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Date: 11 Feb 2009 18:30:35
From: samsloan
Subject: Nigel Eddis, Chess Life photographer, has died
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Nigel Eddis, prolific Chess Life Photographer and once a candidate for
election to the USCF Policy Board, died on January 11, 2009 at age 72.
I owe many great debts to Nigel Eddis. In 1978 my marriage was
breaking up with my first wife Anda, mother of my two children, Peter
and Mary. Nigel and Anne lived just two blocks away from us on the
Upper West Side of Manhattan. Often Nigel and and his wife Anne became
unofficial marriage counselors, especially when Anda would kick me out
of the house, which was frequently. Nigel and Anne would come over and
talk her into letting me back into the house. It is probably because
of Nigel and Anne that I was able to stay with Anda long enough to
have two children with her.
In 1997, Nigel came to the rescue again. By then, he was working for
Tiger Direct, an Employment Agency in the Wall Street Financial
District. Nigel got my beloved girlfriend, Passion Julinsey, a job
working for Goldman Sachs in the library.
As it turned out, after three months of living with me, Passion went
nuts and broke up with me and Goldman Sachs fired her, either on the
same day or the next day. Passion probably thought I had gotten her
fired, because both things happened at the same time.
Nigel Eddis lost his job with the Wall Street Employment Agency, which
was on William Street, when 9/11 happened and the agency had to close.
Sam Sloan
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Date: 12 Feb 2009 08:12:51
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Nigel Eddis, Chess Life photographer, has died
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NIGEL'S QUESTION
FIDE prez Florencio Campomanes came to the Marshall Chess Club on his
whistlestop tour of America in an attempt to justify his cancellation
of the first Kasparov vs. Karpov title match. Campo claimed he stopped
the match after 48 games "for medical reasons" because both players
were exhausted (even though the challenger and champion wanted to
continue).
Larry Evans On Chess reported that Nigel Eddis asked Campo what
doctors he had consulted before making such a fateful decision,
eliciting this memorable response from Campo: "I didn't need to
consult any doctors. I come from a medical family."
samsloan wrote:
> Correction:
>
> The correct name of the company Nigel Eddis worked for was Tiger
> Information Systems (not Tiger Direct). They are back in business now
> and back at 130 William Street where they were when Nigel Eddis worked
> for them.
>
> http://www.tigerinfo.com/services/
>
> Sam Sloan
>
> On Feb 11, 9:30 pm, samsloan <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Nigel Eddis, prolific Chess Life Photographer and once a candidate for
> > election to the USCF Policy Board, died on January 11, 2009 at age 72.
> >
> > I owe many great debts to Nigel Eddis. In 1978 my marriage was
> > breaking up with my first wife Anda, mother of my two children, Peter
> > and Mary. Nigel and Anne lived just two blocks away from us on the
> > Upper West Side of Manhattan. Often Nigel and and his wife Anne became
> > unofficial marriage counselors, especially when Anda would kick me out
> > of the house, which was frequently. Nigel and Anne would come over and
> > talk her into letting me back into the house. It is probably because
> > of Nigel and Anne that I was able to stay with Anda long enough to
> > have two children with her.
> >
> > In 1997, Nigel came to the rescue again. By then, he was working for
> > Tiger Information Systems, an Employment Agency in the Wall Street Financial
> > District. Nigel got my beloved girlfriend, Passion Julinsey, a job
> > working for Goldman Sachs in the library.
> >
> > As it turned out, after three months of living with me, Passion went
> > nuts and broke up with me and Goldman Sachs fired her, either on the
> > same day or the next day. Passion probably thought I had gotten her
> > fired, because both things happened at the same time.
> >
> > Nigel Eddis lost his job with the Wall Street Employment Agency, which
> > was on William Street, when 9/11 happened and the agency had to close.
> >
> > Sam Sloan
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Date: 12 Feb 2009 04:30:30
From: samsloan
Subject: Re: Nigel Eddis, Chess Life photographer, has died
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Correction:
The correct name of the company Nigel Eddis worked for was Tiger
Information Systems (not Tiger Direct). They are back in business now
and back at 130 William Street where they were when Nigel Eddis worked
for them.
http://www.tigerinfo.com/services/
Sam Sloan
On Feb 11, 9:30=A0pm, samsloan <[email protected] > wrote:
> Nigel Eddis, prolific Chess Life Photographer and once a candidate for
> election to the USCF Policy Board, died on January 11, 2009 at age 72.
>
> I owe many great debts to Nigel Eddis. In 1978 my marriage was
> breaking up with my first wife Anda, mother of my two children, Peter
> and Mary. Nigel and Anne lived just two blocks away from us on the
> Upper West Side of Manhattan. Often Nigel and and his wife Anne became
> unofficial marriage counselors, especially when Anda would kick me out
> of the house, which was frequently. Nigel and Anne would come over and
> talk her into letting me back into the house. It is probably because
> of Nigel and Anne that I was able to stay with Anda long enough to
> have two children with her.
>
> In 1997, Nigel came to the rescue again. By then, he was working for
> Tiger Information Systems, an Employment Agency in the Wall Street Financ=
ial
> District. Nigel got my beloved girlfriend, Passion Julinsey, a job
> working for Goldman Sachs in the library.
>
> As it turned out, after three months of living with me, Passion went
> nuts and broke up with me and Goldman Sachs fired her, either on the
> same day or the next day. Passion probably thought I had gotten her
> fired, because both things happened at the same time.
>
> Nigel Eddis lost his job with the Wall Street Employment Agency, which
> was on William Street, when 9/11 happened and the agency had to close.
>
> Sam Sloan
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Date: 12 Feb 2009 00:20:43
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Nigel Eddis, Chess Life photographer, has died
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A REMEMBRANCE
Nigel Eddis died in New York City on January 11, 2009, from
complications involving a heart ailment. He leaves behind his wife
Anne and three children, Timothy, Christine and Tatiana.
Last evening I spoke to his wife, a violinist with the New York
Symphony Orchestra. She would not mind if someone phoned her for a
commemorative piece in Chess Life. There are many wonderful stories
about Nigel, the 6' 6" Englishman, who attended Westminister, one of
the five great public schools of England, whose brother was an
Etonian. The two would frequently compare notes to make sure to avoid
anyone from either school, not wishing to get too involved with "the
pansies."
In the 1950s Nigel fought for Her Majesty's forces over here in
Malaya against the Communist insurrection, which had begun in 1948.
He was thankfully unmolested by the enemy and returned whole in body
and mind. His worst or, more accurately, most amusing moment was
having to dive under a bed in the spirit of Anthony Burgess's Beds in
the East, which is a tome in that author's Malayan Trilogy.
Nigel was literate in the older sense of taking his information
from great books rather than from television documentaries. His Latin
and Ancient Greek were formidable (he once carried on a short
conversation over the telephone in Latin with my classicist mother,
which was more than I could do); his German was totally fluent (he
translated one of Emanuel Lasker's non-chess works); and his memory
for poetry nearly eidetic, a facility that astonished his friends. He
could chatter off entire sections of Milton, and I'll never forget the
afternoon when I sent him my personal translation of Vergil's Aeneid
(done in fifth-year high school Latin) for his inspection. I expected
to impress my dear friend and he instead began offering, without sight
of any text, his own interlinear translation of the great epic poem.
For those who did not know Nigel, he could appear a very tall,
exceedingly arrogant Englishman with an accent so veddy-veddy-upper-
upper that he made Margaret Thatcher sound like Jackie Beers of the
Bronx or Brooklyn. Such was the surface Nigel.
The real Nigel was as kind and generous as they come. As a young
man, he had a lady friend dying of cancer. Heartbroken, he nursed her
24-hours a day until her death. He never breathed a word of this
horrendous physical and moral chore to me. I learned about it from
his family. Too, when I had a wrenching affair of the heart a few
decades back, he travelled from New York City to Newburgh to stay with
me. His attitude: "I'll hold your hand if necessary, so buck up,
can't be as bad as all that." He was wonderful beyond ready
reckoning.
Over the years I frequently dined with Nigel at his enormous
apartment on the Upper West Side in Manhattan. These feasts were
collaborations. Since we were both Old Malaya hands, the menu always
featured Basmati rice, aromatic Indian pickle, crackling papadam,
soothing raita and, to be sure, an extravagant serving of two curried
chickens with their wings, drumsticks and breasts swimming in buttery
ghee. All of which we washed down with copious cuppas of Tiger beer,
a splendid Singaporean pilsener.
A favorite topic of conversation during these sybaritic repasts
was Edward VII, the son of Victoria Regina, and of course, her
successor to the British throne. Edward was the greatest gourmand and
sturdiest trencherman in the long history of not only the British
monarchy, but arguendo, in the histories of all the other European
royal houses. From Edward, it was the shortest of verbal byways to
segue into descriptive discussions of the champion heavyweights and
fatheads who have sat on USCF ruling boards over the decades.
Which brings us to the subject of chess politics.
Nigel was a founder, along with GM Larry Evans, GM Lev Alburt,
Robert Cohen and this writer, of the infamous Friends of the USCF. We
produced a series of Delegates' Newsletters that, I am told, are
highly valued these days by Federation political cognoscenti. Jerry
Hanken cheerfully credits an article we wrote on how he got pantsed by
Fred Gruenberg at a Policy Board meeting for ending his career in USCF
electoral politics. We managed to elect a few members to the Board,
which was publicly known, and two members in our private capacity as
their campaign managers, the details of which to this day are sub
rosa.
Flushed with these successes, I managed to talk Nigel into
running for the Policy Board against Don Schultz. This was one of the
few times I was able to prevail upon him to do something against his
settled judgment. Our official excuse for getting swamped in an
electoral tsunami was that Nigel spent most of the time during the
campaign in Brazil arranging to adopt a baby. That baby is today a
splendid young lady, a cherished part of the Eddis family.
Now is perhaps the time to admit that Friends of the USCF
chairman GM Larry Evans and I realized that Nigel got as many votes as
he did precisely because he didn't do much campaigning. I was with
him while he made a few phone calls to selected delegates at the
beginning of the campaign and, after his return from Brazil, at the
very end. These calls were disasters because my friend practiced
conversation sans tergiversation. One delegate, who began the call
predisposed to Nigel, ended up announcing he would campaign for Mr.
Schultz. The delegate had asked Nigel about his views regarding
somebody-or-other and I heard Nigel say, in a close paraphrase, "The
blighter wants lynching from an honest English oak."
Of course, I remonstrated -- no, make that tearfully begged him
-- to get into the spirit of a political campaign. His response was
unforgettable, and I can paraphrase it fairly closely: "Larry,
strange as it may seem to you I think of myself as a British
gentleman. No, really, I do. And I will not tailor my tongue to the
views of a woolly-headed Federation delegate."
Nigel, alas, was not candidate material.
Instead, he was among the two finest chess photographers ever to
snap a shutter. The other is Catherine Jaeg of France.
Nigel's photos were nearly always technically perfect and his
compositions, though simple and mainstream, were subtle. He had a
knack for drawing out the essential character or lack thereof of his
subjects. The photo portrait of Arnold Denker in, if memory serves,
the November 1985 issue of Chess Life is as elegant and energetic as
the man himself. His portrait of Maria Ivanka at the 1986 World Open,
see perhaps the CL of October 1986, is a study in vivacious, desirable
femininity. In a CL issue of early 1987 he captured Filipp Frenkel
tellingly. There are many other examples of his work that graced the
pages of Chess Life for decades, and I wish that I could recollect the
year, let alone the issue, with his photo portrait of Bent Larsen, one
of the most subtle, yet hoppingly vibrant studies ever to appear in a
chess publication. Perhaps it was in the July 1986 Chess Life.
An example of Nigel's dedication to Chess Life -- though he
always insisted he worked for the magazine only because we were
friends -- was an incident at the 1985 U.S. Open in Hollywood,
Florida. Briefly, Nigel had a phobia about flying that he would not
discuss beyond resolutely refusing opportunities to fall to the ground
from 40,000 feet. One afternoon, Carol Jarecki announced she was
taking up her plane to get an overview of the beautiful beachside
hotel where the tournament was being held.
I asked Nigel whether he might consider getting into a single-
engine aircraft, fly over the area, lean out the open window as it
tipped at a suitable angle and give us a panoramic shot of hotel and
beach. He pursed his lips thoughtfully, looked at me, paused for a
moment, checked out his camera, and said, and I now quote
precisely, "No." One word. And walked away.
A few minutes later Nigel reported for aerial duty, went up in
the air with Mrs. Jarecki, produced a lovely shot that appeared in CL
-- though only on the precondition that I not quiz him later on how he
felt during the flight. There was duty to perform, he would so
perform it manfully, but he would not submit himself to jocular cross-
examination.
That was my friend.
I believe Nigel deserves an obituary in Chess Life in consideration
for not
only his services to the magazine but for the shimmering quality of
those services. For several years CL enjoyed the pictorial
inspirations of not only a professional New York photographer but of
an inspired craftsman. His chess work merits a photographic collection
of the sort produced for Catherine Jaeg several years back.
Yours, Larry Parr
[email protected] wrote:
> A GRIEVOUS TYPO
>
> I apologize to all concerned. I posted a brief note on the passing
> of Nigel Eddis and noted his age of 92. That was a grievous typo. He
> was 72. My own father recently died at age 92. Sorrry to all
> concerned.
>
>
> samsloan wrote:
> > Nigel Eddis, prolific Chess Life Photographer and once a candidate for
> > election to the USCF Policy Board, died on January 11, 2009 at age 72.
> >
> > I owe many great debts to Nigel Eddis. In 1978 my marriage was
> > breaking up with my first wife Anda, mother of my two children, Peter
> > and Mary. Nigel and Anne lived just two blocks away from us on the
> > Upper West Side of Manhattan. Often Nigel and and his wife Anne became
> > unofficial marriage counselors, especially when Anda would kick me out
> > of the house, which was frequently. Nigel and Anne would come over and
> > talk her into letting me back into the house. It is probably because
> > of Nigel and Anne that I was able to stay with Anda long enough to
> > have two children with her.
> >
> > In 1997, Nigel came to the rescue again. By then, he was working for
> > Tiger Direct, an Employment Agency in the Wall Street Financial
> > District. Nigel got my beloved girlfriend, Passion Julinsey, a job
> > working for Goldman Sachs in the library.
> >
> > As it turned out, after three months of living with me, Passion went
> > nuts and broke up with me and Goldman Sachs fired her, either on the
> > same day or the next day. Passion probably thought I had gotten her
> > fired, because both things happened at the same time.
> >
> > Nigel Eddis lost his job with the Wall Street Employment Agency, which
> > was on William Street, when 9/11 happened and the agency had to close.
> >
> > Sam Sloan
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Date: 11 Feb 2009 19:06:58
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Nigel Eddis, Chess Life photographer, has died
|
A GRIEVOUS TYPO
I apologize to all concerned. I posted a brief note on the passing
of Nigel Eddis and noted his age of 92. That was a grievous typo. He
was 72. My own father recently died at age 92. Sorrry to all
concerned.
samsloan wrote:
> Nigel Eddis, prolific Chess Life Photographer and once a candidate for
> election to the USCF Policy Board, died on January 11, 2009 at age 72.
>
> I owe many great debts to Nigel Eddis. In 1978 my marriage was
> breaking up with my first wife Anda, mother of my two children, Peter
> and Mary. Nigel and Anne lived just two blocks away from us on the
> Upper West Side of Manhattan. Often Nigel and and his wife Anne became
> unofficial marriage counselors, especially when Anda would kick me out
> of the house, which was frequently. Nigel and Anne would come over and
> talk her into letting me back into the house. It is probably because
> of Nigel and Anne that I was able to stay with Anda long enough to
> have two children with her.
>
> In 1997, Nigel came to the rescue again. By then, he was working for
> Tiger Direct, an Employment Agency in the Wall Street Financial
> District. Nigel got my beloved girlfriend, Passion Julinsey, a job
> working for Goldman Sachs in the library.
>
> As it turned out, after three months of living with me, Passion went
> nuts and broke up with me and Goldman Sachs fired her, either on the
> same day or the next day. Passion probably thought I had gotten her
> fired, because both things happened at the same time.
>
> Nigel Eddis lost his job with the Wall Street Employment Agency, which
> was on William Street, when 9/11 happened and the agency had to close.
>
> Sam Sloan
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