Gary Gygax and the Chili Festival

So, one of the odder things to turn up in the preliminary sorting of old TSR stuff was a clipping from a local news paper of TSR founder and DandD co-creator Gary Gygax judging a local chili contest. I've attached a scan below, but being low-res newsprint the image doesn't reproduce all that well. Gygax is the second from the left.

I have no memory of this clipping at all, or any idea how it found its way into those papers. The date was sometime between February 5th (the date of the contest) and 14th (since, as Jeff Grubb pointed out, there's an add for Valentine's Day on the back), but I don't know the year; probably '95, '96, or '97. Nor do I know where it appeared, other than some local area paper (the classified ads on the back include return addresses for Delavan, where we were living at the time, as well as Elkhorn, where Jim Ward lived, and Whitewater, a little further off). The event was probably held at the Grand Geneva resort (since the contest's name is given as the "Grand Geneva Winter Carnival"), right there in Lake Geneva. I don't know what year this first such event was, but according to their website they're still having it as recently as this past February.*

It's kind of nice, though, to see Gygax in a non-gaming context, and to know he achieved some status as a local figure in his own hometown.

Here's the link:

--John R.
current audiobook: CATCHING FIRE (resumed)
current book: THE PRYDAIN COMPANION (MIchael O' Tunnell), tales of the Tuatha de Danaan (Lady Gregory)






*http://blog.grandgeneva.com/2012/01/grand-geneva-hosts-annual-winter-carnival/