Obituaries
La Grange Park Postman, Invented 'Diplomacy' Game, Dies
Allan Calhamer grew up in La Grange Park, graduated from LTHS and spend much of his life as a mailman there—but also created the mass-selling game reportedly loved by the Kennedys.
Born and raised in La Grange Park, and having spent over two decades working as one of the Village's mailmen, the inventor of the board game "Diplomacy," Allan B. Calhamer, passed away at Adventist La Grange Memorial Hospital on Monday, The Doings La Grange reports.
According to a detailed 2009 profile piece in Chicago Magazine, the Harvard-educated Calhamer created and published the pre-WWI alliance-strategy game—"a thinking-man's Risk"—in the 1950s, and it would go on to sell over 300,000 copies as well as being a favorite of politicians like the Kennedys and Henry Kissinger.
“His mother encouraged him to have a big imagination, and he was always inventing board games,” childhood friend Gordon Leavitt told the magazine in 2009. “Lawyers like Diplomacy because they’re into power, [but] Allan had the wrong kind of personality to become a lawyer. He wasn’t aggressive enough. He's more scholarly.”
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Calhamer was heavily mourned in a forum at the website BoardGameGeek, with many posters calling Dipomacy one of their all-time favorite games, if not their sole favorite.
"While Diplomacy didn't bring Mr. Calhamer a fortune, and perhaps not widespread fame, it has, I believe, earned him immortality," blogger Seth Owen wrote. "Diplomacy is among that select few games that has earned the title of a 'timeless classic.'"
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