Robert Alan Feldstein

December 15, 1956 – October 18, 2011

     Born, raised and educated in the Bronx, Robert Feldstein was taught to play chess by his father at the age of seven and continued to play at Bronx House, a youth program for Bronx preteens and teens.  By the time he was in high school (Christopher Columbus High School), Robert was already a tournament player and frequently hitch-hiked to tournaments throughout the East Coast, and sometimes further away, on Friday afternoons.   Robert played on the Lehman College Chess Team and represented Lehman College at the Pan-American tournament throughout his college years and as an alumnus for several years after his graduation.  No matter what his health or employment situation, chess has been the constant in his adult life as well.

     Robert is best known in the chess world for his extensive chess-related travel.  He has played tournament games in every US State and in every Canadian province and territory (except for Nunavut, which was created after Robert had completed this record). He has also played at chess tournaments in England, Spain, Australia, Israel, Peru, and Mexico, and probably other countries I have forgotten to mention.  In addition to formal tournaments, as long as his health permitted, he participated in a self-sponsored traveling tournament called “County Seat Chess Fever,” where he played rated games with opponents he brought with him or found locally.  Games were played in coffee shops, small motels, fast food restaurants, parks, zoos, and even a (legal) brothel in Nevada.   In recent years, his health did not permit him to travel abroad nor for long periods of time, but he still managed to keep busy playing in tournaments throughout the East Coast and occasionally as far away as Chicago.

         In addition to chess, Robert’s passions included politics (he was most concerned about issues of individual rights and civil liberties), popular music (he knew the tunes, lyrics, and songwriters of virtually every song between 1955 and 1995 and created a personally narrated collection of music from this era), and animals (he loved animals of all species and sizes and in all settings).  He worked in various civil service jobs, as a substitute teacher, and occasionally as a criminal lawyer (he held a law degree from Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing, Michigan and was licensed to practice law in Pennsylvania).

         Since 1981, except for his law school years in Michigan, Robert lived in Brooklyn, New York.  He is survived by his wife, Debra (Debbie) Rothman and our three cats, who still live in the Brooklyn apartment, as well as his father, Jerry Feldstein, and his sister, Ellen (Feldstein) Friedman.

                                                                  --- Debbie Rothman  11/5/11