River from Manhattan, the site of his many chess victories, the driver of an oncoming 18-wheeler was going too fast. He locked his breaks to avoid running into the back of the car in front of him. Suddenly the truck shimmied precariously and jackknifed slightly, the front of its trailer angling out into the oncom- ing lane—Feuerstein’s lane. Faster even than the 1960 U.S. Blitz Champion could analyze and react, the trailer caught his car at the roofline, tearing off its top like foil from a popcorn tray. Something smashed into his head and then sped past him through to the back seat, where it reached so far toward Alice that it killed poor Daisy, who was rest- ing in her lap. Alice’s back was broken in the accident. Arthur slipped quickly into a coma. Twenty-two years earlier, as a 14-year-old student
at Taft Grand Concourse High School, Art had learned chess to play with his older brother. “Harry came home from the service in World War II,” Art said, “and while he was going to college, his friends came over to play chess with him. I wanted to get closer to my brother, who was 16 years older, so I watched the game and learned chess from him.” The game captured young Art en prise. He quickly organ- ized a chess club at Taft, playing first board during challenge-matches against other schools. “I found out that Bronx Science was supposed to be the best,” he said, “so I challenged them, and also Stuyvesant.” Art joined the Marshall Chess Club for a year. “But later someone told me that Manhattan Club was stronger,” he remembered with a laugh, “so I joined it instead.”
From the August 20, 1957 issue of Chess Life
Inspired by a rare moment in chess history After graduating from Taft in 1953, Feuerstein (FYOOR-
steen) went on to the school of business at Baruch College, City University of New York. He continued to play chess and improve his game. “Horowitz’s and Reinfeld’s book How to Think Ahead in Chess really helped me with the openings,” he said. “I started playing the Stonewall as White.” It was an exciting era to be an up-and-coming chess player in New York City. In 1954, the Soviet team, led by Smyslov (who had just drawn an “unsuc- cessful” title-challenge match) substituting for world champion Botvinnik, visited America for the first and only time to play a third post-war match with the U.S. (The first match, in 1945, was played by radio; the second and fourth matches—in 1946 and 1955—were played in Moscow.) The match generated excitement about chess and guarded curiosity about the Soviets. The impact and historical impor- tance of the Soviet visit can only really be appreciated in the context of America’s then-ongoing great Cold War fear and self-examination. At the time of the match, schoolchildren like me regularly rehearsed “duck and cover”—the act of crouching under your wooden school desk in the event of nuclear attack by the only other atomic power, the U.S.S.R. A national debate raged over the value of McCarthyism and its focus on even long- past associations with communism, which populated the notorious “blacklist”—names of U.S. citizens who thus became unemployable, many for decades. In fact, the televised McCarthy- Army hearings, which gripped and divided the nation with its impassioned outbursts, were concluding even as the hushed chess match began. Treasured in Feuerstein’s scrapbook, among yellowed news-
paper clippings of the era that headline his name, is a letter from the organizers of the USA-USSR match, thanking Art for work- ing one of the giant wallboards at the event. “I remember being excited to be a wallboard-attendant,” Arthur told me. What
uschess.org
young and ambitious player wouldn’t be? After all, he was in the room with the greatest players of the generation. Although the Soviets hammered-and-sickled the U.S. 20-12, the resulting effort to better fund the development of American chess helped to cre- ate the three “Lessing Julius Rosenwald Trophy Tournaments,” the last of which would in a few years provide a platform for a surprising Feuerstein debut.
From wallboards to the Rosenwald Two months after mirroring the moves of the USA-USSR.
match on the wallboards, Arthur himself played a game against Erich Marchand at the 1954 New York State Championship in Binghamton that was widely admired for its tactical daring. The game, in which he gave up his queen for three pieces, was reported on in both local newspapers and in Chess Life, which described it as “a game of remarkable depth and beauty, earn- ing for [Feuerstein] the first brilliancy prize.” (See sidebar.) By 1956, Feuerstein placed only a half-point out of first
place in the Greater New York Open, behind Bill Lombardy and Ariel Mengarini. Art even beat young Fischer, who finished a half- point behind him. Feuerstein was favored to win the 1956 Junior Championship in Philadelphia, but finished tied for second after drawing his individual game with Fischer, who won the event. Yet, at the city’s Mercantile Chess Club, Art won the U.S. Junior Blitz Championship, again drawing his individual game with Bobby, who finished second, followed by Lombardy. From 1936 through 1948, USCF held the U.S. Championship
round-robin tournament, dominated by Samuel Reshevsky, every two years. But then FIDE took control of the world cham- pionship on a three-year cycle. So, for a time—1951, 1954, and 1957-8—, the U.S. title tournament was held only during
Chess Life — January 2012 21
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