John Ray Webster

Captain John Ray Webster (born March 31, 1942) is an American competitive checkers player, veterinarian, farmer, retired military officer, and musician. A national checkers champion and grandmaster, Webster won the United States Blitz GAYP title at the American Checker Federation National Championship in 2011. He has won the North Carolina Checkers Championship eleven times and represented the United States, as a member of the United States International Checkers Team, in the World Checkers/Draughts Championship in England in 1989 and Las Vegas in 2005. In 2011 he represented the United States at the World Qualifier Checkers Tournament in Italy.

Early life and family Webster was born on March 31, 1942, in Stoneville, North Carolina, the youngest of five children, to James Jefferson Webster and Nannie Hurt Strong. His father was a local farmer, businessman, and politician who served as the county commissioner for Rockingham County. His maternal grandparents, Margaret May Irving and James Robert Strong, inherited a large tobacco farm along the Dan River from Irving's parents, Walter Scott Irving and Margaret Hurt Robertson, a member of a Virginian colonial family. Through his mother, he is related to the mathematician Ione Grogan. Webster's parents later owned the farm. He is a musician, playing the bass fiddle with the Green House River Band, a bluegrass band that performs in North Carolina and Virginia. Webster manages his family's farm, now a cattle farm, which he and his siblings inherited from their father. Webster won the United States Blitz Go-As-You-Please Championship at the American Checker Federation National Championship in Medina, Ohio on July 25, 2011. He also won the North Carolina State Checkers Open in Greensboro, North Carolina on May 18, 2011, and the Southern Open in Lebanon, Tennessee on July 10, 2011. His first North Carolina State tournament, when he was sixteen years old, was in Hickory in 1958.

In 2005 he placed seventh at the Tennessee State Championships. In 2007 he won the U.S. GAYP National Championship in Las Vegas.

In 2015 Webster won the Tennessee State Open in Lebanon, Tennessee.

The John Webster GAYP Tournament, hosted by the American Checkers Federation, is named in honor of Webster.