This September 11 there is much effort throughout the United States to mark the date and the events on this day in 2001. Amid the tragedy it seems appropriate to mark another passage as well, one that is directly relevant to historical boardgamers, and yet one that most among us are likely to be quite unaware of. I refer to Richard Queen, who passed away at his home in Falls Church, Virginia on August 14, 2001. Born in 1951 Richard was in the exact center of the demographic that represents most of us boardgamers, especially the historically inclined set. The cause of death was complications related to multiple sclerosis, which had afflicted Richard for more than twenty years. Probably the vast majority of people who recognize the name Richard Queen at all remember him as one of the Iranian hostages: American diplomats, military, and intelligence officers who bravely manned the U.S. embassy in Teheran during the Iranian Revolution of the 1970s. The government of Reza Shah Pahlavi was overthrown in the spring of 1979 by surging masses of Iranians disillusioned by government repression and lack of responsiveness. Responding to increasingly fundamentalist religious appeals the Iranians eventually installed the theocratic government of the ayatollahs that remains in power today. The U.S. reduced staffing levels at our embassy in Teheran, and also cut back the level of representation, replacing an ambassador with a charge d'affaires. A smaller cadre of brave Americans kept open the embassy-until November 4, 1979, when revolutionary student mobs surged over the embassy gates and took the place over, triggering a hostage crisis that dominated the headlines for a year and had much to do with the political demise of President Jimmy Carter. Richard Queen was an American official, posted at the embassy with the consular service. He'd always wanted to be with the State Department, and Teheran was his first assignment-Richard had joined the consular service earlier that year following completion of a masters degree in Eastern European history at the University of Michigan. Queen was excited by the Teheran scene, wanting to be a witness to history, to see a nation in the midst of revolution, and had specifically asked to be sent to Teheran even after the cutback at the American embassy. He arrived in Teheran just three months before the embassy takeover. This thing, this idea of being a witness, this curiosity is highly characteristic of wargamers, and that is what Richard was, and what we mark here. At one level it is a reminder that wargamers not only explore history but can make it too. But perhaps that is a subject for a different day. I first met Richard Queen in the early 1970s at the offices of Simulations Publications Incorporated (SPI) in New York City. We were both on the periphery -- as a freelance designer and Richard as one of the SPI playtesters -- of the company that in many ways was at the center of our hobby at that time. Friday nights down on 23 d Street (and later at the office around the corner on Park Avenue South), Richard was to be found volunteering his efforts on the games that were in development. Pushing counters around a mapboard, wading through draft rules, or with a mouth full of the pizza that SPI used to order in, Richard numbered among the unsung stalwarts who helped ensure that the wargames were playable, interesting, and informative. His dedication was notable among that cadre. I was merely coming down from the Upper West Side but Richard was commuting from Westchester when he was on vacation from Clinton College, up near Utica. I don't remember him at any of the jawboning sessions that would occur at the local Irish bars, Blarney Stone and Mollys, but no doubt the train schedules and travel had something to do with that. In any case, over a period of years I ran into Richard Queen quite a few times at Simulations. Fast forward to the Iranian Hostage crisis. Queen was one of the sixty-six members of the residual American team taken prisoner on November 4. Five women and eight African-American diplomats were released relatively quickly, after just three weeks in captivity. Seven managed to reach the Canadian embassy and were spirited out of the country in a CIA covert operation. The charge and a couple of others, who had been at a meeting away from the embassy, were housed separately. The other forty-four spent several months after the takeover in a dank and windowless basement, their indignities punctuated by mock executions where the hostages were blindfolded, put before firing squads, and then taken back to the basement. They came to call it the "Mushroom Inn." In March 1980 Richard Queen and some others were moved to quarters in the embassy chancellery. Back in New York the folks at SPI learned in due course that a game tester was among the hostages in Teheran. We were chagrined to say the least. But Queen made the best use of his time with lots of reading and wargaming! I don't remember at this time whether Simulations Publications sent Richard games, or whether he already had them with him in Teheran, but that became a major pastime. The late 1970s was the era of the "monster" game, simulations with many maps and thousands of pieces, and in Iran Richard had a copy of the SPI game War Between the States, naturally a simulation of the Civil War which had weekly turns. Aside from the problems of their size and setup, of course, one of the key problems with the monsters was just generating enough time to play them. At the U.S. embassy Queen had nothing but hours on his hands, and he was able to play through to somewhere in 1864 in game time. On a few occasions he was able to interest others of the Americans in his project, and also a few of the Iranian student guards, but for the most part it remained a solo endeavor (so much for multiplayer games!). The chancellery had much better light, but the experience did not help Richard's eyes. Queen's gaming continued through the summer of 1980, after the failed hostage rescue mission that aborted on Desert One. Somewhere in that timeframe Richard began to suffer from strange medical symptoms. There was muscle tingling, difficulty coordinating movements, dizziness, and double vision. Eventually the Iranian guards sought medical assistance for Queen, but Iranian doctors decided they could not treat his malady. That July Iranian ruler Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ordered Richard Queen released and repatriated to the United States. He left Iran on July 11, about six months ahead of the rest of the American hostages, who were freed by negotiations held in Algeria between the Carter administration and Iran. It turned out Richard Queen had contracted multiple sclerosis. For some months after his return Richard regularly met with hostage families and played an active role in the denouement of the crisis, while undergoing diagnosis and preliminary treatment of his own ailments. After the hostages returned in January 1981 he dropped out of sight. Queen served in two more American embassies, those in London and Toronto, and had tours at the State Department in Washington. He retired from the consular service in 1995 after a long assignment at home. It was a full career served in spite of the debilitating effects of his MS. I ran into Richard Queen on the street in Washington one day in the late 1980s. We greeted one another warmly and talked of gamers we had known. We exchanged numbers, or at least I gave him mine. I think Richard was still on one of his tours abroad at the time. My phone did ring but it was a few years later, in the early 1990s. We got together and played a couple of wargames. Richard was in fine fettle and still getting on with his life. At the time I was moving into testing of a Civil War game of my own, Campaigns of Robert E Lee, which would eventually be published by Clash of Arms Games, and I inquired whether Richard would be willing to get back into some of his old metier. He was amenable. Richard Queen participated in a number of test sessions on Campaigns and I am sure the game profited from the connection. Through the decade I remained in intermittent contact with Richard. We played games a couple more times, and I invited him to parties I hosted. It was a sadness to observe Richard's gradual deterioration from the ravages of multiple sclerosis. At first he was fine save for the occasional lapse. Later he appeared walking with a cane. Then it was two canes, then a walker. The last of my yard parties Richard Queen attended he sat in a wheelchair. Through all of this there was never a complaint, never a hint of upset or bitterness at what had befallen him. Our final encounter, in the late 1990s, came at one of the Smithsonian museums, where both Richard and I showed up to listen to Burke Davis extol the virtues of various figures of Civil War fame. The chance meeting was nothing but a pleasure. There is something heroic in Richard Queen's life and the way he lived it and we should salute him for that. All of which is to say that boardgamers; are people too. When the hobby was young and there were a lot more of us it was easier to ignore the comings and the goings. Richard Queen stood in the center of the demographic, though. Some of us remain in fine form, some may be as badly off, or worse than Richard. Not only are there fewer gamers today, we tend to be older. As we move ahead it is good to seek out models for graceful maturity, and Richard Queen should be seen as an exemplar. And there is something else here too that is relevant-good games can get you through bad times better than a lot of other stuff. And Richard helped make some of our games good indeed! I salute Richard Queen! Back to Table of Contents -- Against the Odds vol. 1 no. 3 Back to Against the Odds List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2002 by LPS. 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