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This article was reproduced from CHESS Magazine January/2018, with kind permission.
Born on 4th December 1937 to a Polish mother and an Italian father, Bill Lombardy grew up in Hunts Point in the South Bronx, New York, where he was taught to play chess at the age of 9 by a neighbourhood friend. He soon took to the game and began frequenting chess clubs across the city, including a 1954 visit to the Manhattan Chess Club, where he first befriended an 11-year-old Bobby Fischer, and both standout prodigies were prepared for chess stardom by legendary chess coach Jack Collins.
However, during an era that witnessed Fischer explode upon the scene, Lombardy found himself having to be content to play second fiddle with his teenage talents never being fully recognised — and although he was forever overshadowed by Fischer, Lombardy seemed quite content to be a privileged eyewitness to somebody transforming the sport forever, and recently that friendship and association was immortalised in a Hollywood movie.
"It’s kind of like Mozart and Salieri," once said Frank Brady, former president of the Marshall Chess Club and Fischer’s biographer. "Lombardy might have been the greatest of his generation if Bobby hadn’t come along." And Brady wasn’t far from the truth here. Being Fischer’s senior by six years, it was Bill who proved to be the first to usher in that exciting new generation of U.S. chess stars, only to then being eclipsed by Fischer and becoming his close confidant as he reached the summit.
Bill Lombardy’s first front cover for ‘Chess Review’ in October 1954, after becoming the youngest-ever New York state champion in 1954. On the right Jerry Spann, Raymond Weinstein, and Bill Lombardy on their way to the historic 1960 World Student Team Championship | Photos: U.S. Chess Federation
In 1957, in Toronto, Canada, Lombardy became the first American to win the World Junior Chess Championship title, and doing so with a perfect score of 11/11, a record that still stands today. Three years later, in a defining moment, he led the United States to an historic gold-medal winning performance ahead of the strongly-favoured Soviet Union in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in the 1960 World Student Team Championship. In inspired form and undefeated on top board with a tally of 11 wins (and two draws), Lombardy memorably beat future world champion, Boris Spassky, in a key game that not only led to the capture of the title, but also caused consternation for Spassky, who became the scapegoat for the humiliating Soviet defeat.
This gave the Americans their first and only team victory over the Soviets and started a Cold War rivalry over the chessboard that would challenge the one also in space. That same year, 1960, Lombardy was a standout performer playing second board behind Fischer and helped the U.S. team take silver behind Russian gold at the Leipzig Olympiad. He also qualified from the 1961 U.S. Championship to the 1962 Stockholm Interzonal, which Fischer went on to easily win – but he declined his Interzonal place and this signalled the end of any further chess ambitions, as by now he had made the decision to become a Catholic priest. He entered the seminary in 1961, was ordained in 1967 and worked in the Bronx, but left in 1973, complaining of unscrupulous pastors who objected to his playing chess. When he left the priesthood, he married, had a son, but soon divorced.
In 1972, as Fischer went on to challenge Spassky for the world title, the American recruited Lombardy to be his second and confidant during the match in Reykjavik. However, despite Fischer sacking Lombardy as his chief trainer during the adjournment of game 13 and replacing him with Lubosh Kavalek for the remainder of the 21-game series, there was no real animosity between the two. And in 2014, a Hollywood movie of that epic Cold War duel was released, Pawn Sacrifice, with A-listers Tobey Maguire and Liev Schreiber in the leading roles as Fischer and Spassky, with Lombardy’s character portrayed by Peter Sarsgaard.
In the latter years of William J. Lombardy, the endgame of his life tragically played out much like one of the many old masters from a bygone era we have all read about, who had sadly fallen on hard times with ill health, and were to die in penury. It all started to go tragically wrong for Bill in 2016 with many stories appearing in the media, including a major feature in the New York Times, about a protracted legal dispute with his landlord over rent arrears for his cherished sixth-floor New York red brick apartment in Stuyvesant Town.
He’d lived there for almost 40 years, initially moving there in 1977 to help take care of Jack Collins, his former coach. But the last decade proved to be problematic, with accusations that the building’s management were deploying tough tactics with tenants simply to clear the building located in a prime piece of NY real estate – in order to make way for a new multi-million dollar development. Bill was one of the last to leave the building, but not before 18 court cases and many subsequent appeals, and then finally being evicted in early 2016 with rent arrears of $27,124.82, which he strenuously denied he owed.
Many have commented that Bill often created ‘roadblocks’ for himself, having a strong will and often being too proud to accept help when it was being offered to him. But now finding himself homeless, and his health plagued by chronic heart problems, he initially rejected offers of help and support, only for things to get further complicated after he was seriously assaulted and had to spend months in hospital before finally discharging himself, and since the early spring precariously living life day by day.
Bill attended the U.S. Open in Norfolk, Virginia, in early August, then spent a few days in Chicago before moving on to teach at a chess camp in Burlington, Iowa, on the Mississippi river. On the spur of the moment he hopped on the California Zephyr heading west and ended up at the railway terminus in Emeryville (next to Oakland). He then took a cab to Redwood City on the Peninsula between Silicon Valley and San Francisco, there spending the best part of a week staying in the Europa Hostel for the homeless.
He finally accepted the offer of a friend, Richard Hack, to stay temporarily in his small studio apartment, which was handily located half a mile or so from the Mechanics’ Institute Chess Club. And being so near to the fabled SF club, he got a gig giving lessons and lectures to the club members that at least put $1500 in his pocket – but typically of Bill, rather than get a hotel, he opted instead to stay at a 24-hour McDonald’s hamburger bar and then slept for a period on the floor at the Mechanics’.
But after a few days roughing it, and with his health noticeably declining, Bill accepted an offer to stay with another friend, Ralph Palmeri, in Martinez, California, where he at least had some respite by spending the last ten days of his life in his own room, with a laundry service and a well-stocked fridge. And there, on 13th October, 2017, he died peacefully in his sleep of natural causes.
In his lifetime, Lombardy, a very private and stubbornly principled person, twice notably refused approaches from the powers that be to be inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame. Paradoxically, in death, now there’s no reason for him not to be inducted, and I’m sure he’ll soon rightly be taking his place in the Hall of Fame, right up there alongside Bobby Fischer and the many other chess stars of his generation.
Bobby Fischer is enrapt as he watches his American team mate Bill Lombardy ponder his 15th move, in his game against Radovici at the Leipzig Olympiad in 1960 | Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-76052-0053 / Kohls, Ulrich / CC-BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
As previously mentioned, Lombardy was in his pomp in the early Sixties, so must look towards this period to pay tribute to him through his games. And for me, his best game was against Lajos Portisch, at Leipzig 1960, that immediately made an impression on me as a young kid, when I first came across it in one of my earliest chess books, Chess With the Masters, by Martin Beheim – though the English version was edited, revised and greatly improved with many new additions by Leonard Barden, who had the good sense to included this game after witnessing it at firsthand while in Leipzig.
Despite my own personal choice, one of the most published games of 1960 is this defeat of Boris Spassky that’s universally recognised as Lombardy’s best-known game. However, what was worse for the Soviets on their home turf, was that Lombardy, with an astonishing unbeaten score of 12/13 (92%!), also stole the limelight by winning the individual gold medal for the best top-board performance — and his famous double gold-medal feat over Spassky was to have serious repercussions for the future world champion.
Boris Spassky and Bill Lombardy in 1960 | Source: Olimpbase.org
As author Andrew Soltis mentions in his book Soviet Chess: 1917-1991, "After Spassky lost a highly publicised game to the American William Lombardy on first board in the 1960 Student Olympiad he was left off the 1961 team and was eventually suspended from foreign travel three times. He was replaced at the last minute as a Soviet invitee to Hastings 1962-63 — a typical Sports Committee humiliation."
And, indeed, when Spassky stayed with Soltis during a visit to New York in the 1980s, he confirmed that he was the one who was singled-out and punished by the Soviet authorities for that defeat to Lombardy: “My nervous energy was completely destroyed for three years”, confirmed Spassky of this period in his life.
Bill Lombardy, left, at a news conference at the world championship in 1972, with Paul Marshall, centre, a lawyer for Bobby Fischer, and Fred Cramer, Mr. Fischer’s representative.
Another who was also a part of that golden generation for U.S. chess was Larry M. Evans, and here, in an almost forgotten gem from the American chess scene, Lombardy wins the brilliancy prize as he spectacularly thwarts his opponent’s brilliant attempted swindle in a wild game from the 1971 U.S. Open in Ventura, California.
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