World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer Dies

This guy was one name on my list of people to chase, locate and interview during my days as a journalist. One of those wild minds, along with JD Salinger, Hunter Thompson (Hunter spoke to everyone, but I was more curious how he’d respond to my first words to him), Marlon Brando, Bettie Page, Iva (Tokyo Rose), and DB Cooper, that made up a list ten names I carried around with me — people who never answered the most important question in life, “Why?” Those who know me will remember when I spoke to each and whether I befriended them, they hung up on me or told me to “Fuck Off!”

• Clearly, I never found DB; dead or alive.
• JD Salinger always answered the phone with silence, waiting for the caller to speak first. I did, he always hung up. A few years later I learned he was always waiting for the caller to say a “code word” before he warmly responded.
• Brando always answered in character; males/females, my favorite was his redneck voice! I’d try to talk to him but he’d ignore all I said and keep on reciting whatever monologue he’d chosen for the day.
• Bettie was great and I became friendly with her and her brother. Her story is amazing, but in the end quite sad. To think she walked away from millions of dollars off her name and likeness — and to this day couldn’t care less about it — simply enjoying her small apartment and unrecognizable face.
• Hunter was simply whacked. Life to an extreme — he spoke to an extreme! My few chats with him had to be recorded so I could listen over and over to understand the words he spoke with such speed. I finally decided to just call from time to time to hear the messages he left on his answering machine. And the times he answered, catching me off-guard, he’s lecture me on how if I took the time and spent the money to call him I should, “..fuckin say something interesting.” He was right, but his lectures were not worth interrupting — and he knew that too.
• Iva… oh Iva. Great personal story. In my opinion, just one of those terrible life stories of heartbreak, mistreatment and injustice by the US government. I’m proud of President Ford for issuing her a pardon.

and this brings us to Bobby… Bobby was impossible to find. For the longest time I found myself wanting to believe he was in fact, DB Cooper! Then paydirt, Bobby had a sister living in San Francisco, which led me to Bobby — and his most unique way of answering his phone — “Fuck Off!” He would pick up the phone and before the second or two of silence one hears as the phone goes from cradle to mouth, Bobby would fire off a “Fuck Off!” and slam the phone down. After several calls over several months I left him alone. I figured he was either angry at the world or the world had no one in it he cared to talk to — I was right in both cases. If possible, rest in peace Bobby.

ABCNEWS OBIT
Bobby Fischer, the Reclusive American Chess Master Who Became a Cold War Icon, Dies at 64
The Associated Press
REYKJAVIK, Iceland

Bobby Fischer, the reclusive American chess master who became a Cold War icon when he dethroned the Soviet Union’s Boris Spassky as world champion in 1972, has died. He was 64.

Fischer died Thursday in a Reykjavik hospital, his spokesman, Gardar Sverrisson, said. There was no immediate word on the cause of death.

Born in Chicago and raised in Brooklyn, Robert James Fischer was a U.S. chess champion at 14 and a grand master at 15. He beat Spassky in a series of games in Reykjavik to claim America’s first world chess championship in more than a century.

The event was given tremendous symbolic importance, pitting the intensely individualistic young American against a product of the grim and soulless Soviet Union.

It also was marked by Fischer’s odd behavior possibly calculated psychological warfare against Spassky that ranged from arriving two days late to complaining about the lighting, TV cameras, the spectators, even the shine on the table.

But his reputation as a genius of chess soon was eclipsed by his idiosyncrasies.