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Karl Connell
In 1924, the author, Karl Connell, was born in an elevator in New York City and raised in the Catskill Mountains. His Dad taught him to play chess at an early age and they played a...view moreIn 1924, the author, Karl Connell, was born in an elevator in New York City and raised in the Catskill Mountains. His Dad taught him to play chess at an early age and they played a game every evening. Almost always his Dad won except on Sunday evenings when they played for One Dollar. On Sundays his Dad always lost.
Aside from the Sunday Dollar, his only claim to fame as a chess player is that he once defeated the champion of Cuba, Dr. Guillermo Garcia Gonzales, using the Queen’s Indian Defense. Of course, that was some 40 odd years after Dr. Gonzales became champion.
He attended Millbrook School, Yale and then spent 37 months in the Army. Orders were cut for his outfit to lead the second phase of the invasion of Japan, but providentially President Truman ordered the atomic bomb be dropped first. He returned to graduate from Columbia Law School with a J.D. degree. As a lawyer he wrote the history of corporations offering securities to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and later became Vice President and General Counsel for a corporation that acquired Gulf American Corporation, the developer of Cape Coral, Golden Gate, River Ranch, Barefoot Bay and four other properties in Florida and Arizona.
As an environmental, he founded the Neversink Association, Inc. and co-founded the Catskill Landowners Association, Inc. He is honored by the Karl Connell award made each year to individuals “for their wisdom, guidance and leadership in promoting forest stewardship and water quality.” It was named for him, “as a Catskill leader in conservation who helped mediate the citizen’s interests upstream with New York City interests in protecting its water supply.”
He has written a number of law texts, articles on fishing under the pen name Wintoon Waters., and “Biography of an Inventor.” It describes the last minute escape of the subject from a firing squad and how that enabled him to develop the life saving American gas mask in World War I.view less