Mark Lanegan, singer. (Queens of the Stone Age, Screaming Trees)
The Amazing Johnathan (John Edward Szeles).
…
Gary Brooker, of Procol Harum.
Arthur Feuerstein. He’s probably one of those people you’ve never heard of, but the obit fascinates me (for reasons that will become apparent shortly).
Mr. Feuerstein was a chess player. A really good chess player. How good?
Over his career, Mr. Feuerstein had a record of one win, one loss and three draws with Mr. Fischer.
More:
At the 1956 United States Junior Championship, he took third, behind Mr. Fischer. He then edged Mr. Fischer for the United States Junior Blitz Championship, in which each player had five minutes for the entire game.
The third Rosenwald tournament, played in October 1956 at the Manhattan Chess Club, is usually remembered because of Mr. Fischer’s remarkable win against Donald Byrne, Robert’s younger brother. But Mr. Fischer finished in a tie for eighth, while Mr. Feuerstein was third — just behind Arthur Bisguier, another New York prodigy, who had won the United States Championship two years earlier.
Then, in the 1957-58 championship, Mr. Feuerstein tied for sixth with Arnold Denker, a former champion, and Edmar Mednis, a future grandmaster. Mr. Fischer, who was then only 14, won the championship, beating Mr. Feuerstein in the process for the first and only time…
The NYT obit describes the 1950s as being “a golden age for the game in the United States, particularly in New York City”. It would probably have a limited audience, but I’d read a book about this time in the chess world.
Anyway, Mr. Feuerstein didn’t want to turn pro. He thought professional chess was “too unstable and too poorly paid”, so he went into the corporate world. But he continued to play as an amateur.
Then, one day in 1973, Mr. Feuerstein, his wife, and their dog were driving to their vacation home. They got hit by a semi.
The dog was killed. Mrs. Feuerstein broke her back and spent six weeks in a cast.
Mr. Feuerstein suffered a horrible head injury. The doctors on his case gave his wife an extremely negative prognosis.
Then one day Mr. Feuerstein woke up, pulled the breathing tube out and began trying to talk. A nurse called Alice, who rushed to the hospital. She found him playing chess with the neurosurgeon, who had also been called.
Years later, in a profile that appeared in 2012 in Chess Life, the magazine of the United States Chess Federation, the game’s governing body, Alice Feuerstein said her husband, after waking, did not even know what a toothbrush was. But, Mr. Feuerstein recalled, “I remembered everything about chess, even my openings.” He also recalled that he had won that game with the doctor.
This isn’t a miracle story. According to the obit, Mr. Feuerstein was never able to work full-time again.
But he did return to competition at something approaching his pre-accident ability, sometimes beating grandmasters, and he remained a master-level player into his late 70s.
He played his last tournament in October 2015, when he was nearly 80, and scored 50 percent, with one win, one loss and a draw.
Cancer got him at 86.