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Long time member and former RA Chess Club champion Douglas Dougherty passed away last Sunday at the age of 93.
His memorial reception will be held September 17, 2022 at Tubman’s Garden Chapel from 2:30-4:30. It will be friends and family, slide show and photos, sharing some stories and memories, and some food.
Doug Dougherty had a long association with the RA Chess Club. Doug Dougherty pre-dates me by a few decades at the RA. I first joined the RA Chess Club in 1982. So I do not know precisely when he first joined the RA Chess Club. However, he was one of the strongest chess players in Ottawa for about 25 years from the 1960s to mid or late 1980s.
I brought the RA Chess Club Championship Trophy with me to this memorial reception because Doug Dougherty won it three times!
Doug Dougherty won the RA Championship outright in 1970.
Doug Dougherty and Ken Winterton tied for the RA Championship in 1981.
Doug Dougherty, Gilmore, Veltman and Sexton tied for the RA Championship in 1984.
When I joined the RA Chess Club in the early 1980s Doug Dougherty was one of the big tests in the club by the virtue of his playing strength.
He was the youngest in the wall of older players consisting of Ron Rodgers, Ken Winterton and Doug Dougherty. These names are all over the RA Chess Club Championship Trophy. For the younger up and coming chess players these guys were huge.
For the first few years in the 1980s I was too weak to be paired against the likes of Doug Dougherty. We first played in 1988 and it was tough going with him winning or drawing all the games for the first few years. I and others at the RA Chess Club learned a lot about chess from Doug Dougherty. My last game with Doug Dougherty was in 2013 and I think that was the year he called it a chess career.