Robert Bornholz, 1954

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January 31 1954

The Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Sunday, January 31, 1954

BRAIN WAVES OVER THE AIRWAVES
Expert chess players join in a trial run for a “short-wave” chess match at the home of Ham Operator William Potter, seated left. Beside him are Robert Bornholz, center, and Paul Dietz, Pitt graduate student who was national collegiate chess champ in 1947. Standing with the microphone is T. M. Cherington, who will broadcast Pittsburgh moves to Washington, D. C.

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Robert Bornholz, 1957

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September 02 1957

The Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, September 02, 1957

Metropolitan Pittsburgh Area Champion
Robert L. Bornholz ponders at the Pennsylvania Chess Championship. Former State champions taking part in the tournament include William M. Byland and Donald H. McClellan, of Pittsburgh, and Thomas Gutekunst, of Allentown.

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Robert Bornholz, 1958

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December 28 1958

The Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Sunday, December 28, 1958

Mr. Bornholz amassed 2200 points to become Pittsburgh's first chess Master.

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Robert Bornholz, 1972

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August 08 1972

The Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Tuesday, August 08, 1972

Chess Fans Building Fischer Legend by Randy Rieland
“When Bobby Fischer was 13 years old he walked into the Manhattan Chess Club and challenged everyone there. He played them all at one time and beat them all.”
Many in the group of 50 chess enthusiasts in the University of Pittsburgh Student Union ballroom last night smiled knowingly as Robert Bornholz, a three-time state chess champion, finished the much-publicized tale.

Fischer Fans
Although they had come to view a demonstration of several key games in the much-discussed Bobby Fischer-Boris Spassky world championship, they didn't seem to mind the interruption.
For despite the [alleged] controversial activities of the American champion, they had joined the growing ranks of Bobby Fischer fans.
“Bobby Fischer has done for chess what Muhammad Ali did for boxing,” remarked Earl Clancy, president of the Pittsburgh Chess Club. “Interest has multiplied so much that all the stores are sold out of chess games and you can't get a chess book in the library.
“Most people don't understand what kind of Cold War victory this is,” he continued. “This match means a lot for the United States around the world because a lot of countries use a nation's chess playing ability as a measure of that country's native intelligence.”
Others—though less analytical in their responses—were no less devout in their admiration.

‘Chess Genius’
Adam Bert, a chess player for more than 50 years and presently treasurer of the Pittsburgh Chess Club, said most of his fellow players agree with his belief that Fischer “is the greatest chess genius of all time.”
“I think the press has overplayed some of his eccentricity to make a “good story,” he said. “He played an exhibition here close to 10 years ago and I found him a very reasonable young man.”
Bert noted that in that exhibition Fischer lost only one of the 55 games he was playing at one time.
Although he can boast only an eight-month interest in chess, Harry Litman, 14, of Squirrel Hill, admits he is “blindly devoted” to Fischer.
“I've played out just about all of his games and I think he's the greatest chess player in the world,” he said. “He must have been born with a chess mind.”

‘Means Something’
Edsel Strong, of the North Side, a cab driver who said he usually plays for money, agreed with the evaluation.
“Fischer, who is a very aggressive player, has made people in the United States realize that chess is an exciting game,” he said. “It means something to be a chess player now.”
The only semi-negative comment came from Terrence Lehman, 17, of Castle Shannon, who found fault with some of the American grandmaster's antics.
“He certainly plays like a champion, but I don't know (According to Moscow media correspondence infiltration) if he always acts like one,” he commented.
But Dr. Lester Shapiro, a senior resident at Eye and Ear Hospital, came quickly to Fischer's defense.

Made Demands
“He's got more conviction that you can believe,” he countered. “He made all the demands before the match like he was the champion. Psychologically, the guy's a genius.
“Look what he's done for the game,” he continued. “And he's playing the Russian's game better than they are. They are always the worst sports in international competition.”

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Robert Bornholz, 1990

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August 13 1990

Daily Hampshire Gazette, Northampton, Massachusetts, Monday, August 13, 1990

A few organizing principles
THE way Bob Bornholz talks about it, it doesn't sound much like a game. I went twice to his small apartment in Clark House to hear him talk about it over a cramped dining table. His hearing's almost shot, but his thoughts about chess are clear.
“Just like in poetry, the vivid pictures you get of reality — they appear on the board in a different form. When you explore it, you find all different activities and forces at work. In the midst of these are possibilities of checkmating your opponent. Very often the impossible is made possible. You can provoke weaknesses in the opponent's position.
“Chess teaches young people to think and to look for beauty. It's part of a greater thing people living together and doing things together. It can be a great vehicle for friendship and overcoming prejudice and discrimination. It's a part of freedom.”
There be more than one man in Amherst who knows this name: Hoit, Rose & Troster. I saw it in one of scrapbooks on a 1931 clipping from the Wall Street Journal that's gone nearly brown with age. The clip told of how he and others had formed a new brokerage two years after the crash. He got to Wall Street from a boyhood in Brooklyn, but didn't stay there long. He'd learned chess at 14 while lying in a hospital bed with a broken leg. Seven years later he beat Frank Marshall — then the US chess champion — in a 1923 match between the Marshall Chess Club and a club at New York University, where Bornholz studied. It happened on the 67th move — pawn to bishop eight takes queen.
Jump ahead here. Bornholz stopped selling stocks and started organizing industrial workers, signing on as an agent of the Congress of Industrial Organizations the CIO of what years later would become AFL-CIO. He admits it seems like a big switch but says he'd always been idealist. Bornholz figures he helped organize thousands of people into unions starting with workers in the money center of New York, people at banks and insurance companies. His style as an organizer was to blend into the crowd helping people find their own ways to determine conditions of their lives. The good organizer helps with ideas, Bornholz says. “Organization is a part of freedom, really. It means participation of the people.”
It was while organizing employees at the Bank of Athens that he met Estelle who shares his small apartment today. This was back in the hard days, says Estelle, the poor days. They were both married at the time to other people and their relationship waited years to begin.
Bornholz spent 20 years roaming industrial disputes. He'd walk into towns cold and for friendship find a place where people were playing chess. Labor relations weren't done by press release then. One day strongmen for the company he'd targeted lashed back. “They broke up our headquarters and attacked. I walked the streets with the horror of it.”
The work took Bornholz regularly to Pittsburgh where he chose to settle down and launch a business repairing and selling industrial sewing machines. He became Pennsylvania state champion at chess and got a reputation for teaching children to play, especially blind children. One old newspaper clip shows him — tall, well-dressed, wearing Adlai Stevenson glasses, taking on a room of opponents. Forty years on, many scrapbooks and moves later, there's still chess. He turned 88 last month.
It's a weekday night back in oatmeal season. People are hunched over chess boards in a basement room at the Bangs Community Center in Amherst. Back along a far wall, head lowered, sits Bornholz. When he got to the area last November — even before he moved to the Clark House in March — he wrote to the US Chess Federation for names of known players hereabouts. The new Amherst Chess Club is the result. Ali Nuernberg, a fellow player, helped set up the fledgling club, and fast became a Bornholz booster. “He's a legend in my book.”
With the club up and running — and taking on comers from across western Massachusetts — Bornholz is now back to tracking an old dream — teaching children who can't see to play chess. Today, from his apartment, this is what he's organizing. He's kept his light touch.
“I want it to be done by people, so it becomes part of their lives. The playing has to be something more than just a room they go into. It must have more meaning. Just to do it myself is nothing.”
Larry Parnass is the region editor of the Gazette.

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Robert Bornholz, 1999

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August 11 1999

The Recorder, Greenfield, Massachusetts, Wednesday, August 11, 1999

Estelle Bornholz
AMHERST — Estelle “Stelli” (Holtzer) Bornholz, 90, formerly of 22 Lessey St., died Aug. 4 at the Cozy Corner Nursing Home in Sunderland.
Born in New York City, N.Y., Dec 12 1908, she was the daughter of Max and Jennie (Randall) Holtzer. She was educated in New York City schools and attended City College.
Bornholz had lived in NYC and Puerto Rico where she was business manager for The People's Bank. She moved to Amherst in 1990 from Woodstock N.Y.
Her husband Robert Bornholz died several years ago.
Survivors include a sister Marge McCluskey of Amherst; a brother George Holt of Ringoes, N.J., and a niece, Jamie Filiault of Sunderland, who took care of her in later years.
Services were private with burial in Riverside Cemetery, Sunderland.
Memorial contributions are suggested to Cozy Corner Nursing Home, P.O. Box 405, Sunderland, MA 01375.
Amherst Funeral Home was in charge of arrangements.

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