Ben Lockhart

[Kirby]

I was sad to see this article in the AGA e-journal.

https://www.usgo.org/news/2019/10/ben-l ... 1993-2019/

I'd like to offer my condolences. I didn't spend a lot of time with Ben, but I appreciated chatting with him on a couple of occasions at US Go Congresses. I'll miss seeing him at future go congresses. I admire Ben's apparent willingness to travel his own path in life.

[EdLee]

[Bonobo]

[Applebaps]

RIP

[mhlepore]

I am sorry to hear this as well.

I'm sure people will have more profound memories of Ben, but I will never forget a Go joke he told at the 55 second mark of the video link below. It made me laugh and made Chris Garlock blush. The whole video makes me wish I knew him better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJet9NPf4tU

[EdLee]

Hi mhlepore, oddly enough, another friend made the same joke, not about moves, but (oppositely) about the stones!

Preferring thin stones.

[HKA]

When I think of Ben, I am sopping wet and wearing only a towel.

Perhaps I should explain.

Several years ago, I headed back to my dorm room to get ready to emcee the Congress Banquet. The last thing I did was check the Lightning tournament results and, with an hour till the banquet, I was in the Dan final, but the other semi-final had yet to take place. So I happily intended to declare myself the winner.

After undressing and showering, I waddled and dripped my way back to my room and closed the door behind me. Almost immediately, there was a knock. I will never know how he figured out which room was mine, but I opened the door to find Ben and a friend, go set and Ing clock in tow. He announced that he had just won the other semifinal and was here to play the Lightning final. I am sure I hesitated, but ultimately, and, I hope, modestly, I soaked down into the dorm room carpet to play the game with this gangly teenager. This is the only game I ever played with him and I have no record of the 18 odd minutes spent, yet in many ways it was enough to etch the essence of Ben on my mind forever.

I mean only Ben would have done this in the first place, with his single minded, if slightly off schedule pursuit of the game. And he loved the game, laughing at himself for an early mistake, bearing down after, with a stream of self revelatory commentary one can only appropriately hear in a lightning game. His focus was amazing, as was his comfort in his surroundings - there was nothing strange about sitting on the floor opposite this technically undressed middle aged man - the game was the thing. Ultimately his youthful enthusiasm and growing strength overwhelmed my groups and my hopes. With some bitterness and after some hasty dressing, I was soon handing this force of nature the trophy.

And I am so glad, so very glad to have been able to do so, to reward this young man, who should have had so many other victories. In so many ways we could not have been less alike, and yet we shared an absolute love for this game. Yet while I labored to a gentleman's "C" in the rest of my life to conserve what focus I could for go, that was not Ben's way. I will always envy and admire his razor sited pursuit of the game, tirelessly learning and playing and also teaching. It is sad that we will never know how far he could have gone, but we can take great solace in knowing he went absolutely as far as he could have gone in the time he had, and I know that would make him smile.

[Jowels]

The link at the top of this thread is no longer working (due to link rot), so I am preserving a backup below:

Ben Lockhart, one of the stars of the American go scene, died peacefully at home on Saturday, October 12th, reports his brother Will Lockhart. Ben had been fighting an aggressive cancer for the past two years. “Even in the last stages of his illness, Ben was filled with an amazing energy for life, and a strong sense of himself,” Will said. “I want to express to the go community at large, how thankful I am for the community you gave him. Determined to live his life in his own way, according to his own principles, Ben pursued what he loved completely. As a teenager traveling alone in Korea and Budapest, and as a young man following his own scary and unconventional path, Ben found a world that made sense to him, and in that world you were his second family. You were his second siblings, his teachers, his friends, his guardian angels, his devoted fans.”

The family wanted to reach out to let the go community know Ben has passed. Will plans to write a longer memorial for Ben in the future, celebrating his trajectory through the go scene. Readers who would like to contribute memories, stories or photos of Ben are welcome to do so by email to youth<at>usgo<dot>org. We will share them with the family when they have had a little time to catch their breath. – Paul Barchilon, EJ Youth Editor

If anyone has a link to his obituary, feel free to DM it to me so I can include it in this post.