young Bobby Fischer, hailed as a budding chess genius, is caught in a characteristic pose during a tournament match at the Manhattan Chess club: nail-bitten fingers to lips, coatless and tieless, a study in deep concentra- tion. This 15-year-old Brooklyn boy has already won international fame for his chess play, but remains virtually unknown, outside of chess circles, in his own country.

and her voice assumed an expression of patience tested almost to the breaking point. Later that night I reported to John. "It's the beginning," I said direly. "She's growing up. "I'm not sure I like it." John, interrupted in the study of his favorite gun catalog, brushed my worry aside.

"Don't sound so portentous. If she's growing iip maybe she'll clean out the bathtub after she's used it." THE BIG DAY ARRIVES "You don't know how I feel," I said accusingly. "You're not her mother." "Obviously," said John, but relented as I turned glumly away, calling after me, "Maybe she'll change her mind about the party after all." Libby, however, did not change her mind. The morning of her birthday she opened her package before she went to school. That night for dinner, to make things more festive, I cooked all the things she liked best, finally bringing in her birthday cake with its 13 flickering candles to a rousing chorus of the birthday song.

With a funny little lump in my throat, I watched as she blew out the candles and made her wish. But if she felt any regret that this birthday was different from her other ones she gave no sign. And when she went off to her room to do her homework without being reminded I thought perhaps John might be right There would be good things about Libby growing up. Perhaps she would be more careful of her clothes; take a new interest in her room. And 13 would be a good age to start.

A little later I went off to make the suggestion. She had not yet started to study, but was sitting on her bed admiring ner presents. In other years, her gifts had all been the "things of childhood." But this birthday she had asked for and received only things to wear a frilly petticoat, a crew neck sweater, triple roll socks, a red leather purse, a pink lipstick. STILL A CHILD 'Tve been thinking," I said brightly, "that on Saturday we'll really clean up your room. I'm afraid Sally's half is hopeless, but we can make your part look quite nice.

First, we'll get rid of some of this clutter I indicated a welter of comic books on the lower edge of Libby's book case, an assortment of stones that had been the nucleus of a long-forgotten rock collection, a lidless box billowing with scraps of material saved to make doll clothes. "And your stuffed animals you don't play with any more. Perhaps we could put them and poor Louise Noel in a box in I was interrupted by a small strangled cry. "No, Mama, no! Not the animals. Not Louise!" She snatched a large frozen-eyed baby doll from me, held its mangled and desicated rubber body close to her chest, crooned softly for a moment, then faced me with brimming eyes.

"Mama, don't you understand that when you're 13, though part of you is being pulled into the grown-up world, another part is being pulled back into childhood and that sometimes you don't know which way to go?" "I understand," I whispered, and for a moment held her very close. "I had just forgotten it for a little while." (All Rights Reserved) Allard and Marie to Florian Houle, a Quebec government clerk. When Annette married Germain in October. 1957, at the ultra-modern Notre Dame De Salette church in Montreal, about 70 reporters and photographers sneaked in through a back door. Photographers snapped pictures a few feet from the altar despite the couple's plea that they wanted no publicity.

About a month later, Cecile and Philippe were married in Corbeil, where the Dionne parents now live and where quints' doings have ceased to be a local novelty. Their ceremony also was widely publicized. Marie and Florian were married Aug. 12 in the chapel of Montreal's historic Notre Dame church. They managed to keep their wedding a secret until about 12 hours afterward.

YVONNE IS SINGLE Yvonne Dionne remains unmarried, and, in the opinion of brother-in-law Germain Allard. may remain so. "Ivy," said Germain, "is not 'Boheme exactly, but something like Bohemian. She likes to come and go as she pleases." Cecile and Yvonne graduated together as nurses last year from Notre Dame de L'Es-perance hospital in suburban month. Their parents separated when Bobby was two.

Mrs. Fischer, a University of Colorado graduate, is a registered nurse now earning her M. A. degree. Bobby, she says, is no disciplinary prob-bra.

"There's nothing to discipline him about," Mrs. Fischer explains. "The only thing I do is nag him to take his nose out of his chess books and go outside for some fresh air. "You know, that's what aggravates me so. He used to be terrific in athletics.

He didn't talk until he was practically two years old, but he was climbing all over the place." Bobby started in the game at age six when Joan got chess set and the two puzzled out the directions. Mrs. Fischer doesn't know a thing about chess. "I spent four years trying to get him away from it, but I've given up now," she says. "He was only eight when he first went to the Brooklyn Chess club.

He was pretty sensitive and they used to tease him about thinking he could play with grownups. He played about four years before he won at all. "I tried to stop him. The school people said I should try to get him away from it He used to get awfully upset. "You know, people say it's the publicity that attracts him to chess.

Well, there wasn't any glory for years. It was all discouragement." Within half honr nf My 28. 1034. A Canadian farm wife matte th name of IHonne world famous. She had riven birth to qnintuplet.

From that moment foreward. the doings of the atiinW have been new, sometimes much to their dUmay.) By CHRISTINE STEWART MONTREAL, Oct. 11 Of) The birth announcement read: Born to Cecile and Philippe Langlois, a boy, seven pounds, 14 ounces. Mother and son both doing well. It would have been just another announcement but for the fact the mother is one of the famous Dionne quintuplets, and the first quint in the world to bear a child.

Many newspapers front paged the birth, reporters telephoned husband Philippe for reactions, topped their stories with Cecile's first words "it's marvelous" and hunted for interesting sidelights. As Cecile made news, so will sister Annette in a short time. The first of the four surviving quints to marry, Annette is the second to expect a blessed event. QUINTS MAKE NEWS One editor remarked: "Let's face it. The quints were big news when they were born and they'll continue to make news as long as they are living." The girls have always shied away from publicity.

They have moaned on more than one occasion that they want to be left alone, more so since the 1955 death of Emilie during an epileptic seizure at a rest home in the Laurentian mountains north of Montreal. Reporters trooped in droves to the Roman Catholic retreat at Ste. Agathe, and some newspapers said the death occurred under "mysterious circumstances." But Dr. Rosario Fontaine, a Montreal medico-legal expert, scotched the rumors by issuing a post-autopsy statement saying Emilie died of suffocation in a pillow during the epileptic seizure. It was then that Papa Oliva Dionne disclosed Emilie had suffered from epilepsy since childhood.

THREE ARE MARRIED Three of the four surviving quints now are married, Cecile to Phillippe. a television tech-n i i a Annette to finance company executive Germain Boy U. S. Champion (In outward appearance and behavior young Bohhy Fischer Is much like other teen-agers. But his grand passion is chess, and having recently heenme an International grand master, he's aiming for the world championship held by Soviet Russia.) NEW YORK, Oct.

11 There's a Batman comic book on his bedside table arid a rock 'n' roll program blaring over his radio. He's slouchy, gangly and crew-cut. But Batman is sprawled over an open chess book and his nail-bitten fingers are deftly moving chess pieces over the black and white board which means more to him than anything else in his life. Bobby Fischer doesn't want to be a baseball star or a football player or the most popular fellow at the prom. He wants to be chess champion of the world.

Most Americans don't know it, but their honor in a big international contest with Russia is riding on the thin shoulders of this 15-year-old boy from Brooklyn. Bobby is hailed by the ex--perts as the greatest chess mind the world has produced in many years. HE'S A GENIUS "He doesn't look like one he looks more like a farmer's boy than an intellectual but he is a genius," says Hans Kmoch, secretary of the Manhattan Chess club which is the nerve center of chess in the United States. "Fischer is something unique. None of the great ones ever accomplished so much so early." He has become an international grand master the youngest in the long history of the game and will meet the world's top seven players this year in a challengers' tournament The winner will get a whack at the present world champion, Russia's Mikhail Botvin-nik.

Bobby, who presents a porcupine exterior to the world, doesn't show much interest in possible cold war implications of his career. He just wants to be champion. If he makes it this try, he'll be the youngest world champion in chess history and only the second American ever to occupy that lofty position. The first U. S.

champion was Paul Morphy, who turned the trick at 21 a century ago. Bobby won't say what he thinks of his chances. Nobody else thinks he will make it this time. But then, nobody thought he could win the American chess championship at 14 and no- body expected him to do very well at the recent international chess tournament in Yugoslavia. As the big chess players, all champions in their own countries, sat down opposite the bony young American, each informed him that he would be beaten.

Some were nicer than oth- October Snappy Fall Morning Is Inspiration to Ambition" By HAYDN S. PEARSON (Journal Special Writer) There is something about a snappy October morning that appeals to the countryman. There- are degrees of frosti-ness and a morning of 3.0 degree temperature is not the same as a 20 degree frost The latter is genuinely frosty and puts a nip into the air that a 30 degree temperature lacks. A hard-frost morning means a covering of gray-white powder on fields and meadows. It means a still, quiet dawn with a touch of winter silence brooding over the countryside.

Along the valleys and hill roads, dark smoke spirals slowly upward from farmhouse chimneys and drifts slowly away eastward sign of a beautiful, brooding-hazy autumn day. As the sun pulls above the horizon and starts its arc to the southwest, mist patches on the hillsides begin to rise. Ragged-edged puffs of gray-white fog float above the meadows. On dark, damp shingles of ice houses and barns, curlicues of white mist dance back and forth as the temperature begins to climb. Theoretically, a snappy morning that makes one think of Squaw Winter, should inspire a man to ambitious work.

But' practically, a man shivers as he gets the fire going in the kitchen stove and then heads for the warm barn to do morning chores. A snappy, frosty morning is an expected part of October. It marks the end of early fall; it writes the introduction to beginning winter. A man-made calendar has its good points, but nature does not go by arbitrary dates. A frosty morning is expected and a man takes it in stride, knowing that a mellow high noon in a few hours will return a touch of September warmth and beauty.

ers they said they were sorry to have to defeat him. They didn't need to be. Most of them didn't. Bobby, playing in his first international competition, pulled out of his early difficulties and tied for fifth place winning his place in the star-studded challengers. Bobby is a tall boy with the classic adolescent slump and light brown hair.

He eyes strangers in general and reporters in particular with glum distrust "Most reporters ask stupid questions. What do I eat for breakfast? That's not important. Why don't they ask about chess?" he said. He sat on his bed, idly moving the figures on the chess board in front of him. He was dressed as usual in a sports shirt.

Bobby won ths. American chess championship in dungarees and a T-shirt; no one remembers seeing him in a coat and tie. STUDIES RUSSIAN The Russians keep winning the big ones in chess, he said, because "everybody there plays. They're subsidized. Sure, they put out a lot of books.

Yeah, I can read a little Russian I can read the moves. I can speak a little. Mr. Pressman at N. Y.

(New York university) taught me." Does he think he can win the challengers' and get a shot at the a i i He shrugged and twisted his lip. "I don't know." Wouldn't it be nice to bring the world chess crown, back to the United States for the first time in 100 years? A sudden, charming grin lights his face. And all at once you could see why the people who have got inside his prickly shell like Bobby Fischer very much indeed. "It would be nice," he agreed. Bobby has few friends his own age.

He comes home from school about 2 o'clock and picks up a chess book. Every spare minute, he is either reading about chess, analyzing moves on his bedside chess board or going somewhere to play chess. Girls are nothing to him. "Girls can't play chess," he says. "Bobby isn't interested in anybody unless they play chess and there just aren't many kids who like it," says Mrs.

Fischer. Maurice Kasper, president of the Manhattan Chess club, commented: "We have about 100 students in the club that Bobby could associate with. But he is so much superior, you see. He just plays with the stronger players. "Yes, Bobby definitely does think well of himself.

But he is a phenomenon that happen' once in a hunted years in a thousand. Until last year, Bobby was little more than a good average student. But he is settling down now and working hard. Bobby lives with his mother in a small fourth-floor walk-up apartment in a neat section of Brooklyn. His 21-year-old sister, Joan, lived there too until her marriage last Sunday, Oct, 12, 1958 Page 73 St.

Laurent. Annette was studying music and home economics in Nicolet, Que. Marie twice entered a convent to become a nun, but left because of ill health and never returned to take her- final vows. In 1956 she opened a flower shop on Montreal's fashionable Pine named it "Salon Emilie" and painted the walls blue, the late Emilie's favorite color. Marie closed the shop six months later.

She complained to a reporter that the trust company handling the quints' estate had "interfered." Other reports said the shop produced more publicity than profit Emilie was 20 when she died. The surviving quints, who turned 24 on May 23, inherited a reputed one million-dollar trust fund when they reached 21. It was from her share of this fund that Marie financed the shop she named after the sister closest to her. The Quints were born to Oliva and Elzire Dionne May 28, 1934. in a modest farm house near Collander, Ont The couple already were the parents of six other children, one of whom died at birth.

The girls became wards of the crown on whose behalf the Ontario government engaged nurses to care for them. The quints' parents were given little responsibility in their care, saw the girls only for a few minutes daily, a cbndition which Mr. and Mrs. Dionne quietly resented. The girls remained close when grew up, but a gap between the parents and children appeared to remain.

The quintuplets, sheltered for most of their lives, decided to fend for themselves when they were about 20. a year before they came into their money and about the time Emilie died. They decided to settle in the Montreal area. The four surviving quints did not spend the Christmas of 1955 with their parents, breaking an annual custom. This gave rise to speculation that all was not well between the parents and the girls.

Lately, however, all seems rosy between the girls and their parents. Pap Dionne remarked after hearing of Marie's secretive marriage to the 38-year-old Florian Houle: "I have never met Florian, but if Marie picked him out by herself, we feel sure she will be happy." on the west the "neighborhood house kitchen." He says some 200 of these house kitchens currently are in operation throughout the country. It's in these establishments that "one may order and receive meals to suit any taste," Pavlov says, adding that these kitchens make it possible to "fully relieve families of low-productive and labor consuming household chores." More than a thousand kitchens of this kind are planned from the end of 1958 and into the following year in areas where there are large concentrations of apartment buildings. Here, Pavlov says, the working people will be able to buy and take home not only dinners but breakfasts, suppers and semi-finished food products. It all seems to boil down to a double-barrelled pitch to keep the Soviets happy a combination of "less work for mother" and "the best way to a consumer's heart is through his stomach." Election Campaign Dignified By BILL DILLINGHAM (State Journal Special Writer) Are your eyes, ears and nerves strained because of the rapid fire of the election campaigns? Americans are given more ear-blasting during an election than any other people of the world.

Take a look at the quiet manner in which the English settle the vote ques The Statistics But Not Service) Si We See It By HOD SHEWELL AND PHIL MONGEAU Just the smell of a home permanent is enough to curl one's hair. Booze may oil the cogs of the imagination, but it also strips the gears. School teachers are underpaid and over-worked, but have about three, months in which to recuperare, remunerate and resuscitate. The gent who wakes up feeling like a million at least knows he hasn't spent it the night before. gressive service forms" next year, raising the productivity of shop workers to such a degree that it will be "tantamount to opening 750 new For the benefit of the consumer, Pavlov notes that the trend of home deliveries of staple products like milk, bread, potatoes and vegetables is on the upswing in bigger cities.

He does admit, however, that only 1 percent of bread sold in Moscow is delivered to homes and less than that in Leningrad. But "we intend to extensively expand this form of service," he says. "House delivery of milk is to be increased in Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev to no less than 25 percent of total sales by the end of 1959. "Motorcycles, scooters, bicycles and minicars will be equipped for this purpose." While boosting the forthcoming era of frozen foods and the like, Pavlov talks of another innovation which may put the Soviet Union one up Show Russia Has Gone Modern Mostly Non sense By DICK MURRAY (Journal Staff Writer) An ad in the personal column of the London Times offered "meager pay, fascinating work." The job: choirmaster at a prison. Whoever takes the post will have to be careful some of his proteges might try to scale the wall on high C.

People drink more, sayt a. noted doctor, as a necessary aid to conversation. Liquor may put a phony polish on a dull joke but ifs a poor substitute for wit. Library books in Los Angeles were 11 million days overdue during the past fiscal year. At three cents a day fines totaled $338,379.

Readers who lost books paid $20,546 to replace them. No TV quiz will answer this question: "Where'd I put my book?" Telephone conversations I never bother to finish: "Your name has just been selected for The difference between an intellectual and a lowbrow: If you mention the James brothers, the intellectual thinks of William and Henry; the lowbrow of Jesse and Frank. JUDGE JAMES E. RYAN in England Age-Old Problems nchangedl LOS ANGELES (UPD So you think traffic, the cost of living, smog and noise are modern complaints of a high-pressure, mechanized society. Like fun.

According to Dr. Edward O'Neil, head of the University of Southern Cali-fornia classics department, Romans were worrying about the same things 1,800 years ago. O'Neil found these comments on life in Rome in the writings of the satirist Juvenal: About traffic "Hurry as we may, we are hemmed in by a surging crowd in front and a dense throng of people pressing in from the rear. One man digs his elbow into me, another a pole; one bangs my head with a plant, another with a wine-cask You can be considered foolish' and thoughtless about a sudden end, if you go out to dinner without your will made." About the cost of living "People whose poverty stands in their way find it hard to rise, but at Rome the attempt is still harder. Here you must pay a big rent for a miserable house.

In Rome everyone dresses above his means. This is a common fault: We all live in a state of pretentious poverty. In short, everything at Rome has its own special price!" About noise: "Most of the sick here die from sleeplessness. For what sleep do rented lodgings allow? The passing of wagons in the narrow, winding streets and in the conversations of the drivers standing around make sleep impossible." tion: Both major parties in England receive about five hours of radio and TV time. During their last election it was five hours and 15 minutes exactly.

More than that is not allowed. After all, authorities say, consider the poor public Each major party in England gets four radio broadcast, "nd three TV casts on national hook-ups. The radiocasts last about 20 minutes and, by law, must be after 9 o'clock at night. This spares the children who are happily tucked away in bed by that hour in foggy England. Americans, however, get attacked by candidates every time they open their eyes, ears or the front door.

Most European countries follow the English pattern in this matter. One obvious drawback, though, occurs in some lands where the amount of radio time allotted is judged by the size of the party concerned. The Vegetarians, by this measure, would get very little time to state their the more popular parties would have longer. The British government takes the attitude that an election campaign should not be turned into advertising. Ample time is given the various candidates to quietly state their programs.

The public is then supposed to consider the merits of what they have just heard and then cast votes accordingly. Advertising merely confuses the issues at hand and makes intelligent voting more difficult Living in Dark Africa Has Unusual Problems LOURENCO MARQUES, Mozambique (INS) Hazard of living in darkest Africa: A car waiting for service at a gas station sustained $200 damage when a hippopotamus wandered in and took a few big bites. By ANGELO NATALE MOSCOW on Hey, Capitalists! Quit bragging about your frozen foods, sleek self-service stores and automatic vending machines. The Soviet Union has them already, and lots more of the same is planned for the future. At least so says Minister of Trade Dmitri Vasilyevich Pavlov.

And he's got figures to prove it. But there's many a slip twixt the figure and the real McCoy. It's no cinch for the busy Moscow housewife, hurrying home from a day at the factory, to stop off at the corner supermarkets and pick up a few packages of frozen borscht. Reason No. 1 There's not vet a visible corner supermarket.

Reason No. 2 There's not yet a very large visible supply of frozen foods. Reason No. 3 The Moscow housewife probably isn't ready for an innovation like frozen foods. "Eat fresh," she says with the faintest flavor of sour grapes about the frozen foods which aren't found at the corner supermarket which isn't there.

All these incidentals aside, Pavlov said in a recent interview with the newspaper "Trad" that customers spend 50 percent less time shopping in self-service stores than at conventional stores. In those Moscow bakery stores which have been converted to self-service, he says, personnel efficiency has risen 20 percent And Pavlov adds that some 6.000 retail establishments will convert tq "pro A GOOD SPORT John Doe who'd never hunted birds. Once thought it would be nice If we would take him hunting; So I gave him this advice. "There are a few things you should know, Excitement you should curb, It never is good sportsmanship To shoot a running bird." "I'd never shoot a running bird," Said Johnnie, greatly shocked, "I sure would give the bird a chanct And wait until it stopped!" J. 1 I.