Jeremy Gaige (1927-2011)

Jeremy Gaige, one of this country's leading chess historians and archivists, died of emphysema on February 19 at his home in the Spring Garden section of Philadelphia. He was 83.

Mr. Gaige was born on October 9, 1927 in Peekskill, New York, the adopted son of theatrical producer Crosby Gaige (ne Roscoe Conkling Gaige). He graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. During World War II, he served in the Army Medical Corps. After his discharge, he earned a bachelor's degree from Columbia University. He began a career in journalism as a copyboy at the New York Times and contributed obituaries to the New York Herald Tribune. He was later a radio and television editor at the Syracuse Herald-Journal, editorial editor at the Toldedo (Ohio) Blade, and a reporter at the Wall Street Journal. He started working at the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin in early 1959 and was a copy editor of the business section of the paper when it closed in 1982.

While working at the Evening Bulletin during the 1960s, he started compiling detailed records of chess tournaments and published biographical data about players and chess journalists. He set up a printing press in his basement and hand-set type to produce six volumes of tournament crosstables between 1851 and 1980. He also self-published other books and booklets. In 1987, McFarland & Company Inc. published his "Chess Personalia: A Biobibliography," which contained about 14,000 chess personalities from around the world. A paperback reprint of his book appeared in 2005. During the 1970s and '80s, Mr. Gaige collaborated with chess journalists Stephen Dann and George Mirijanian of Massachusetts in collecting data on chess personalities in New England, the rest of the United States, and overseas. Mr. Gaige was inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in August 2007 at the U.S. Open in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. He was one of the original honorary life members of the Chess Journalists of America (CJA).

He is survived by his wife, Harriet (Oken) Gaige, whom he had married in February 1959 at City Hall in New York. He is also survived by a daughter, Monica Gaige-Rosenzweig, and a granddaughter.

George Mirijanian
MACA President

Jeremy Gaige - may you rest in peace.