Dewain’s First Chess Lesson
By
George Dwight Barber, Jr.
My brother Dewain was first introduced to the game of chess by me. I returned from spending a day visiting our father, who taught at a Navy School in Norman, Oklahoma, where we all lived. On my visit to the Navy School, one of the sailors asked me if I would like to play some chess. After showing me how to move some of the pieces, we played a game. He won and then laughed. I learned later that he was a prankster and would use a Fool’s Mate on unsuspecting individuals. Our father heard about the prank and told me about the sailor. I was really mad and determined to learn how to play chess.
As brothers, Dewain and I have always been very close. When I got home, I told him what the sailor had done. At that point we both really wanted to learn chess. Our father bought us a chess book and set. We both studied the book and started to play chess together. This was in the fall of 1955. Dewain was 9 years old at the time. He was later to travel to his first tournament in Tulsa, Oklahoma.