Apologies to the Undead
VanUpp
by Sam Sloan
In a posting I sent out yesterday entitled "What ever happened to Peter
Winston?" I gave the names of several chess players who are believed to
have killed themselves.
It has since been confirmed to me by a person whom I consider to be a
reliable source that Roy Ervin is indeed alive and living near Chico,
California. This should come as a great surprise to the organizers of the
"Roy Ervin Memorial Chess Tournament" which was held in Southern
California several years ago.
Almost everybody else believes that Roy Ervin is dead. Somebody remarked
that a letter from a person named Roy Ervin was published in Chess Life
two years ago, but that the letter was obviously fake, because Roy Ervin
is dead.
Several sources have said that Roy Ervin was easily over 2400 in strength
and could beat Walter Browne at 5-minute chess. Ervin played in Lone Pine
1975, 1976, 1977 and 1978. According to my database, Ervin defeated Saidy
and Biayasis in Lone Pine 1976 and Grandmasters Browne, Sahovic and
Biayasis in Lone Pine 1977. Ervin won the Charles Bagby Memorial Chess
Tournament in 1976, among many others. However, when his mental health
started to decline, he became a street person and slept under the chess
tables on Santa Monica Beach. The common belief is that Roy Ervin killed
himself by drowning.
According to several sources, David Forthoffer is alive and has never been
dead. I have confused him with another chess player with a similar name
who killed himself by hanging himself in Central Park in New York City in
about 1970. That chess player left a suicide note which stated, "My
parents had nothing to do with this". His obituary was published in the
New York Times. The obituary said that he was a promising chess player who
had won many trophies. I found this ironic, because the only trophies he
had ever won were Class B trophies. At that time, Bill Goichberg used to
give out huge trophies as prizes, a practice which he has discontinued.
That chess player was no better than Class A. He was never a master.
That chess player, whose correct name I still can not recall, told me at a
tournament in 1969 or 1970 that he was going to kill himself in six months
if he did not get out of the draft. I was a big anti-war activist at the
time and I told him that I knew of several ways to get out of the draft.
However, six months later, almost exactly to the day, his body was found
hanging in Central Park.
The person who would remember his name would be Bill Goichberg. Goichberg
has an encyclopedic memory for the names of chess players. However,
Goichberg has not yet joined the electronic revolution and apparently does
not have an e-mail address.
Nobody as yet has offered any further information on the actual subject of
my inquiry, which was Peter Winston. There have been reminiscences of
people remembering how they or their friends played chess against Peter
Winston around 20 years ago, but nobody has reported a live sighting of
Peter Winston since he disappeared in late1977.
I remember the date because I recall that it happened about one month
after he defeated me in an international chess tournament which was won my
Mednis. I believe that was the tournament which had Grandmasters Soltis,
Helgi Olafsson, Sigurjonsson and others. I got into the tournament only
because there were an odd number of players. I also lost to Bonin in that
tournament. My loss to Bonin is analyzed in the Myers Opening Bulletin,
Vol. 1, No. 3, page 10, with the date of 7/1977.
I found the last published USCF rating of Peter Winston in the February,
1978 Chess Life, which reflects tournaments through December 21, 1977.
Winston's rating was 2146 and he was ranked number 46 among U.S. chess
players under 21. This exceptionally low rating of 2146 was no doubt due
to the fact that he lost all of his games in the last tournament in which
he played, which was an event of at least 6 or 7 rounds. Winston's rating
undoubtedly must have been more than 2200 before than tournament.
I also looked up Peter J. Winston in Chess Personalia by Jeremy Gaige. He
is listed on page 466 and his birthdate is given as 18 March 1958. This
means that he was 19 and not 17 when he disappeared in 1977. This also
means that he had just turned 12 when he defeated me on April 12, 1970 and
was not 10 or 11 as I said. This also means that Timothy Hanke is probably
correct when he said that Winston was older than him, but the difference
between them is just a matter of months, and not years as Hanke apparently
believed.
Richard Reich reports that Winston's last published FIDE rating was 2260.
This rating obviously does not reflect the poor results which Winston had
just before he disappeared. Perhaps those events did not get rated,
although I recall that Goichberg said that he was going to send them in
for rating.
Returning to the case of David Forthoffer, I am sincerely sorry for
mistakenly saying that he is believed to be dead. One source informs me
that Forthoffer got a Ph.D. in something and has not played chess in at
least 10 or 15 years. Another source says that Forthoffer became a
religious fanatic, devotes himself to his church and no longer plays much
chess. However, a member of this discussion group reports Forthoffer as
playing chess as recently as two years ago.
Remember that this is not The New York Times. This is just a discussion
group. Nothing on this group can be absolutely guaranteed to be accurate.
I could have guaranteed the accuracy of my report by simply substituting
the name of Charles Henin for Forthoffer. Henin was a solid master who had
the distinction of having a plus score against Fischer. Henin defeated
Fischer in the 1956 U.S. Junior Championship. Fischer won the tournament
and Henin finished second. Henin killed himself some time in the early
1970s with a combination of a massive overdose of sleeping pills and
alcohol. However, I have heard that there is some disagreement as to
whether his death was accidental or a suicide.
Jim Schmidt was a solid master who killed himself in around 1970 by
hanging himself in the closet of his parent's house, or so I am told.
Again, this information is not guaranteed to be accurate, except that I
can guarantee that Schmidt will not be coming back. Schmidt was a serious
alcoholic. He was always drunk. A chess player recently told me that he
thought that Schmidt had killed himself because he lost a game to that
player. I told him that I was sure that that had nothing to do with it and
that Schmidt's death was related to alcohol.
I was always told that Grandmaster Nicholas Rossolimo died after the World
Open which he won. Rossolimo had a victory celebration in his Rossolimo's
Chess Studio in Greenwich Village that night, got drunk and fell down the
stairs into the basement, and broke his neck, is the story I was told.
However, somebody told me recently that that was not how Rossolimo died at
all. This source said that Rossolimo got into a fight or an argument in a
building across the street from the Marshall Chess Club in New York City,
that the other person hit him, and Rossolimo died. The police
investigated, but no charges were ever brought.
I make no apology about saying that Roy Ervin is believed to be dead. I
have asked a dozen chess players in the last few days, and all of them
have said that Ervin is dead. However, I have received one e-mail saying
that Ervin is alive and living near Chico, California.
If anybody wants to find out whether Winston and Ervin are dead or alive,
the Mormon Church Library maintains a database on CD-ROM with the social
security number of every deceased person in America (except, of course, of
persons who died so long ago that they did not have a social security
number). However, the social security number is only available for those
persons who are dead. The numbers for people who are still alive are
protected by the Privacy Act. There is a branch of the Mormon Church
Library in every major city of the United States and is open to the
public, so anybody can go there and look in that database to see whether
Winston and Ervin are dead or alive.
I imagine that this database is also available on the Internet somewhere,
but I do not know where it is.
If anybody wants to know whether Peter J. Winston is in prison in South
Carolina, as Bruce Kopet claims, they can call the South Carolina
Department of Corrections and inquire there. In addition, armed with his
birth date of March 18, 1958, any police station should be able to find
out his NCIC number, which is a number assigned by the FBI to convicted
criminals and fugitives. (However, the police are not supposed to give
this information to the general public.)
Again, my apologies for saying that David Forthoffer is believed to be
dead, when he is actually alive.
Sam Sloan